The 9 books on this stack
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The Dream Hotel
Laila Lalami · 2025
* LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025 * * A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK MARCH 2025 * 'A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future' JENNIFER EGAN 'So cleverly conceived, so relevant, that everyone should read it and sweat' THE TIMES 'Extraordinary' RUMAAN ALAM 'Absolutely unputdownable' SANDRA NEWMAN Sara is returning home from a conference abroad when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside at the airport. Using data from her dreams, their algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming her husband. For his safety, she must be transferred to a retention centre, and kept under observation for twenty-one days. But as Sara arrives to be monitored alongside other dangerous dreamers, she discovers that with every deviation from the facility's strict and ever-shifting rules, their stays can be extended – and that getting home to her family is going to cost much more than just three weeks of good behaviour. Then, one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom. The Dream Hotel is a gripping speculative mystery about the seductive dangers of the technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier. As terrifying as it is inventive, it explores how well we can ever truly know those around us – even with the most invasive surveillance systems in place.
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The Candy House
Jennifer Egan · 2022
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE of the TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR by THE NEW YORK TIMES * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY * SLATE* THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER * Also named one of the BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by Vanity Fair, Time, NPR, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, Self, Vogue, The New Yorker, BBC, Vulture, and many more! OLIVIA WILDE to direct A24's TV adaptation of THE CANDY HOUSE and A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD ! From one of the most celebrated writers of our time comes an “inventive, effervescent” ( Oprah Daily ) novel about the memory and quest for authenticity and human connection. The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is “one of those tech demi-gods with whom we’re all on a first name basis.” Bix is forty, with four kids, restless, and desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious”—which allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires and there are “eluders,” those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also a moving, speculative fiction testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for connection, family, privacy, and love. “A beautiful exploration of loss, memory, and history” ( San Francisco Chronicle ), “this is minimalist maximalism. It’s as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive” ( The New York Times).
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Tender Is the Flesh
Agustina Bazterrica · 2015
THE RUNAWAY NATIONAL BESTSELLER AND INTERNATIONAL SENSATION Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.
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Private Rites
Julia Armfield · 2024
'Brilliantly audacious' GUARDIAN 'Stunning' DAZED 'Her prose sparkles' ELIZA CLARK 'Hauntingly good' iNEWS 'A must read' GLAMOUR 'Brilliant, original' KALIANE BRADLEY 'One of my favourite novels' JEFF VANDERMEER 'Elegant, evocative' CLAIRE FULLER 'Extraordinary, unsettling' JACQUELINE WILSON From the bestselling author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a haunting, heart wrenching novel of three sisters navigating queer love and faith at the end of the world. There's no way to bury a body in earth which is flooded It's been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves. Old places have been lost. Arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their estranged father dies. A famous architect revered for making the new world navigable, he had long cut himself off from public life. They find themselves uncertain of how to grieve his passing when everything around them seems to be ending anyway. As the sisters come together to clear the grand glass house that is the pinnacle of his legacy, they begin to sense that the magnetic influence of their father lives on through it. Something sinister seems to be unfolding, something related to their mother's long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always been unusually interested in their lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperilled world. A Book of the Year in the Guardian and Dazed 'Armfield writes so gracefully' THE TIMES 'Evocative yet grounded' OBSERVER 'A chilling vision of a future capital that I've found impossible to shake' INEWS 'Ballard-ian in apocalyptic scope ... Deeply, passionately, messily human' PAUL TREMBLAY 'A signature cocktail of deadpan wit and staggering beauty' ALICE SLATER 'Every page guillotines you with its wisdom' TOM BENN Longlisted for the 2024 Climate Fiction Prize
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The Every
Dave Eggers · 2021
When the world's largest search engine/social media company, the Circle, merges with the planet's dominant e-commerce site, it creates the richest and most dangerous - and, oddly enough, most beloved-monopoly ever known: the Every. Delaney Wells charms her way into an entry-level job with one goal in mind: to take down the company from within. With her compatriot, Wes Kavakian, they look for the company's weaknesses, hoping to free humanity from all-encompassing surveillance and the emoji-driven infantilization of the species. But does humanity truly want to be free?
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Venomous Lumpsucker
Ned Beauman · 2022
* SUNDAY TIMES SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL OF THE YEAR* 'A novel that delights, dazzles and moves in equal measure' Financial Times 'Brutally satirical and grimly hilarious' Daily Mail The irresistible new novel by the Booker-longlisted author Ned Beauman - a darkly funny and incisive zoological thriller for the age of Extinction Rebellion. The venomous lumpsucker is the most intelligent fish on the planet. Or maybe it was the most intelligent fish on the planet. Because it might already be extinct. Nobody knows. And nobody cares. Except for two people. Mining executive Mark Halyard has a prison cell waiting for him if that fish has gone for good. And biologist Karin Resaint needs it for her own darker purposes. They don't trust each other, but they're left with no choice but to team up, pursuing the lumpsucker across the strange landscapes of near-future Europe. On the way, they are drawn into a conspiracy far bigger than one ugly little fish. Gripping and singular, Venomous Lumpsucker is a comedy about environmental devastation that asks: do we have it in us to avert the tragedy of mass extinction? And also: do we really need to bother? 'A hilarious, terrifying novel in which Ned Beauman captures brilliantly the contradictory blend of urgency, paralysis, panic and resignation the climate emergency and its attendant mass extinctions inspire' Chris Power
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Chain-gang All-stars
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah · 2023
She felt their eyes, all those executioners... Enter a world where, watched by millions, prisoners fight like gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom. 'You cannot applaud [this] novel without getting blood on your hands...' NEW YORK TIMES 'A dystopian vision so...illuminating that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we're capable of doing' WASHINGTON POST 'Electrifying' GEORGE SAUNDERS Welcome to Chain-Gang All-Stars, the popular and highly controversial programme inside America's private prison system. In packed arenas, live-streamed by millions, prisoners compete as gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom. Fan favourites Loretta Thurwar and Hamara 'Hurricane Staxxx' Stacker are teammates and lovers. Thurwar is nearing the end of her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares for her final encounters, as protestors gather at the gates, and as the programme's corporate owners stack the odds against her - will the price be simply too high? --------- 'Beautiful and brutal, with a really furious social commentary underpinning it.' INDEPENDENT 'A sort of The Hunger Games meets Gladiator meets WWE meets the modern private prison system.' ELLE 'The new maestro of dystopian lit has arrived.' WIRED 'Adjei-Brenyah writes sharply about the economy of spectacle and the fickle alchemy between futility and hope.' RAVEN LEILANI, author of Luster 'A brutal, heart-wrenching story that feels so close to reality...' COSMOPOLITAN 'Adjei-Brenyah may have the buzziest book of the year...' GOODREADS Most Anticipated Books of 2023 'An awe-inspiring novel that will be read for generations' JESSAMINE CHAN, author of The School for Good Mothers 'A revelation!' TOMMY ORANGE, author of There There
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The School for Good Mothers
Jessamine Chan · 2022
Longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and th e Carnegie Medal for Excellence | Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize | Selected as One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year! In this New York Times bestseller and Today show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick, one lapse in judgment lands a young mother in a dystopian government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance, in this “surreal” ( People ), “remarkable” ( Vogue ), and “infuriatingly timely” ( The New York Times Book Review ) debut literary fiction novel. Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough. Until Frida has a very bad day. The state has its eye on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgement, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion. Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good. An “intense” ( Oprah Daily ), “captivating” ( Today ) page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages. Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.
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Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro · 2019
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is “an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness” ( The Associated Press ). • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick! Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
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