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Shades of Grey


Jasper Fforde - 2009
    In a society where the ability to see the higher end of the color spectrum denotes a better social standing, Eddie Russet belongs to the low-level House of Red and can see his own color—but no other. The sky, the grass, and everything in between are all just shades of grey, and must be colorized by artificial means. Eddie's world wasn't always like this. There's evidence of a never-discussed disaster and now, many years later, technology is poor, news sporadic, the notion of change abhorrent, and nighttime is terrifying: no one can see in the dark. Everyone abides by a bizarre regime of rules and regulations, a system of merits and demerits, where punishment can result in permanent expulsion. Eddie, who works for the Color Control Agency, might well have lived out his rose-tinted life without a hitch. But that changes when he becomes smitten with Jane, a Grey, which is low-caste in this color-centric world. She shows Eddie that all is not well with the world he thinks is just and good. Together, they engage in dangerous revolutionary talk.

Attack of the Mammary Clans


David Blake - 2018
    after a cleaner unplugged his cryogenic freezing machine by accident, Detective Inspector Capstan wakes up to find that he's been in a state of suspended animation for over four hundred years. As he's forced to adjust to life in the future he finds himself reinstated as a policeman, and together with the great great great great grandson of his former subordinate, Sergeant Dewbush, he's put on the case of a missing cow.

The Impending Sausage Sandwich of Doom


Kirk St Moritz - 2017
    After being fired from his job as the clandestine stooge on hit TV show Ghostbusters UK, Elliott returns home to find his girlfriend missing. To make matters worse, Hapkido Valentine, the legendary 1980s wrestler, has returned from the dead and taken up residency in Elliott’s flat. Despite a voracious appetite for sausage sandwiches, Hapkido is convinced he has finally become the mystical Japanese warrior he once portrayed in the ring.Together they must undertake a dangerous journey to find out why the Universe created this most unlikely of partnerships. All that stands in their way is a medallion wearing TV psychic, a train-spotting assassin and the murderous intentions of the local over 75’s women’s group. If Elliott thought the day started badly, things are about to get a whole lot worse.

Adults


Emma Jane Unsworth - 2020
    Supposedly. At thirty-five she owns her own house, writes for a cool magazine and has hilarious friends just a message away.But the thing is:• She can’t actually afford her house since her criminally sexy ex-boyfriend Art left,• her best friend Kelly is clearly trying to break up with her,• she's so frazzled trying to keep up with everything you can practically hear her nerves jangling,• she spends all day online-stalking women with beautiful lives as her career goes down the drain.And now her mother has appeared on her doorstep, unbidden, to save the day…Is Jenny ready to grow up and save herself this time?Deliciously candid and gloriously heartfelt, ADULTS is the story of one woman learning how to fall back in love with her life. It will remind you that when the world throws you a curve ball (or nine), it may take friendship, gin & tonics or even your mother to bring you back…

Marrow Island


Alexis M. Smith - 2016
    Now, Lucie’s childhood friend Kate is living within a mysterious group called Marrow Colony—a community that claims to be “ministering to the Earth.” There have been remarkable changes to the land at the colony’s homestead. Lucie’s experience as a journalist tells her there’s more to the Colony—and their charismatic leader-- than they want her to know, and that the astonishing success of their environmental remediation has come at great cost to the Colonists themselves. As she uncovers their secrets and methods, will Lucie endanger more than their mission? What price will she pay for the truth? In the company of Station Eleven and California, Marrow Island uses two tense natural disasters to ask tough questions about our choices—large and small. A second novel from a bookseller whose sleeper-hit debut was praised by Karen Russell as “haunted, joyful, beautiful….” it promises to capture and captivate new readers even as it thrills her many existing fans.

If Darkness Takes Us


Brenda Marie Smith - 2019
    But when a solar pulse destroys modern life, she’s left alone with four grandkids whose parents do not return home. She must teach these kids to survive without power, cars, phones, running water, or doctors in a world fraught with increasing danger.If Darkness Takes Us is realistic post-apocalyptic fiction with a focus on a family in peril, led by a no-nonsense grandmother who is at once funny, controlling, and heroic in her struggle to hold her family together with civility and heart.

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman


Angela Carter - 1972
    But Albertina, a beautiful woman made of glass, seems only to appear to him in his dreams. Meeting on his adventures a host of cannibals, centaurs and acrobats, Desiderio must battle against unreality and the warping of time and space to be with her, as the Doctor reduces Desiderio's city to a chaotic state of emergency - one ridden with madness, crime and sexual excess.A satirical tale of magic and sex, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is a dazzling quest for truth, love and identity.

