Bloom Again unfolds the story of two women whose seemingly fulfilling lives are shaken by environmental catastrophe, leading them to changes that reverberate into a shared, but forgotten, past.
Weaving together sophisticated literary narrative and characters, evocative travel and nature writing, and effective and reliable depictions of climate change crises in parts of the world underrepresented in mainstream literary fiction, Bloom Again is a realistic work of eco/climate fiction (cli-fi) about Elyse, an empty-nest mother and artist in Alaska, and Astrid, a paleobotany professor in North Carolina. For Elyse, it’s a mundane moment at the grocery store; for Astrid, it’s just another faculty reception—but with that first shudder beneath their feet, everything they’d carefully established—from friends to careers to marriages—shifts, slips, unravels. These outer unravelings mirror a growing discomfort with those safe lives.
Both must either ignore the rumblings and fight for their comfortable lives—or leap. Before long, Elyse is following a Yupik marine mammal hunter along the windswept Siberian coast, and Astrid is planting trees in Goa, India, risking her entire career. As they navigate upheavals, each also confronts reminders of their shared past—one whose full truth carries in it the promise of their future.
This story weaves two guiding threads: How do people, in their everyday lives, confront and respond to an amorphous yet unavoidable event like climate change? And, how do women, at the point in their lives called the “second spring” when career and family needs are fulfilled, find new inspiration?
A fresh addition to the vibrant subgenre of long fiction based in natural science and studied real-world adaptations, Bloom Again illuminates the undercurrent of climate change in ordinary people’s everyday lives, the essential value of wild places and wild lives in the human psyche, and a path to transforming humanity’s collective paralysis and ennui into creative, passionate, and joyful action. It’s a book about waking up and finding our way, together.
Categories: Realistic, Contemporary Fiction, Literary Fiction
Published by University of Alaska Press (out now)
Something in the Water by Phyllis R. Dixon
Small town. Dirty water. Big secrets. A mother’s choice. Buried secrets, environmental disaster, and a legacy of corruption hit too close to home when a California native and her family make a fresh start in small-town Texas—and find trouble just beneath the promising surface . . .
Categories: Family Drama, Climate Fiction, Contemporary Fiction
Published by Kensington Books (out now)
Caterpillar Island is off the central coast of Maine—beloved vacationland of lobster bakes and quaint fried clam shacks, kayaking and country houses. At night, though, by the light of a headlamp, the island is alive with cash, guns, and poachers. Oxy addicts, struggling retirees, and unemployable deadbeats dip their nets in the creeks to catch elvers which are smuggled to Korea where they are raised then processed into unagi for the international sushi market.
Into this dark and dangerous world falls Jeanette King, who has, up to this moment, been earning her meager living mainly by picking and packaging peekytoe crab meat for shipment to New York and Boston. As Jeanette gets drawn into a fast moving story of risk and violent consequences she enlists the aid of a local policeman and an Indigenous activist. Together they try to set things right for the people and the planet, but the deeper they dig the more dangerous things get. An ensuing procession of colorful locals, corrupt state politicians, and treacherous outsiders weaves a tale that reveals the underbelly of a deadly business.
Categories: Quirky Crime, Thriller, Contemporary Fiction
Published by Mysterious Press (out now)
A Deadly Inheritance by Jane McParkes
Eco-architect Olivia Wells’s return to the small Cornish seaside village of Penbartha is troubled. She’s taken leave from her successful life in Manhattan to create the legacy her godfather wanted, a sustainable group of entrepreneurs working out of his beloved disused railway station, boosting the local economy and bringing more life to the village. But it seems that not everyone is as committed as she’d thought.
The day after an unexpected argument with someone she considered an ally, Olivia finds her friend’s murdered body. The tight-knit Cornish community closes ranks to protect Olivia, but the forensic evidence points in only one direction. Against all her instincts, Olivia finds herself relying on newcomer Jago Trevithick in her efforts to clear her name and help the police find the real killer.
With a dark web of secrets and lies becoming visible throughout Penbartha, who can Olivia really trust?
Categories: Cosy Crime, Mystery, Contemporary Fiction
Published by Bedford Square Publishers (available November 20th 2025)
Fragili Futuri by Meltea Keller
Fragili Futuri is a collection of ten short stories set in the Anthropocene, each blending ecological urgency with speculative resonance. These stories imagine futures strained by climate change, where landscapes shift, human and nonhuman lives intersect, and fragile systems tremble under pressure. The prose dwells in the margins: in the quietness after the storm, the invisible ruptures behind everyday routines, and the slow collapse of certainties.
