Archives de catégorie : Speculative Fiction

THE OTHER VALLEY de Scott Alexander Howard

For fans of Emily St. John Mandel, David Mitchell, and Kazuo Ishiguro, this “mind-bending take on time travel” (The New York Times) is about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future, and a young girl who spots two elderly visitors from across the border: the grieving parents of the boy she loves.

THE OTHER VALLEY
by Scott Alexander Howard
Atria/Simon & Schuster, February 2024
(via Frances Goldin Literary Agency)

Sixteen-year-old Odile Ozanne is an awkward, quiet girl, vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decree who among the town’s residents may be escorted deep into the woods, who may cross the border’s barbed wire fence, who may make the arduous trek to descend into the next valley over. It’s the same valley, the same town. But to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The only border crossings permitted by the Conseil are mourning tours: furtive viewings of the dead in towns where the dead are still alive.

When Odile recognizes two mourners she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her classmate Edme have crossed the border from the future to see their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme—who is brilliant and funny, and the only person to truly know Odile—is about to die. Sworn to secrecy by the Conseil so as not to disrupt the course of nature, Odile finds herself drawing closer to her doomed friend—imperilling her own future.

Masterful and original, THE OTHER VALLEY is an affecting modern fable about the inevitable march of time and whether or not fate can be defied. Above all, it is about love and letting go, and the bonds, in both life and death, that never break.

Jimmy Fallon’s Book Club Top Four Pick
A PBS Book Club Pick
Soon to be a TV series

« Beautifully written…a triumph »—Booklist (starred review) « This gripping speculative novel will make for wonderful book club discussions. » —Library Journal (starred review)

“A mind-bending take on time travel” and “a slow-boiling psychological thriller…Howard has a naturalist’s gift for the pastoral.” —The New York Times

« What a stunning debut! This coming-of-age story is filled to the brim with heart and hope and Howard’s prose is simply breathtaking. The Other Valley is a brilliant take on time travel and a thought-provoking exploration of the boundaries between fate and choice. Make room on your shelves, folks, this book is going to knock your socks off. » —Sylvain Neuvel, award-winning author of Sleeping Giants

Scott Alexander Howard lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. He has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, where his work focused on the relationship between memory, emotion, and literature. THE OTHER VALLEY is his first novel.

MY MURDER de Katie Williams

A propulsive, darkly comic novel, set in the near future, in which a young mother is cloned and brought back to life following her own murder, but comes to suspect that there is more to the story of her life and death than anyone is telling her.

MY MURDER
by Katie Williams
‎Riverhead, June 2023
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She’s also the clone of the original Louise who, along with four other victims of a local serial killer, has been brought back to life by a government project to return the women to their grieving families. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old life and attends a support group for murdered women, questions surface about what exactly preceded her death, and how much to trust those around her. Understanding the truth may determine what comes next for Lou.
Darkly comic, set in the near future, MY MURDER offers an exploration of ideas about personal identity, domestic life, and reinvention, within a suspenseful, surprising, and entertaining mystery.

Katie Williams is the author of the novel Tell the Machine Goodnight, a Kirkus Prize finalist, New York Times Editors’ Choice, and NPR Best Books of 2018. She is also the author of the young adult novels Absent and The Space Between Trees. Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Best American Fantasy, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, Subtropics, and elsewhere. Katie is an assistant professor in fiction writing at Emerson College in Boston.

ALL THAT’S LEFT IN THE WORLD d’Erik J. Brown

Jamie and Andrew are strangers, and two of the last people left alive. They don’t know what they’ll find on their perilous journey … but they may just find each other. What If It’s Us meets Life as We Knew It in this postapocalyptic, queer YA adventure romance from debut author Erik J. Brown. Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Alex London.

ALL THAT’S LEFT IN THE WORLD
by Erik J. Brown
Balzer + Bray, March 2022
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

When Andrew stumbles upon Jamie’s house, he’s injured, starved, and has nothing left to lose. A deadly pathogen has killed off most of the world’s population, including everyone both boys have ever loved. And if this new world has taught them anything, it’s to be scared of what other desperate people will do . . . so why does it seem so easy for them to trust each other?
After danger breaches their shelter, they flee south in search of civilization. But something isn’t adding up about Andrew’s story, and it could cost them everything. And Jamie has a secret, too. He’s starting to feel something more than friendship for Andrew, adding another layer of fear and confusion to an already tumultuous journey.
The road ahead of them is long, and to survive, they’ll have to shed their secrets, face the consequences of their actions, and find the courage to fight for the future they desire, together. Only one thing feels certain: all that’s left in their world is the undeniable pull they have toward each other.

Erik J. Brown is a Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow and a Temple University graduate with a degree in writing and media arts. When not writing genre-blending books for young adults, he enjoys traveling and embarking on the relentless quest of appeasing his Shiba Inu. Erik lives in Philadelphia with his husband.

