Good Reef! – Z. E. Marchant

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Good Reef! - Z. E. Marchant
Good Reef!
Z. E. Marchant

A humorous adventure story about the not-quite end of the world where a bard tries to get home to his wife after deserting from the army, and travels with a pair of suspiciously well-spoken mercenaries in tow.

A general escorts her king to ‘gods know where’ (he’ll know it when he gets there) while a witch and a wizard attempt to solve an age-old magical mystery.

A young girl with the gift of Sight discovers a race of empathic sea people, and their reappearance from behind a mysterious barrier dividing land and sea is coinciding with impending doom.

Together they all trip over history while trying to keep it from repeating itself.

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The Land of Decoration – Grace McCleen

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The Land of Decoration - Grace McCleenThe Land of Decoration
Grace McCleen

Judith and her father don’t have much – their house is full of dusty relics, reminders of the mother she’s never known. But Judith sees the world with the clear Eyes of Faith, and where others might see rubbish, Judith sees possibility. Bullied at school, she finds solace in making a model of the Promised Land – little people made from pipe cleaners, a sliver of moon, luminous stars and a mirror sea – a world of wonder that Judith calls The Land of Decoration. Perhaps, she thinks, if she makes it snow indoors (using shaving foam and cotton wool and cellophane) there will be no school on Monday…

Sure enough, when Judith opens her curtains the next day, the world beyond her window has turned white. She has performed her first miracle. And that’s when her troubles begin.

With its intensely taut storytelling and gorgeous prose, The Land of Decoration is a heartbreaking story of good and evil, belief and doubt. Its author, Grace McCleen, is a blazing new talent in contemporary literature.

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White Horse – Alex Adams

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White Horse - Alex AdamsWhite Horse
Alex Adams

The world has ended, but her journey has just begun.

Thirty-year-old Zoe leads an ordinary life until the end of the world arrives. She is cleaning cages and floors at Pope Pharmaceuticals when the president of the United States announces that human beings are no longer a viable species. When Zoe realizes that everyone she loves is disappearing, she starts running. Scared and alone in a shockingly changed world, she embarks on a remarkable journey of survival and redemption. Along the way, Zoe comes to see that humans are defined not by their genetic code, but rather by their actions and choices. White Horse offers hope for a broken world, where love can lead to the most unexpected places.

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The Age of Miracles – Karen Thompson Walker

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The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson WalkerThe Age of Miracles
Karen Thompson Walker

Luminous, haunting, unforgettable, The Age of Miracles is a stunning fiction debut by a superb new writer, a story about coming of age during extraordinary times, about people going on with their lives in an era of profound uncertainty.

On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, 11-year-old Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life–the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.

With spare, graceful prose and the emotional wisdom of a born storyteller, Karen Thompson Walker has created a singular narrator in Julia, a resilient and insightful young girl, and a moving portrait of family life set against the backdrop of an utterly altered world.

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Wicked – Gregory Maguire

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Wicked - Gregory MaguireWicked
Gregory Maguire

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in the classic novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, we heard only one side of the story. But what of her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch?

Long before Dorothy drops in, a girl is born in Oz with emerald-green skin. Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous witch, is a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived ideas about the nature of good and evil.

Taking readers past the yellow brick road and into a phantasmagoric world, Gregory Maguire’s novel is a rich and triumphant feat of imagination and allegory.

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No Such Thing As Immortality – Sarah Tranter

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No Such Thing As Immortality - Sarah TranterNo Such Thing As Immortality
Sarah Tranter

I will protect you until the day I die… forever.

A vampire does not have to feel any emotion not of his choosing. And Nathaniel Gray has spent two hundred years choosing not to feel. But when he accidentally runs Rowan Locke off the road, he is inexplicably flooded with everything she’s feeling, and that’s rage, and lots of it. He is consumed with the need to protect Rowan at all costs including from himself. To Nate what is happening is unthinkable and is pretty much as unbelievable, as the existence of faeries. But you see, ‘There is no such thing as… immortality.’

This is Nate’s story …

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666 Park Avenue – Gabriella Pierce

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66 Park Avenue - Gabriella Pierce666 Park Avenue
Gabriella Pierce

Welcome to New York City, where the socialites are witches. Jane Boyle has been living a fairy tale. When her boyfriend Malcolm proposes, Jane can’t believe her luck and decides to leave her Paris-based job as a fledgling architect and make a new start with him in New York.

But when Malcolm introduces Jane to the esteemed Doran clan, one of Manhattan’s most feared and revered families, Jane’s fairy tale takes a darker turn. Now Jane must struggle with newfound magical abilities and the threat of those who will stop at nothing to get them.

Welcome to 666 Park Avenue…

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