Through voices shaped by loss, resistance, and yearning, Fragili Futuri asks: how does one live meaningfully in a world unraveling? It’s not catastrophic spectacle but intimate speculation — stories of survival, longing, memory, and the small acts that insist on hope even as the horizon grows unstable.
Categories: Sci-Fi, Dystopia, Magic Realism, Short Stories Collection
Published by KaiFab (out now)
Circular Motion by Alex Foster
A brilliantly imagined literary debut of love, despair, and two people’s search for belonging in a world literally spinning out of control
The acceleration of Earth’s spin begins gradually. At first, days are just a few seconds shorter than normal. Awareness of the mysterious phenomenon hasn’t reached Tanner, a young man preoccupied with dreams of escaping his tiny Alaskan hometown. One night, desperate to make his mark on the world, he runs away. He lands an unlikely job at CWC, the global operator of a network of massive aircraft that orbit the Earth at 30,000 feet, revolutionizing global transportation. Now goods and people can travel anywhere in little more than an hour—you can visit Paris for an evening or order sushi from Japan. But a wave of social unrest presents challenges for CWC just as Tanner settles into his new lifestyle and develops surprising feelings for one of his colleagues.
A propulsive exploration of capitalism, technology, and our place within a system that dwarfs us, Circular Motion is one of the most ingenious debut novels of our time.
Categories: Speculative, Techno Thriller, LGBTQ+ Literary Fiction
Published by Grove Press (out now)
Sometimes an Island by Ellen Meeropol
After Cossacks burn their home, ten-year-old Deborah and her father flee their shtetl to a remote island on Maine’s Penobscot Bay, seeking refuge and a new beginning.
More than a century later, their descendants are once again uprooted, this time driven by rising seas and a collapsing world. From coastal towns to higher ground, a new community emerges: off-grid, tightly knit, and forged from an unlikely alliance of island refugees, family from Brooklyn, friends from a fractured Massachusetts co-op, and others seeking sanctuary as the political landscape grows increasingly volatile.
Sometimes gritty, sometimes magical, and always deeply human, Sometimes an Island asks a vital question: How do we navigate an uncertain future armed only with our memories, our hopes, and the bonds that hold us together?
Categories: Literary fiction, Speculative Fiction
Published by Sea Crow Press (Coming March 2026)
A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet
Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet’s sublime new novel—her first since the National Book Award long-listed Sweet Lamb of Heaven—follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion.
Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group’s ringleaders—including Eve, who narrates the story—decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.
As the scenes of devastation begin to mimic events in the dog-eared picture Bible carried around by her beloved little brother, Eve devotes herself to keeping him safe from harm.
A Children’s Bible is a prophetic, heartbreaking story of generational divide—and a haunting vision of what awaits us on the far side of Revelation.
Categories: Dystopia, Coming of Age, Literary fiction
Published by W. W. Norton (out now)
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
In the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona, and California skirmish for dwindling shares of the Colorado River. Into the fray steps Angel Velasquez, leg-breaker, assassin, and spy. A Las Vegas water knife, Angel “cuts” water for his boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her luxurious developments can bloom in the desert, so the rich can stay wet while the poor get dust. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in drought-ravaged Phoenix, it seems California is making a play to monopolize the life-giving flow of the river, and Angel is sent to investigate. There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a drought-hardened journalist, and Maria Villarosa, a young refugee who survives by her wits in a city that despises everything she represents. For Angel, Lucy, and Maria, time is running out and their only hope for survival rests in each other’s hands. But when water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only thing for certain is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink.
Categories: Dystopia, Thriller, Fantasy
Published by Knopf (out now)
In a village in the Welsh Marches, the undercurrents are as turbulent as the River Severn. After a beloved family member is drowned in a devastating flood, Bede and Elin Sherwell want nothing more than to be left in peace to pursue their off-grid life. But when the very real prospect of fracking hits their village, they are drawn in to the front line of the protests. During a spring of relentless rain, a series of mysterious threats and suspicious accidents put friendships on the line, and the Sherwells’ marriage under unbearable tension. Is there a connection with their uncle’s death? As the river rises and pressure mounts, Bede’s sense of self begins to crumble and Elin is no longer sure who to believe or what to believe in.
