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.
On the morning of August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein, jet-setting consigliere and friend to the rich and powerful, was found unresponsive in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan where he awaited his second trial for sexual predation and other crimes. He was rushed to a local hospital and one hour later pronounced dead. The coroner’s verdict? Suicide. But cracks in the official story emerged immediately. And the questions kept coming: Why did the surveillance cameras in front of his cell mysteriously stop working that night? Why was Epstein’s cellmate transferred out and never replaced? Why was a high-profile prisoner so suddenly taken off suicide watch and left unguarded for eight hours? How did Epstein get a bedsheet for hanging himself, when his having one was against jail protocol? Finally, was he murdered to protect the powerful people who feared what he might reveal? Many were happy to learn that Epstein would not have his day in open court. Across the world, a sinister web of powerful billionaires, celebrities and political players, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, had reason to sigh with relief at news of Epstein’s death. Having flown on his private planes and visited his many homes—the sites of so many illicit activities—they had much to lose if their transgressions were ever exposed. And now, Epstein was silenced for good. In A CONVENIENT DEATH, investigative reporters Alana Goodman and Daniel Halper search for the truth behind the scandal that shocked the nation. With unprecedented access to Epstein’s victims and lawyers, to medical professionals, Wall Street insiders and law enforcement officers, they reveal the dirty secrets and sinister ties that may have driven someone in Epstein’s circle to take matters into their own hands.
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.
Anyone who has ever been told “You should speak up!” during a presentation at the office, a group project at school, or even a conversation among friends can attest to the misunderstanding at the heart of that demand. For those of us—women, people of color, immigrants, outsiders—who find it hard to speak up, the issue is not just about willpower. Many of us have internalized the same messages since birth: that because of the pitch of our voice, the accent we possess, or the slang we use, we will not be taken seriously. Power, we’re told, sounds like the mostly white, straight, wealthy men who wield it.