Commons

Winner: Illinois Library Association's Soon to be Famous Illinois Author Project "Paul Reid died in the snow at seventeen. The day of his death, he told a lie-and for the rest of his life, he wondered if that was what killed him."And so begins the battle for the afterlife, known as The Commons. It's been taken over by a corporate raider who uses the energy of its souls to maintain his brutal control. The result is an imaginary landscape of a broken America-stuck in time and overrun by the heroes, monsters, dreams, and nightmares of the imprisoned dead. Three people board a bus to nowhere: a New York street kid, an Iraq War veteran, and her five-year-old special-needs son. After a horrific accident, they are the last, best hope for The Commons to free itself. Along for the ride are a shotgun-toting goth girl, a six-foot-six mummy, a mute Shaolin monk with anger-management issues, and the only guide left to lead them. Three Journeys: separate but joined. One mission: to save forever. But first they have to save themselves.

All Lily wants is a fresh start. A desk job in a cryonics lab, miles from home, seems like the perfect way to begin her new life. She just doesn't expect her employers to be a pair of power-hungry psychopaths from the far future who won't let anyone stand in their way, including their quiet receptionist. Hauling a pile of museum artifacts in a dilapidated patrol ship, the worst things Captain Rian Marska expects to deal with are bickering crew members and a long, long trip across the galaxy. An Earth exhibit coming to life and claiming to be from the year 2017 is not something he imagined possible. Nor is he able to admit the feelings she stirs up in him. When Rian's superiors sweep Lily under the rug, they take it upon themselves to find out why she was taken from her own time and what her kidnappers want. What they discover has implications not only for them, but for the entire civilized universe.

Lieutenant Honora Kharn lives and breathes the Kurran Empire's Special Ops unit: A highly skilled fighter pilot and warrior, she is selected to go back in time and thwart a plot by the Nym, the number-one enemy of civilized space. When she returns home with a man critically injured by Nym agents, she finds herself dishonorably discharged from Special Ops, and responsible for a man centuries from where he should be. Andrew Claybourne realized too late that the scientists he trusted to handle his final affairs were anything but. When he finds himself hundreds of years into the future with only the irritable and antisocial Lieutenant Kharn for company, it's difficult to find an upside to the otherwise interesting new time he's landed in. Unable to get along but strangely drawn to each other, they try to forge new lives for themselves as they travel through space together. But when the opportunity to go home surfaces, neither of them are sure if that's where they truly belong.

"I think I did something. Something someone really bad was counting on me to do. And I think you helped me." Ray-Anne Blair isn't buying it. She just wants Paul Reid to forget about the imaginary place he says he needs to return to-and to stop calling her Rain. Everyone wants something. Jeremy Johns wants to do well at his job, but the new office is strange. So is his boss, Mr. Truitt. Annie Brucker wants to understand how she ended up back with her abusive ex. Zach, her son, wants to know if he should trust whatever it is that speaks to him from the darkness of his closet-something so heavy it makes the floorboards creak. Jonas Porter, Audra Farrelly, Po the silent monk, and Charlene Moseley want to know why their colleagues and prospective Journeymen have disappeared, though the answer might spell the end of all existence. Welcome to The Margins, a place that shouldn't be-but is, thanks to Paul and his friends. They thought they'd won. But they played right into the hands of an evil that anticipated their heroic act. Now realms are crossing over, the universe is collapsing, and it's up to those who created the danger to neutralize it. No one said it would be easy. No one's sure it's even possible. But this is where the difficult and the impossible abound. This is The Commons.