The miraculous Midge Raymond has done it again. Floreana has everything I’ve come to expect in her writing, such as a vividly drawn setting that draws me in and makes me feel I have visited the place, and a deeply felt and viscerally experienced story, with human characters who come to life on the page.
Her books always feature animals, too—penguins again this time. There’s a certain amount of mystery in the book, but as always the author is most interested in—pardon the cliche—the mysteries of the human heart. And, as in My Last Continent the story contains dire warnings about human-caused climate change, plus clear information about what we’re doing dreadfully wrong, to date. But don’t worry, this is no soapbox book, the novel’s twin plots are engrossing and compelling and the pertinent natural history facts are easily absorbed.
On the Galapagos Islands, the lives of two women-a century apart-converge in the most startling ways in a historical novel of desperate love, secrets, and deception by the author of My Last Continent.
After ten years away to build a family, Mallory returns to Floreana Island in the Galapagos, and to Gavin, the mentor with whom she had a long-ago affair. Their project is to build nests to revive the vulnerable penguin population. But Mallory doesn't dare tell Gavin why she's really come back. Then she discovers old journals hidden in a lava cave-confessions of another woman who needed to…
Very rarely, an author craft a gem of literary fiction that delves into the psychology of a character in a way that quietly terrifies me to my core, even though there’s no blood or gore at all. Such a novel is The Night Child.
The main character, Nora, is a high school English teacher who loves her adorable young daughter and cares deeply about her students but is not too happily married. I don’t want to give away anything more, because the settings, plot, and cast of characters are so effectively crafted and their reactions and interactions ring so true. In short, I highly recommend this book, especially for those readers who are intrigued by the psychology of abuse and repression (content warning: the book deals with childhood sexual abuse).
My other warning is for readers who like to read a quick chapter before bed—forget it, The Night Child is likely to fascinate you so completely, and grip you so tightly, you’ll end up reading it very late into the night, as I did.
Exquisitely nuanced and profoundly intimate, The Night Child is a story of resilience, hope, and the capacity of the mind, body, and spirit to save itself despite all odds.
Nora Brown teaches high school English and lives a quiet life in Seattle with her husband and six-year-old daughter. But one November day, moments after dismissing her class, a girl's face appears above the students' desks--"a wild numinous face with startling blue eyes, a face floating on top of shapeless drapes of purples and blues where arms and legs should have been. Terror rushes through Nora's body--the kind of raw terror…
This is easily one of the best science fiction books I've read in years and it immediately jumped up into the rankings of one of the ten best science fiction books I've ever read. The two main characters, are a little girl and a robot soldier. You will fall in love with both of them. At least I did.
The plot is simple enough—getting from here to there without dying—but it has so much to say about our modern world, addressing concepts as diverse as militarization, living off the grid, and dealing with A.I. And in a larger sense, it is the story of how we could wake to find ourselves in a city that is ruined, in a world that is dead, yet we must learn to go on, to move forward, and even find ways to embrace change.
I found myself thinking of the great sci-fi stories of our time, like Stranger in A Strange Land, and of course I Robot. The author calls this new book an homage to Asimov but There's so much more to it than that. I don't want to give anything more away. Just read the sample right here. You’ll be hooked. And I haven’t even mentioned the artwork—definitely the best art I have seen in any ebook. It’s extraordinary!
“Hauntingly beautiful and poignant.” ~ Readers’ Favorite
In a world shattered by war, a lone robot soldier awakens with one mission: to protect the last surviving human – a little girl named Amy.
Together, they form an unbreakable bond in a world where hope is scarce. But danger lurks in the form of robotic mutations known as wolfhounds. One Shot’s prime directive is clear: protect Amy at all costs.
On a perilous journey through a devastated world, the bond between a girl and a robot might be the key to humanity’s future. If they can survive.
When Jennifer Shea married Russel Redmond, they made a decision to spend their honeymoon at sea, sailing in Mexico. The voyage tested their new relationship, not just through rocky waters and unexpected weather, but in all the ways that living on a twenty-six-foot sailboat make one reconsider what's truly important. In this charming, meditative memoir, Jennifer recounts that fateful first year, moving back and forth with the currents of her life. On their voyage, the couple sailed Watchfire to Baja California's Sea of Cortez, where they spent twelve months before sailing south along Mexico and Central America and through the Panama Canal. Jennifer's unique experience on the boat weaves through time as she explores the events that lead to taking her first step onto Watchfire-from her bohemian 1960s childhood in Southern California to the years she spent as a struggling actor in New York.
