I bought this used mass market paperback today at Half Price Books in Vernon Hills, Illinois. I have previously read another copy, so this is available to bookcross immediately.

From the back cover: "Drought had come to the 21st century, and the land was dying. Crops failed, refugee camps overflowed, and riots raged across the country - and the Army Corps of Engineers had the dirty job of rationing what little water was left. Carter Voltaire, a Corps officer in charge of the Columbia Riverbed Pipeline, had orders to stop a group of desperate farmers sabotaging the Pipe - at any cost. Nita Montoya, a Drylands woman burdened with a strange mental talent, knew the farmers were being framed. She could help Carter expose the real saboteurs - but only by exposing her own abnormal ability. In the Drylands, the few people strangely altered by the drought were feared and persecuted if their mutations came to light. But if Nita couldn't trust Carter with her secret, there was no way to stop the wave of violence the would sweep their lives away."

My own comments on the novel can be found on Goodreads.

I'm adding this to Spatial's Bookbox of the Apocalypse to replace a book I have taken out.

I'm claiming this book from the Bookbox of the Apocalypse, attracted by the drought/water-wars concept.

Later: This one was quite harrowing, dealing as it does with the all-too-possible problems of climate-change and overuse of resources resulting in a catastrophic water shortage. The main characters include a military man who's had to open fire on rioters to protect the pipelines, and a woman who lives in the Drylands and who has a kind of telepathy that helps her realize just how corrupt the bureaucracy has become. And she's not the only person with odd new abilities, though not all of them can hide theirs, and desperate people can be very cruel to those who are different. (One of those others has the ability to make people see illusions, though the scope and range of his talent varies according to a number of factors. Early on after his first appearance in the story, he gives the woman a vision of what the area looked like back before the droughts, and just that glimpse of what would be ordinary greenery today, as seen by someone to whom it's alien, was quite wrenching.)

There's a lot going on in the story, with politics and old loyalties, practical concerns and desperate acts of violence, alliances and betrayals - but in the end at least some measure of justice has been done. But there's still a lot of work to do, and while the new-talents people may be able to help, it isn't clear whether it will be enough to push back against the water shortages.

The psi-powered characters aside, this is the kind of story that could - and does - happen whenever large numbers of people run up against dwindling necessities, and it's all the more unnerving for that.

Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.

I left this book in the Little Free Library; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2020 D for December challenge. ***

*** Released for the 2020 What's in a Name challenge, for the embedded "Ryland" in the title. ***

*** Released for the 2020 Science Fiction challenge. ***

*** Released for the 2020 Keep Them Moving challenge. ***

This looks like fun, so I grabbed it.