Post-punk is a rock music genre that can be considered punk’s artsy, more experimental little sister. Eventually, the white noise, synthesizers and moodiness of post-punk turned into new wave, industrial, and alternative rock.

For post-punk albums, click here.

Tom Harry runs Medicine Lodge, the best watering hole in Gros Venture, Montana. He doesn’t have a wife and doesn’t need a wife. He doesn’t even need his son, Rusty, though they get along well enough…until 1960. That’s when Proxy and Francine show up. Proxy is a taxi dancer from Tom’s past. Francine is her beatnik daughter. Old passions attempt to reignite in Tom, while Rusty discovers the world for the first time. Ivan Doig’s The Bartender’s Tale is a slow burn, character-driven novel on coming of age and the currents of small towns. Doig is a master at showing the fullness of everyday living in the wide open west.

When you are ready to expand your horizons, why not start with stories that are celebrated by other authors? The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America have announced the winners of the Nebula Awards, and it is an earth-shaking year for the imagination:

Best Novel:  2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Finalists:  Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed, Ironskin by Tina Connolly, The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin, The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan, and Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal
Best Novella:  After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress
Best Novellette:  “Close Encounters” by Andy Duncan, soon to appear in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection
Best Short Story:  “Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard, available online via Clarkesworld
Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation:  Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by Benh Zeitlin

Zero Dark Thirty is a dramatization about the 10-year search for Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. Maya is a young CIA officer who refuses to give up the search even when it involves torture. Maya and Seal Team 6’s efforts ultimately secure bin Laden in this engrossing film.

Out-of-work graphic designer Clay Jannon stumbles on an unusual bookshop and impulsively asks for work. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore seems innocuous enough, but soon it becomes apparent that there is a strange plot that can’t be contained by the towering shelves of unusual tomes. It will take a love of books, complex data visualization, connections at both Google and Industrial Light & Magic, and a motley crew of friends with unusual skills to complete this quest, and even then the victory may not be theirs. Author Robin Sloan crafts a modern lit-tech adventure, and reader Ari Fliakos brings it to life, honoring the wit, geekery, and enthusiasm that make decoding the secret of immortality hard to resist. The glow-in-the-dark cover helps, too.