AN ARROW TO THE MOON d’Emily X.R. Pan

Romeo and Juliet meets Chinese mythology in this magical novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Astonishing Color of After.

AN ARROW TO THE MOON
by Emily X.R. Pan
Little, Brown BYR, April 2022
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

In Fairbridge, a series of bizarre phenomena brings together a pair of star-crossed lovers from rival families.
Hunter Yee has perfect aim with a bow and arrow, but all else in his life veers wrong. He’s sick of being haunted by his family’s past mistakes. The only things keeping him from running away are his little brother, a supernatural wind, and the bewitching girl at his new high school.
Luna Chang dreads the future. Graduation looms ahead, and her parents’ expectations are stifling. When she begins to break the rules, she finds her life upended by the strange new boy in her class, the arrival of unearthly fireflies, and an ominous crack spreading across the town of Fairbridge.
As Hunter and Luna navigate their families’ enmity and secrets, everything around them begins to fall apart. All they can depend on is their love…but time is running out, and fate will have its way.
AN ARROW TO THE MOON, Emily X.R. Pan’s brilliant and ethereal follow-up to The Astonishing Color of After, is a story about family, love, and the magic and mystery of the moon that connects us all.

« Emily X.R. Pan’s brilliantly crafted, harrowing first novel portrays the vast spectrum of love and grief with heart-wrenching beauty and candor. This is a very special book. » ―John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down

« Magic and mourning, love and loss, secrets kept and secrets revealed all illuminate Emily X.R. Pan’s inventive and heart-wrenching debut. » ―Gayle Forman, bestselling author of If I Stay and I Was Here

« A lovely, lyrical exploration of how a poignant Chinese myth might play out in a contemporary setting. » ―Kirkus

« Expansive, third-person chapters—including some from the adults’ perspectives—and snippets of lore create a contemporary telling with an otherworldly, age-old feel in this cleverly conceived novel. » ―Publishers Weekly

« Emily X.R. Pan beautifully depicts grief in all its complexities: the numbing sadness, the rage, the confusion, and, most hauntingly, the joy. » ―Bustle.com

Emily X.R. Pan is the New York Times bestselling author of The Astonishing Color of After, which won the APALA Honor Award and the Walter Honor Award, received six starred reviews, was an L.A. Times Book Prize finalist, and was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, among other accolades. NBC News called the novel “moving and poetic” and the Wall Street Journal named it as one of the top twelve books of the season. Emily is also co-creator of the Foreshadow anthology. She currently lives on Lenape land in Brooklyn, New York, but was originally born in the Midwestern United States to immigrant parents from Taiwan.

AFTER THE BLINDING de Thomas Mullen

From Thomas Mullen, the internationally acclaimed author of Darktown and The Last Town On Earth, and in the tradition of Blade Runner and Minority Report, AFTER THE BLINDING is a fast-paced speculative thriller about the ways technology has warped how we see the world and the people around us.

AFTER THE BLINDING
by Thomas Mullen
St. Martin’s Press, Fall 2022
(via Writers House)

Years ago, in a still little-understood phenomenon known as The Blinding, all of mankind lost the ability to see. Now, people can “see” again thanks to vidders, devices that transmit radar and other visual information directly to the brain. It feels like slightly enhanced vision, complete with night vision and, alas, pop-up ads. But now someone’s figured out to hack it.
Mark Owens is a burned-out, grieving detective called to investigate a murder in which the killer supposedly blacked himself out of view of every single witness. Owens doesn’t believe the story—until the killer strikes again, and this time Owens himself “sees” not the killer but a black blur, like a human censor bar, the killer somehow redacted from Owens’ vision.
In this police procedural set in a recognizable but fully imagined world, Owens needs to figure out how the killer is redacting himself, and who he is, before he strikes again. His investigation will take him from tech billionaires to anti-modernity cultists, and he’ll be forced to confront his past mistakes and the tragic loss of his wife, a visual artist who was driven to suicide by The Blinding.
Tackling subjects like the pervasive impact of technology, the role of police, government censorship, and a world recovering from collective trauma, AFTER THE BLINDING has the social resonance and immersive world-building of Darktown but with an escapism that whisks the reader someplace new.

Thomas Mullen’s first novel, The Last Town On Earth, was named Best Debut of the Year by USA Today, won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction, was optioned in a preempt by DreamWorks, and has been a popular choice for colleges’ Freshmen Reads programs (and its treatment of the 1918 flu has proven eerily prescient). Darktown was named an NPR Best Book of the year and was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Indies Choice Award, and several international prizes, and is currently under development for television with MGM. The follow-up, Lightning Men, was named one of the top 10 crime novels of the year by The New York Times Book Review. Five of Mullen’s novels have been optioned for TV and film.