Categories: Contemporary fiction, psychological thriller, family drama, environmental protest
Published by Honno (out now)
Between taking night classes for her MBA and her demanding day job at a cruise line, marketing manager Henley Evans barely has time for herself, let alone family, friends, or dating. But when she’s shortlisted for the promotion of her dreams, all her sacrifices finally seem worth it.
The only problem? Graeme Crawford-Collins, the remote social media manager and the bane of her existence, is also up for the position. Although they’ve never met in person, their epic email battles are the stuff of office legend.
Their boss tasks each of them with drafting a proposal on how to boost bookings in the Galápagos—best proposal wins the promotion. There’s just one catch: they have to go on a company cruise to the Galápagos Islands…together. But when the two meet on the ship, Henley is shocked to discover that the real Graeme is nothing like she imagined. As they explore the Islands together, she soon finds the line between loathing and liking thinner than a postcard.
With her career dreams in her sights and a growing attraction to the competition, Henley begins questioning her life choices. Because what’s the point of working all the time if you never actually live?
Categories: Romance, Travel,
Published by Hachette/Simon & Schuster (out now)
The Unmapping by Denise S. Robbins
4 a.m., New York City. A silent disaster.
There is no flash of light, no crumbling, no quaking. Each person in New York wakes up on an unfamiliar block when the buildings all switch locations overnight. The power grid has snapped, thousands of residents are missing, and the Empire State Building is on Coney Island—for now. The next night, it happens again.
Esme Green and Arjun Varma work for the City of New York’s Emergency Management team and are tasked with disaster response for the Unmapping. As Esme tries to wade through the bureaucratic nightmare of an endlessly shuffling city, she’s distracted by the ongoing search for her missing fiancé. Meanwhile, Arjun focuses on the ground-level rescue of disoriented New Yorkers, hoping to become the hero the city needs.
While scientists scramble to find a solution—or at least a means to cope—and mysterious “red cloak” cults crop up in the disaster’s wake, New York begins to reckon with a new reality no one recognizes. For Esme and Arjun, the fight to hold the city together will mean tackling questions about themselves that they were too afraid to ask—and facing answers they never expected. With themes of climate change, political unrest, and life in a state of emergency, The Unmapping is a timely and captivating debut.
Categories: Adult Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary speculative literary, disaster fiction, dystopian, contemporary fantasy, literary fiction
Published by Bindery Books (available June 3rd, 2025)
Syllables of the Briny World by Georgina Key
As he focuses on the hem of the horizon, it begins to shimmer and unstitch—until it cracks into a thousand pieces, shards like glass piercing the ocean below.
When a formidable hurricane threatens a remote community on the Texas Gulf coast, its residents reveal their true natures. Agnes and Earle, steadfast pillars of the community, defiantly oppose evacuation orders, leaning on their unwavering faith to guide them through. Deep within the storm’s unforgiving heart, hardened commercial fisherman Pete fights a battle worthy of his ancestor, the infamous pirate Jean Lafitte. And Izzie, teetering on the precipice of womanhood, hits the road to escape her stifling life—inadvertently endangering the one person who has always supported her.
The living, however, are not alone in their struggles. Struck by a chilling vision of a storm so cataclysmic, it would devour everything in its path, young Finn must bridge the chasm between his spirit realm and the world of the living to save his mother, Clementine. Still grieving the loss of her son, Clementine faces an agonizing choice amid the chaos of the storm—a choice that demands the ultimate sacrifice.
In this compelling follow-up to her award-winning debut novel, Shiny Bits in Between, Georgina Key weaves a tapestry of resilience and interconnection. With its intoxicating blend of magical realism, heart-pounding suspense, rich character development, and lyrical prose, Syllables of the Briny World is an unforgettable odyssey that will leave readers captivated long after the storm has subsided.
Categories: magical realism, survival, suspense
Published by Balance of Seven (out now)
Only one knows the truth. Only one can reveal it. Only one can save them all.
Carrie, a Scottish rescue swimmer out of her depth in the High Arctic. Ross, the owner of an oil rig with a guilty conscience. Amaruq, an Inuvialuit oil-rig worker caught between two worlds.
