A 2021 Hugo Award Finalist! A 2021 Locus Award Finalist! A 2020 ALA Booklist Top 10 SF/F Pick! A Booklist Editor's Choice Pick! Book Riot's Best Books of 2020 So Far! Named a Best of 2020 Pick for NPR | NYPL | Booklist | Bustle | Den of Geek In Upright Women Wanted, award-winning author Sarah Gailey reinvents the pulp Western with an explicitly antifascist, near-future story of queer identity. “That girl’s got more wrong notions than a barn owl’s got mean looks.” Esther is a stowaway. She’s hidden herself away in the Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her—a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda. The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing. Praise for Upright Women Wanted "A good old-fashioned horse opera for the 22nd century. Gunslinger librarians of the apocalypse are on a mission to spread public health, decency, and the revolution."—Charles Stross "A dazzling neo-western adventure. . . . Gailey’s gorgeous writing and authentic characters make this slim volume a pure delight."—Publishers Weekly, starred review At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Wow, did we not like this novel. The premise was intriguing -- what's not to like about a story of queer literate freedom fighting Librarians? Well, just about everything. Basically, Gailey just failed at every level of execution. The characters aren't developed, so there's no reason to get interested in them or care about them. The characters routinely make nonsensical decisions (particularly the assassin, who seems to just want to die?) that make the plot completely contrived. The storyworld is nothing more than a sketch -- there's no explanation at all about why the world is in such a fascistic state or how the government functions. It's very hard to care about a rebellion when you don't have any sense of what the empire is. And there's honestly no point to this book. Are we supposed to doubt whether Esther is going to join the rebellion? Do we think the Librarians might actually fail in this book? Who is the villain we're hoping goes down? All of us just felt there was no reason to read this book. I can't think of a more damning thing to say about a novel than that no one at NUBClub understood why we should have read it. It's not the worst written or stupidest thing we've ever read, but there is literally no reason to pick it up. Dream up your own story based on this concept -- it will be better than what Gailey wrote.