Ghosts


Dolly Alderton - 2020
    When she meets Max, a beguiling romantic hero who tells her on date one that he's going to marry her, it feels like all is going to plan.A new relationship couldn't have come at a better time - her thirties have not been the liberating, uncomplicated experience she was sold. Everywhere she turns, she is reminded of time passing and opportunities dwindling. Friendships are fading, ex-boyfriends are moving on and, worse, everyone's moving to the suburbs. There's no solace to be found in her family, with a mum who's caught in a baffling mid-life makeover and a beloved dad who is vanishing in slow-motion into dementia.Dolly Alderton's debut novel is funny and tender, filled with whip-smart observations about relationships, family, memory, and how we live now.

The Worst Man on Mars


Mark Roman - 2016
    Legend. Role model. He’s none of those.Blunt Yorkshireman and reality TV show winner, Flint Dugdale, has used his large frame and ‘persuasive personality’ to take charge of Britain’s first mission to Mars. Little does he know that the base, built by an advance party of inept robots, is far from ready, with no food, water or doors. And the ship’s scanners are picking up strange signals. There is life down there. But will it be pleased to see him?

Nasty Little Cuts


Tina Baker - 2022
    She leaves the kids tucked up in their beds and goes downstairs. There's a man in her kitchen, holding a knife. But it's not an intruder. This is her husband Marc, the father of her children. A man she no longer recognises.Once their differences were what drew them together, what turned them on. Him, the ex-army officer from a good family. Her, the fitness instructor who grew up over a pub. But now these differences grate to the point of drawing blood. Marc screams in his sleep. And Debs hardly knows the person she's become, or why she lets him hurt her.Neither of them is completely innocent. Neither is totally guilty. Marc is taller, stronger, and more vicious, haunted by a war he can't forget. But he has no idea what Debs is capable of when her children's lives are at stake...

Vox


Christina Dalcher - 2018
    Jean McClellan is in denial—this can't happen here. Not in America. Not to her.This is just the beginning.Soon women can no longer hold jobs. Girls are no longer taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke sixteen thousand words a day, but now women only have one hundred to make themselves heard.But this is not the end.For herself, her daughter, and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice.

The Lightest Object in the Universe


Kimi Eisele - 2019
    Working his way along a cross-country railroad line, he encounters lost souls, clever opportunists, and those who believe they’ll be delivered from hardship if they can find their way to the evangelical preacher Jonathan Blue, who is broadcasting on all the airwaves countrywide. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Beatrix and her neighbors turn to one another for food, water, and solace, and begin to construct the kind of cooperative community that suggests the end could, in fact, be a promising beginning. But between Beatrix and Carson lie 3,000 miles. With no internet or phone or postal service, can they find their way back to each other, and what will be left of their world when they do? The answers may lie with fifteen-year-old Rosie Santos, who travels reluctantly with her grandmother to Jonathan Blue, finding her voice and making choices that could ultimately decide the fate of the cross-country lovers. The Lightest Object in the Universe is a story about reliance and adaptation, a testament to the power of community and a chronicle of moving on after catastrophic loss, illustrating that even in the worst of times, our best traits, borne of necessity, can begin to emerge.

Hunters and Gatherers


Geoff Nicholson - 1991
    The narrator, Steve Geddes, is a writer doing a book on collectors, especially those with "unlikely, bizarre, or exceptionally useless collections." His research leads him to the Havergals, a wealthy, eccentric couple. They "collect people"; that is, she does the "collecting" while he watches-"a bout of troilism," as Geddes calls it. By accident, Geddes learns that reclusive "cult author" Thornton McCain may have written a book that Geddes hasn't heard of. Geddes the observer becomes both obsessed collector and, for the randy Havergals, object to be collected. An insightful delight from start to finish; recommended for all fiction collections.

The Disaster Tourist


Yun Ko-eun - 2013
    Her work life is uneventful until trouble arises in the form of a predatory colleague.To forestall any disruption of business-as-usual, Jungle makes Yona a proposition: a paid "vacation" to the desert island of Mui. But Yona must pose as a tourist and assess whether Jungle should continue their partnership with the unprofitable destination.Yona travels to the remote island, whose major attraction is an underwhelming sinkhole, a huge disappointment to the customers who've paid a premium. Soon Yona discovers the resort's plan to fabricate a catastrophe in the interest of regaining their good standing with Jungle--and the manager enlists Yona's help. Yona must choose between the callous company to whom she's dedicated her life, or the possibility of a fresh start in a powerful new position. As she begins to understand the cost of the manufactured disaster, Yona realizes that the lives of Mui's citizens are in danger--and so is she.In The Disaster Tourist, Korean author Yun Ko-eun grapples with the consequences of our fascination with disaster, and questions an individual's culpability in the harm done by their industry.

Not the End of the World


Kate Atkinson - 2002
    Then an enigmatic young nanny named Missy introduces him to a world he never knew existed.