Stranded on the Arctic ice with a starving polar bear and a half-dead stranger, Carrie’s left with nothing but deadly choices. Ross and Amaruq face their own crossroads. Lives hang on their decisions.
From the cruel Arctic to the corporate backrooms of shady Big Oil, White Road is an authentic and gripping eco-thriller of survival, battled out at the edge of everything.
Categories: Eco-thriller
Published by Claret Press (September 2025)
In the Australian outback, a lone farmer prepares her homestead for the latest in a growing wave of bushfires. In Oxfordshire, an elderly man protests the cutting down of an ancient beech tree by chaining himself to its trunk. In the depths of space, two evacuees from a scorched and barren Earth consider whether to tell the rest of the crew that their old home may be starting to heal…
The stories in Jane Rogers’ much-awaited second collection shine an unflinching light on the future health of the planet, and the prospects for its greediest us. With stories spanning hundreds of years – from the far side of the 22nd century all the way back to the darkest days of lockdown – they pose questions about personal responsibility that cannot be easily answered.
Categories: short stories
Published by Comma Press (out now)
The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes
From the writer Anthony Doerr calls “a massive talent,” the story of four brilliant Irish sisters, orphaned in childhood, who scramble to reconnect when the oldest disappears into the Irish countryside
The Flattery sisters were plunged prematurely into adulthood when their parents died in tragic circumstances. Now in their thirties—all single, all with PhDs—they are each attempting to do meaningful work in a rapidly foundering world. The four lead disparate, distanced lives, from classrooms in Connecticut to ritzy catering gigs in London’s Notting Hill, until one day their oldest sister, a geologist haunted by a terrible awareness of the earth’s future, abruptly vanishes from her work and home. Together for the first time in years, the Flatterys descend on the Irish countryside in search of a sister who doesn’t want to be found. Sheltered in a derelict bungalow, they reach into their common past, confronting both old wounds and a desperately uncertain future. Warm, fiercely witty, and unexpectedly hopeful, The Alternatives is an unforgettable portrait of a family perched on our collective precipice, told by one of Ireland’s most gifted storytellers.
Categories: Contemporary realism, Irish literature
Published by Oneworld (out now)
Josh Goldberg is a young lawyer from a prestigious Philadelphia law firm. His girlfriend Kiesha is unconscious and in the hospital. She’s eight months pregnant and may be giving birth to their baby. He’s in Houston and she’s in Cincinnati, one-thousand miles away. The worst climate change-induced hurricane of the century separates them and there are no flights for days. He manages to rent an old Lincoln Continental limo from his friend, the limo driver. His travel companions are his alcohol and drug-addicted best friend and his boss who connives to derail his arrangements so she can get to Philadelphia for a business meeting. Also, she has lascivious plans for Josh.
Josh is torn between taking a perilous road-trip to be with the woman he loves or riding out the hurricane in his five-star hotel room. Then he finds out the former love of Kiesha’s life is her new doctor. Finally, all of his doubts are cast aside and he decides to make the insane drive to be with her. The problem is the odyssey may be a suicide trip.
Categories: Action-adventure thriller
Published by Sunbury Press (2024)
When the Lights Go Out by Carys Bray
Emma is beginning to wonder whether relationships, like mortgages, should be conducted in five-year increments. She might laugh if Chris had bought a motorbike or started dyeing his hair. Instead he’s buying off-label medicines and stockpiling food.
Chris finds Emma’s relentless optimism exasperating. A tot of dread, a nip of horror, a shot of anger – he isn’t asking much. If she would only join him in a measure of something.
The family’s precarious eco-system is further disrupted by torrential rains, power cuts and the unexpected arrival of Chris’s mother. Emma longs to lower a rope and winch Chris from the pit of his worries. But he doesn’t want to be rescued or reassured – he wants to pull her in after him.
Darkly funny and beautifully written, When the Lights Go Out is a novel for our times: a story about cultivating hope and weathering change.
Categories: Literary fiction, Dystopia
Published by Hutchinson (out now)
The Wager and the Bear by John Ironmonger
When young idealist Tom publicly humiliates politician Monty in a Cornish pub, it sparks a simmering feud that cascades through their intertwined lives. The consequences of their argument, and the deadly wager they strike, will cascade down the decades. Years later, they find themselves a long way from St Piran onto a colossal iceberg drifting south away from Greenland, their only companion a starving polar bear.
