Yes, this is a young man's novel, and the emphasis on sex and beauty may be hard for some readers to take. (I listened to the very good audio version in the company of a friend who made frequent comments in this regard.) But this is still the work of a master novelist, and so much of it left me in awe. Unputdownable, a WWII espionage narrative set in Egypt with unrelenting dramatic tension and characters so vivid it's impossible to forget them. The audio version with Tim Downie narrating is truly spectacular!
Ken Follett's The Key to Rebecca took readers and critics by storm when first published forty years ago. Today, it remains one of the best espionage novels ever written.
A brilliant and ruthless Nazi master agent is on the loose in Cairo. His mission is to send Rommel's advancing army the secrets that will unlock the city's doors. In all of Cairo, only two people can stop him. One is a down-on-his-luck English officer no one will listen to. The other is a vulnerable young Jewish girl. . . .
An astoundingly good novel. Well-researched, well told, and well-narrated in audio. I had a slightly harder time getting into the spider timeline—I kept waiting to get back to the human one—but in the end I was engaged by that one too, and of course deeply impressed by the sheer power of the author's informed imagination in creating this entirely new species, tracing its rapid evolution, and giving us its point of view in an entirely plausible way. But the human story is even more amazing, in my view, in part because of the way it uses time. Highly recommended!
Winner of the 30th anniversary Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel
Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed, stand-alone novel Children of Time, is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.
Who will inherit this new Earth?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the…
This book really grew on me. Yes, it was frustrating at times for various reasons, but it was also very smart, beautifully written, with a cool premise, and sympathetic characters that really stay with you. The true test of a good novel, for me, is if I finish it with a certain sense of wistfulness, a lingering emotional aftertaste, and with this one that was definitely the case for me. I can see why it's been so popular, and I look forward to reading the next one from the brilliant Ms Bradley!
A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
The Afterlife Project is a work of speculative fiction that will appeal to readers of Emily St John Mandel, David Mitchell, Cormac McCarthy, and Richard Powers. Featuring a post-apocalyptic sea voyage on a vintage sailing yacht, lovers separated by 10,000 years of time, and pervasive dangers both physical and psychological, this immersive novel will transport you to a future that is by turns terrifying and hopeful. It was a finalist for the Prism Prize for Climate Literature, a New Scientist Best New Science Fiction Book of the Month, and a Middlebury Magazine Editors’ Pick.
“This genre-defying novel blends literary fiction, climate science, and speculative imagination in a haunting narrative that spans millennia.” —The Vermont Journal
“A dark yet hopeful story that is engrossing enough to be a beach read . . . Weed reminds us why cli-fi matters.” — Seven Days
“Riveting and wrenching and suffused with beauty.” — Peter Heller, bestselling author of The Dog Stars
