Updated: Click here for Dragonfly’s YA/teen bookshelf. Followers of this site will be familiar with my spotlight on authors who explore global warming in fiction. This is a diverse series–recognizing various genres, voices, and storytelling styles which cover the subject of climate change found in fiction. Generally speaking, climate change […]
Read MoreWomen Working in Nature and the Arts, D.M. Cameron
I’m very happy to return to the “Women Working in Nature and the Arts” series with D.M. Cameron, whose novel Beneath the Mother Tree (MidnightSun Publishing, 2018) was recently posted at Dragonfly. Donna writes radio plays, film scripts, and novels and has received many awards. As with other women in […]
Read MoreThe Novels of Deon Meyer, South Africa
Click here to return to the series Today the global eco-fiction series travels to South Africa to explore the beautiful country and environmental themes found within Deon Meyer’s crime novels (Meyer writes in his native Afrikaans, and his books have been translated around the world), noting, for example, the Lemmer […]
Read MoreSpliced Series, Jon McGoran
In this gripping sci-fi thriller, genetically altered teens fight for survival in a near-future society that is redefining what it means to be human. Goodreads Reviews Back to Goodreads [Coming May 2019] In the second installment of the Spliced series, sixteen-year-old Jimi Corcoran risks her life to clear a friend’s […]
Read MoreThe Wild Birds, Emily Strelow
Emily Strelow’s mesmerizing debut stitches together a sprawling saga of the feral Northwest across farmlands and deserts and generations: an American mosaic alive with birdsong and gunsmoke, held together by a silver box of eggshells—a long-ago gift from a mother to her daughter. Written with grace, grit, and an acute […]
Read MoreMother of Rain, Karen Spears Zacharias
Using the idiom of the time and place–a small, close-knit, East Tennessee community as the Depression yields to World War II–the story follows the struggles of Maizee Hurd as she suffers through a series of setbacks from childhood on: the gruesome early death of her mother; her father’s rejection; the […]
Read MoreJaws of Life, Laura Leigh Morris
In the hills of north central West Virginia, there lives a cast of characters who face all manner of problems. From the people who are incarcerated in West Virginia’s prisons, to a woman who is learning how to lose her sight with grace, to another who sorely regrets selling her […]
Read MoreWaste Tide, Chen Qiufan
Chen tells me he saw “a huge garbage field” in which migrant workers “are using their hands to break down the pieces of electronic devices, putting them on heat to melt the metals, or putting them in acid pools to dissemble the elements.” It is, he says, an environment of […]
Read MoreRemembrance of Earth’s Past Series, Liu Cixin
Chinese sci-fi has become a global phenomenon thanks to a trilogy by Liu Cixin, a former software engineer from Yangquan. The first novel, The Three-Body Problem, was published in China in 2008 and in English in 2014…In [the novel], the existential threat to humanity is something that will be visited upon […]
Read MoreThe City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders
Anders, former editor of io9 and Hugo and Nebula Award-winner for 2017, writes a story of a divided future world in stasis. January is a colonized planet split into two halves, one always bright-hot and one always freezing dark. The two habitable human cities straddle the small zone of dusk […]
Read MoreShrinking Sinking Land, Kell Cowley
One week before the Global Mandatory Hibernation and Flea Wheeler will do anything to avoid a long winter underground. A claustrophobic climate refugee who has been living rough on the flooded streets of Manchester, Flea dreads the day she’ll be forced into shelter so a geoengineering experiment can attempt to […]
Read MoreTreed
Author: © Virginia Arthur Publication Date: September 20, 2018 Ordering: Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Amazon Social Media: Author’s website, Goodreads Back to the Dragonfly Library Excerpts Wiping tears off her face, she returned to the hotel where an envelope from Millicent was waiting for her. Once in her room, she […]
Read MoreAlexandra Monir’s The Final Six, Review by Kimberly Christensen
The Final Six by Alexandra Monir Hardcover, 352 pages Published March 6, 2018 by HarperTeen Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen The Final Six is a young adult science fiction novel that leapfrogs the reader into a dystopian future in which space colonization is humanity’s best hope for survival. With megastorms, rising […]
Read MoreClimate Change Author Spotlight – Ned Tillman
Back to the series I continue my spotlight focus on authors whose novels are aimed toward a young adult and/or teen audience. These books might be interesting to teachers looking for titles that their students can read and discuss together; the storytelling about climate change is not entirely new but […]
Read MoreCave Walker, Donelle Dreese
My hope is that Cave Walker fits into contemporary eco-fiction in the sense that nature occupies a central space in the novel almost at all times. The Maine woods through which Gillian hikes to reach the holy cave is a character. Each cave is a distinct character. Even when Gillian […]
Read More