Tropic of Kansas is a science fiction novel that goes outside. It follows two characters into an American landscape that has no more to give. And the deeper they get into that landscape, the more they see that the social and economic injustices of their world are rooted in the society’s […]
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The Coyote Hunter of Aquidneck Island, James Conroy
James Conroy, a popular novelist, moved to Newport in the summer of 2010. The coyote issue was getting notice, sporadically, in the local press. This month, with the publication of “The Coyote Hunter of Aquidneck Island,” Conroy’s fictionalized account of Middletown’s solution to the dilemma may get some press attention […]
Read MoreFragment, Craig Russell
When avalanching glaciers thrust a massive Antarctic ice sheet into the open ocean, the captain of an atomic submarine must risk his vessel to rescue the survivors of a smashed polar research station; in Washington the President’s top advisor scrambles to spin the disaster to suit his master’s political aims; […]
Read MoreThe Sunken Cathedral, Kate Walbert
From the National Book Award nominee and author of the acclaimed, New York Times bestselling A Short History of Women, a deeply moving, “lyrical, ominous, and unexpectedly funny” (Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers) novel that follows a cast of characters as they negotiate one of Manhattan’s swiftly changing neighborhoods, […]
Read MoreOink. A Food for Thought Mystery, JL Newton
Thanks to the author, who told me that her new novel “engages with many environmental themes and tries to enlarge the meaning of ‘deep ecology.’” More from JL Newton My novel, Oink. A Food for Thought Mystery, is a sly send up of universities in general for their ever increasing […]
Read MoreThe Sandcastle Empire, Kayla Olson
You know you need to get your hands on a book when it’s already been optioned for a movie, set to be produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. That’s the case with The Sandcastle Empire, a near-future story set in a post-sea-rise America that’s embroiled in a world war. Needless to say, […]
Read MoreFinding Jade, Mary Jennifer Payne
The year is 2030, and climate change is making life on Earth more challenging. In the midst of it all, fourteen-year-old Jasmine Guzman is struggling to come to terms with the abduction of her twin sister, Jade, and with her mother’s illness. Things go from bad to worse when a […]
Read MoreSannah and the Pilgrim, Sue Parritt
When Sannah the Storyteller, a descendant of environmental refugees from drowned Pacific islands, finds a White stranger on her domestep, she presumes he’s a political prisoner on the run seeking safe passage to egalitarian Aotearoa. However, Kaire’s unusual appearance, bizarre behaviour, and insistence he’s a pilgrim suggest otherwise. Appalled by […]
Read MoreThe Ice, Laline Paull
Her [Paull’s] second novel, The Ice, focuses on human intrigue in the warming Arctic: in its opening pages, a glacier calves to reveal a body, several years dead, and the novel plays out as an inquest into this death. By embedding a mystery in layers of melting Arctic ice, Paull […]
Read MoreLotus Blue, Cat Sparks
Sparks’s post-apocalyptic wasteland is far more imaginative and richly rendered [than Mad Max]. More than mere warlords threaten the ragged survivors of this world. Rampant biotech and unchecked corporate greed have left it littered with still-functioning weapons of immense destructive capability. A number of characters journey through this dying terrain, […]
Read MoreThe End We Start From, Megan Hunter
This novel, published on May 18, 2017, will also be made into a movie by actor Benedict Cumberbatch. Benedict is now excited to turn the book, about a mother and her newborn child who are forced to become refugees after London is flooded due to climate change, into a movie. […]
Read MoreThe Shark Club, Ann Kidd Taylor
A novel about love, loss, and sharks by the New York Times bestselling coauthor of the memoir Traveling with Pomegranates….Set against the intoxicating backdrop of palm trees, blood orange sunsets, calypso bands, and key lime pies, The Shark Club is a love story, an environmental mystery, and an exploration of […]
Read MoreThe Beach House, Mary Alice Monroe
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 […]
Read MoreFever 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 […]
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