An unforgettable portrait of a society in freefall, and finding humanity even at the end of it all. Darkly beautiful, bursting with soul and imagination, this stunning sci-fi debut is Station Eleven and The Age of Miracles meets Ted Chiang meets Melancholia, for the literary reader who loves genre-busting, speculative character-driven dramas set “five minutes into the future.”
THE WORLD GIVES WAY
by Marissa Levien
Redhook/Hachette US, September 2021
THE WORLD GIVES WAY is set on a generation ship carrying those wealthy enough have escaped Earth—and the contract workers bound to serve them for the ship’s two-hundred-year journey. Myrra Dal was born an indentured worker on this ship, but her generation will live to see the journey’s end and the expiration of their contracts; she just has to spend the next fifty years serving the powerful Carlyles first. But when Myrra discovers the catastrophic secret the elites have been harboring, everything changes. There’s a crack in the ship’s hull, and everyone on board has two months left to live—if that. Burdened with the secret of a lifetime, and the Carlyles’ infant daughter, she runs—but someone is hot on her trail, and not even the end of the world can stop him.
Marissa Levien is a recent graduate of Stony Brook University’s MFA program. Her work has been published in Slice, LARB PubLab, The Toast, and featured on Glimmer Train‘s Honorable Mentions List. She lives in New York.
Meg lives alone: a little place in the bush outside town. A perfect place to hide. That’s one of the reasons she offers to shelter Nerine, who’s escaping a violent ex. The other is that Meg knows what it’s like to live with an abusive partner. When Nerine arrives she’s jumpy and her two little girls are frightened. It tells Meg all she needs to know about where they’ve come from, so she’s not that surprised when Nerine asks her to get hold of a gun. But she knows it’s unnecessary. They’re safe now. Then she starts to wonder about some little things. A disturbed flyscreen. A tune playing on her windchimes. Has Nerine’s ex tracked them down? Has Meg’s husband turned up to torment her some more? By the time she finds out it’ll be too late to do anything but run for her life. SHELTER is for fans of Jane Harper, Dervla McTiernan and Garry Disher.
MARGREETE’S HARBOR begins with a fire: a fiercely-independent, thrice-widowed woman living on her own in a rambling house near the Maine coast forgets a hot pan on the stovetop, and nearly burns her place down. When Margreete Bright calls her daughter Liddie to confess, Liddie realizes that her mother can no longer live alone. She, her husband Harry, and their children Eva and Bernie move from a settled life in Michigan across the country to Margreete’s isolated home, and begin a new life. MARGREETE’S HARBOR tells the story of ten years in the history of a family: a novel of small moments, intimate betrayals, arrivals and disappearances. Liddie, a professional cellist, struggles to find space for her music in a marriage that increasingly confines her; Harry’s critical approach to the growing war in Vietnam endangers his new position as a high school history teacher; Bernie and Eva begin to find their own identities as young adults; and Margreete slowly descends into a private world of memories, even as she comes to find a larger purpose in them. This beautiful novel—attuned to the seasons of nature, the internal dynamics of a family, and a nation torn by its contradicting ideals—reveals the largest meanings in the smallest and most secret moments of life.
Jane Quinn is a street-smart, young, blonde with music in her blood: raised a stone’s throw from the beachfront Bayleen Island Folk Fest, Jane’s mother was a songwriter who was tragically robbed of proper credit for her work. Jane writes the music and fronts the small time local rock band Harpoon, while her guitarist writes the lyrics. It’s 1969, and this year’s Folk Fest is rabid for the appearance of Jesse Reid, the tall, soft-spoken singer with a baritone voice that’s made him the heir apparent of folk rock. When Jesse crashes his motorcycle en route to the concert, Harpoon takes the stage in his place, and Jane’s confident soaring vocals steal the show. As Jane prepares to settle back into Island life with her cousin, aunt, and grandmother, her work as a caregiver soon thrusts her into the path of none other than Jesse Reid, in town recovering from the near-fatal crash. Romance blossoms between Jane and Jesse just as Jane embarks on her recording career, with Jesse acting as a guardian angel as she contends with the rampant sexism in the industry. With Jesse’s encouragement, Jane begins to write her own lyrics, and the world begins to take notice when Harpoon go on tour as Jesse’s opener. Just as Jane is beginning to carve out a legacy for herself in the shadow of Jesse’s fame, she realizes that Jesse is battling heroin addiction and overnight everything she is building unravels. Jane wants honesty from Jesse, but she’s keeping a secret of her own and the resulting turmoil ultimately adds fodder to her confessional groundbreaking album Songs in Ursa Major.
Working as a wench—i.e. waitress—at a cheesy medieval-themed restaurant in the Chicago suburbs, Kit Sweetly dreams of being a knight like her brother. She has the moves, is capable on a horse, and desperately needs the raise that comes with knighthood, so she can help her mom pay the mortgage and hold a spot at her dream college. But company policy only allows guys to be knights. So when Kit takes her brother’s place and reveals her identity at the end of the show, she rockets to internet fame and a whole lot of trouble with the management. The Girl Knight won’t go down without a fight, though. As other wenches join her quest, a protest forms, and in a joust before Castle executives, they’ll have to prove that gender restrictions should stay medieval—if they don’t get fired first. Filled with witty historical and pop culture references, this book has a sweet, clean friends-to-lovers romance that will satisfy readers looking for a love story without overwhelming the main action.