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
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The 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 Abstract: After Ofelia, Aster, Cat, and Lane fail to persuade a local girls club to change an outdated tradition, they form an alternative group […]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 […]
Read MoreMountains Piled Upon Mountains, Edited by Jessica Cory
Click here to return to the series In November, we head to the USA, the first of the world eco-fiction travels to do so. Having spent a great amount of time in the Appalachian Mountains as a child (you can read more here), when I came across the anthology Mountains […]
Read MoreSarah R. Baughman’s The Light in the Lake
The Light in the Lake by Sarah R. Baughman (Little Brown, 2019) Middle Grade Fiction Review by Kimberly Christensen In rural Vermont, twins Addie and Amos lived at the edge of Maple Lake, a place that had been home to generations of their relatives. Everyone loved the lake, with its […]
Read MoreWolfe Island, Lucy Treloar
Part western, part lament for a disappearing world, Wolfe Island (set off the northeast coast of the US) is a transporting novel that explores connection and isolation and the ways lives and families shatter and are remade. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads
Read MoreThree Ways to Disappear, Katy Yocom
Click here to return to the series In October we head back to India, this time with author Katy Yocom, author of Three Ways to Disappear. Ecofiction is a type of literature that handles nature-oriented and human-impact plots while telling a great fictional story that imagines or reflects real environmental […]
Read MoreGreenwood, Michael Christie
In an era of so much uncertainty, it is comforting to see novelists begin to work through the biggest issue of our age. And, in this case, convert our collective suffering into brilliant, beauty-filled art. There is a kind of hope in that. With any luck, “Greenwood” will spur readers to […]
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