This is a heart-stopping tale of anger, tragedy, and enduring love, cast against the long unfolding backdrop of an irreversible global crisis.
Categories: Literary fiction, friendship, survival
Published by Fly on the Wall Press (Feb 2025)
Spellcasters by Rajat Chaudhuri
BUSINESS REPORTER BY DAY,
DREAMCATCHER BY NIGHT
Chanchal Mitra wakes up in a far-off desert town, sharing a dingy hotel room with the flamboyant Mr. Kapoor, who is planning to abduct a billionaire. Kapoor insists that the billionaire tycoon is an impostor. Chanchal is unwittingly drawn into the plot. Soon they are joined by the mystery woman Sujata, her eyes dark like murder; and then a crutch-clutching ex-sailor, who is quick with a gun.
In the smog-swathed capital city of Aukatabad, an organic chemist engaged by the tycoon to design a mind-altering drug, is found dead from an overdose. Elsewhere, the billionaire industrialist’s chocolate factory is contaminated by salmonella while Sujata fights a fiery death at the hands of hired killers. As weird weather overtakes the land and Kapoor sets out with his accomplices to kidnap the businessman, the flimsy lines between friend, foe and lover begin to quickly disappear.
Categories: Literary fiction, thriller
Published by Niyogi Books (out now)
Michikusa House by Emily Grandy
After enduring a complicated recovery from eating disorders, Winona Heeley is struggling to return to normal life. Her mother recommends a change in scenery and arranges for Winona to stay with friends in rural Japan, at Michikusa House.
The centuries’ old farmhouse hosts residents who want to learn about growing their own food and cooking with the seasons. Jun Nakashima, an aspiring kaiseki chef, is one such resident. Like Winona, Jun is a recovering addict and college dropout. While the two bond over culinary rituals, they change each other’s lives by reconstructing long-held beliefs about shame, identity, and renewal.
But after Winona returns to her Midwest hometown, and despite her best efforts to keep in touch, Jun vanishes.
Two years pass, and Win is about to drop out of university for a second time, a decision that irreparably fractures her relationship with her partner of nearly a decade. Refusing to accept permanent failure and disappointment, Winona once again seeks revival through gardening. Much to the chagrin of her parents, she accepts a job as a groundskeeper at a local cemetery and begins searching for Jun Nakashima once more.
Categories: Literary fiction
Published by Homebound Publications (out now)
Published by She Writes (out now)
Love Is for the Birds by Diane Owens Prettyman
A beach town destroyed. Her mother’s candy store swept away. This is what Teddy Wainsworth faces when she returns to Bird Isle. Meanwhile, Jack Shaughness, owner of a popular barbecue restaurant chain and widower still grieving the death of his wife, receives permission to cross over to the island with a smoker full of brisket to feed hurricane survivors. Soon after arriving, he meets Teddy and immediately finds himself drawn to her—which makes him feel he is betraying his wife. When the two find a lost dog, Jack convinces Teddy to take the dog home while they attempt to find the owner, creating a bond that brings them closer.
In the wake of the hurricane, Bird Isle residents fear the Aransas Wildlife Refuge will not be ready for the whooping cranes’ annual migration south. Seeing that Jack has important connections and a love for the island, they enlist him to help restore the habitat of the endangered cranes before they fly to Padre Island for the winter. With their rescued dog always nearby, Teddy and Jack work side by side to rebuild Bird Isle for the return of the whooping cranes. But Jack is harboring a secret that may ruin everything he and Teddy are creating—and he won’t be able to keep that secret forever.
Fairhaven: A novel of climate optimism by Steve Willis and Jan Lee
What will it take to fix the climate crisis?
Grace Chan, born in Penang, Malaysia, has experienced the dire consequences of climate change personally and is taking action borne both of hope and desperation.Her story explores the implications, both at the global scale and and on a deeply personal level, of our common dilemma and the possibilities that are open to us.
Unlike most ‘cli fi’ novels, which present apocalyptic scenarios for the future, Fairhaven envisions in an engrossing, readily-accessible story for general readers how a range of practical climate adaptation and mitigation solutions could work when fully implemented.Fairhaven opens in 2036 as Grace is days away from assuming office as the President of the newly-formed Ocean Independent State. Driving along the edge of a Penang dyke to clear her mind, her truck crashes and she comes close to death as the tide rises. As she reviews her life, the reader comes to understand what has brought her (and the world) to this point, how she will move forward, and the surprising role that ordinary individuals can play.
