Sylvain Neuvel's new novel is Sleeping Giants. One of his ten top speculative fiction novels with serious science, as shared at the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:Hominids, by Robert J. SawyerRead about the other entries on the list.
The premise for this parallel universe story is a really good one, but the science is what got me hooked. You could probably use this book to help students pick a field of study. It has a bit of everything: physics, (paleo)anthropology, genetics, quantum computing, etc., etc. Sawyer’s research is impeccable and the science is always solid.
--Marshal Zeringue