Though this eco-fiction novel was published in 2006, according to Home Town Station, Mary Alice Monroe’s novel The Beach House will be adapted into a Hallmark Channel Original Movie, starring three-time Golden Globe nominee Andie MacDowell and premiering exclusively on the network in 2017. Monroe’s novel The Butterfly’s Daughter also won […]
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Fever Dream, Samanta Schweblin
Translated into English, January 2017–(originally Distancia de rescate), Fever Dream is shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. With virtuoso skill, well served in Megan McDowell’s finely textured translation, Ms Schweblin fuses a study in maternal anxiety with an ecological horror story. –The Economist Fever Dream is a nightmare […]
Read MoreMara Tusconi Oceanography Mystery Series – Charlene D’Avanzo
Updated to post the second in this oceanography mystery series, Demon Spirit, Devil Sea, which is out in May 2017. I had the pleasure of reading an advanced copy of the novel. I wrote: The novel opens readers’ eyes to a beautiful, mysterious, and threatened rainforest as a climate change […]
Read MoreCli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change, Bruce Meyer et al.
With the world facing the greatest global crisis of all time – climate change – personal and political indifference has wrought a series of unfolding complications that are altering our planet, and threatening our very existence. Reacting to the warnings sounded by scientists and thinkers, writers are responding imaginatively to […]
Read MoreAgency, William Gibson
Due out in January 2018, the novel will travel between two periods: one in present-day San Francisco, where Clinton’s White House ambitions are realised; and the other in a post-apocalyptic London, 200 years into the future after 80% of the world population has been killed. –The Guardian In William Gibson’s […]
Read MoreThe Broken Earth Trilogy, N.K. Jemisin
N.K. Jemisin’s books are some of the most original and eye-opening fantasies being published today, and these books have a particularly vibrant take on survival. Jemisin’s world goes through cycles of catastrophes that upend humanity each time. The stress of the continual shifts leads to an oppressed people known as […]
Read MoreUrsocrypha: The Book of Bear, Katie Welch
Thanks to author Katie Welch for writing in to tell us about her novel The Bears (republished as Ursocrypha: The Book of Bear in January 2017). When an oil pipeline in Northern British Columbia ruptures, the ensuing environmental disaster precipitates a crisis for activist Gilbert Crow, arctic researcher Anne McCraig, […]
Read MoreOrkney, Amy Sackville
Orkney, the second novel from young British writer Amy Sackville, is certainly evocative: poetic, lyrical, lush in texture. But while this is its strength, the line between beautifully written and over-written is a fine one. –The Independent This is lovely: a beautifully painted story of love, obsession and loss, set […]
Read MoreClay, Melissa Harrison
An interesting novel about loneliness and our disconnection from nature. It centres on a run down city park and four main characters whose lives intersect through their use of the park. -Goodreads (Catherine, reviewer) Goodreads Reviews Back to Goodreads
Read MoreAddlands, Tom Bullough
There have been a number of attempts to graft the style of the so-called new nature writing onto the novel…Tom Bullough’s Addlands is a very creditable contribution to this genre. -The Spectator The stark beauty of the Welsh countryside is given powerful life in this sweeping tale of one family […]
Read MoreWe Are But a Moment, Ulrich Baer
Philosophical rather than prescriptive, We Are But A Moment explores how we live and die in the 21st century, what we consume, how we inhabit our world, and whether we can all live, and love, in the future. Goodreads Reviews Back to Goodreads
Read MoreAlaska Highway Two-Step, Caroline Woodward
I’m speaking with the author and part-time lighthouse keeper just after the re-publication of her book Alaska Highway Two-Step. First published in 1993, the unusual mystery novel is set in part along the legendary route and the release of its new edition coincides with the 75th anniversary of the Highway’s […]
Read MoreKinship of Clover, Ellen Meeropol
He was nine when the vines first wrapped themselves around him and burrowed into his skin. Now a college botany major, Jeremy is desperately looking for a way to listen to the plants and stave off their extinction. But when the grip of the vines becomes too intense and Health […]
Read MoreVoid Star, Zachary Mason
Vivid, tumultuous, and propulsive, Void Star is Zachary Mason’s mind-bending follow-up to his bestselling debut, The Lost Books of the Odyssey. -Goodreads Catastrophic events propel Zachary Mason’s Void Star, a mind-bending novel in which rising seas have rendered large swaths of the planet uninhabitable, and impoverished masses huddle in favelas […]
Read MoreThe Book of Joan, Lidia Yuknavitch
In Lidia Yuknavitch’s novel The Book of Joan, the planet in 2049 has been destroyed by war and climate change, and the wealthy have retreated skyward to a ramshackle suborbital complex controlled by a celebrity-billionaire-turned-dictator who continues to suck resources from Earth. –E-flux A riveting tale of destruction and love […]
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