In 1994 in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores is saved from drowning by a shiver of sharks. His family, struggling to make ends meet amidst the collapse of the sugar cane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favour from ancient Hawaiian gods. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads
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God Shot, Chelsea Bieker
Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen-year-old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it’s an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to […]
Read MoreWatershed, Doreen Vanderstoop
Despite its decade-long gestation, Watershed is both timely and urgent as it imagines a semi-dystopian future in Alberta brought on by climate change. In the year 2058, the glaciers have vanished and a catastrophic drought has plunged the prairies into despair. –Calgary Herald Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads
Read MoreWilla and the Whale, Chad Morris and Shelly Brown
Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Middle grade fiction When Willa’s dad takes her on a whale-watching trip to see the migrating humpbacks, an unexpected thing happens: A whale talks to her. The whale, called Meg, seems as surprised as Willa that the two can understand each other, but they form a […]
Read MoreBarn 8, Deb Olin Unferth
Funny, whimsical, philosophical, and heartbreaking, Barn 8 ultimately asks: What constitutes meaningful action in a world so in need of change? Unferth comes at this question with striking ingenuity, razor-sharp wit, and ferocious passion. Barn 8 is a rare comic-political drama, a tour de force for our time. Goodreads Reviews […]
Read MoreThe Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel
Weaving together the lives of these characters, The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the skyscrapers of Manhattan, and the wilderness of northern Vancouver Island, painting a breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads
Read MoreThe World on Either Side, Diane Terrana
Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Young Adult Fiction Content Warning: This book includes descriptions of death, depression, attempted suicide, animal poaching, animal cruelty, forced migration, human trafficking, war, genocide, child soldiers, and rape. Following the death of her boyfriend, high school senior Valentine falls into a severe depression and nearly overdoses […]
Read MoreThe Last Wave, Pankaj Sekhsaria
Ever the aimless drifter, Harish finds the anchor his life needs in a chance encounter with members of the ancient and threatened – Jarawa community-the ‘original people’ of the Andaman Islands and its tropical rain forests. As he observes the slow but sure destruction of everything the Jarawa require for […]
Read MoreSong for a Whale, Lynne Kelly
Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly Middle Grade Fiction Sometimes a book just stops you in your tracks and demands that you sit with it, pushing aside as many demands of “real life” as you can in order to lose yourself in the book’s world. […]
Read MoreWeather, Jenny Offill
The mammoth threat of climate change looms large over the ephemera of modern life in this novel filled with dread and humour. –Esquire From the author of the nationwide best seller Dept. of Speculation–one of the New York Times Book Review‘s Ten Best Books of the Year–a shimmering tour de […]
Read MoreStrange Birds, Celia C. Pérez
Selected as one of our January features for Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation, Strange Birds: a field guide to ruffling feathers is Florida-based juvenile fiction. Abstract: After Ofelia, Aster, Cat, and Lane fail to persuade a local girls club to change an outdated tradition, they form an alternative group […]
Read MoreSool, Cho Dharman
According to Times India, Tamil writer Cho Dharman won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2019. The novel is a “burning portrait of the environmental and ecological disaster in Tamil Nadu.” The story takes place in Urulaikkudi, the native village of Mr. Dharman, and he has captured the destruction of the […]
Read MoreNed Hayes’ The Eagle Tree
The Eagle Tree by Ned Hayes (Little A, 2016) Young adult contemporary fiction Review by Kimberly Christensen To say that fourteen-year-old March Wong loves trees is an understatement. He climbs multiple trees per day and can cite endless amount of information about trees, from information about their species to how […]
Read MoreGhost Species, James Bradley
We originally published this news on October 25, 2019: James Bradley tweeted the cover reveal of his May 2020 novel, Ghost Species. See below. Update: The book is now listed at Goodreads. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads Delighted to reveal the cover of my new novel, Ghost Species. Out May […]
Read MoreAn Invite to Eternity, Gary Budden and Marian Womack, et al.
Humanity is facing a challenge if a magnitude ever before seen, compromising new anxieties we are at times unable to process. An Invite to Eternity is a collection of short story fiction that addresses this shift under the premise that speculative fiction, weird fiction, and dark horror are in a […]
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