Categories: contemporary adult fiction, optimism
Published by Habitat Press (out now)
My Days of Dark Green Euphoria by A.E. Copenhaver
Thirtysomething Cara Foster is, one might say, eco-anxious—perhaps even eco-neurotic. She eats out of dumpsters (not because she wants to but because it’s the right thing to do), does laundry as seldom as possible, takes navy showers every couple of days, and is reevaluating her boyfriend for killing a spider instead of saving a life.
Cara has never met her six (soon to be seven) nephews and nieces because she doesn’t fly domestic (unless it’s an emergency) or international (ever). She longs for a carbon footprint so light you’d hardly know she exists.
Then, during a mimosa-soaked Sunday brunch, she meets her boyfriend’s alluring mother, Millie, and Cara finds herself mesmerized. Millie represents everything Cara’s against: She eats meat, has cowhide rugs, drives a car the size of a small yacht, and blithely travels the world by boat, plane, and train—without any guilt whatsoever. In fact, Cara soon admits this may be why she finds herself so drawn to Millie. As they begin spending time together, getting pedicures and drinking sixteen-olive martinis, Cara becomes hooked on Millie and this new freedom from the harsh realities of life in the twenty-first century.
Yet before long, Cara risks losing everything to be close to the mundane extravagance of Millie’s world—her career, her best friend, and her identity all hang in the balance as she struggles to disentangle from this intoxicating muse.
Irreverent, witty, and provocative, My Days of Dark Green Euphoria—winner of the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature—is a satirical novel of how a life on the edge of eco-anxiety can spiral wildly out of control, as well as how promising and inspiring a commitment to saving our planet can be.
Categories: contemporary adult fiction, satire, eco-fiction, psychological-literature
Published by Ashland Creek Press (out now)
The Pelican Tide by Sharon J. Wishnow
After disaster strikes, a Louisiana family and their community need to prove to each other and the world that their bond is thicker than the oil threatening their shores in Sharon J. Wishnow’s stunning debut novel.
It’s taken Chef Josie Babineaux six months to reconcile the debts left from her husband Brian’s gambling along with her broken heart. But now with a promising tourist season heating up and a travel magazine declaring her the spice queen of the bayou, she may be able to save her family’s historic Cajun restaurant. Repairing her relationship with her daughter, Minnow, while hiding the true reason she left her husband is a bigger issue.
Just as the first tourists arrive, an explosion on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico shatters their fragile plans. With her island community at the epicenter of the oil spill, everything is endangered, including the restaurant’s beloved mascot—a brown pelican dear to the family’s heart.
Josie realizes her family needs more than financial recovery. Only reconciling her past and revealing the truth can clean up the guilt and hurt pooling under the surface. And maybe, with enough honesty, this family can find renewal.
Categories: contemporary adult fiction, climate and social action fiction
Published by Lake Union Publishing (out now)
Fruit of the Devil by Mary Flodin
Ms. Aurora Bourne would do anything to protect her students from harm … even if that means going up against the most powerful corporation on the planet.
While getting her fourth grade classroom ready for Fall, Aurora begins to feel sick, and it’s more than back-to-school blues. Outside her windows next to the playground, strawberry fields have just been fumigated and pesticides are drifting into the classrooms, causing serious health issues for children and adults.
When the teenage sister of a migrant student goes missing from the strawberry fields, it becomes clear that pesticide poisoning isn’t the only thing threatening the children’s safety, and Aurora begins to understand why farmworkers call strawberries Fruta del Diablo — the Fruit of the Devil.
Aurora starts asking questions and gets caught in a web of gangs, drugs, trafficking, and high-level corporate crime. When a Catholic priest comes to her aid, she falls in love with him, complicating her life further. She has no idea he’s actually an ancient nature god out of Pacific Coast indigenous legends.
Categories: contemporary adult fiction, ecothriller, romance
Published by Paper Angel Press (out now)
The River, The Town by Farah Ali
In the rural town in Pakistan where Baadal grows up, children are named like talismans to sustain life and ward off unhappiness. At seventeen, Baadal has come to understand why his parents named him “Cloud,” with hopes that their Big River will one day flow wide and blue again, and their thirst will be quenched after years of drought. But in the final year of his schooling, abundance seems impossibly far away. As his parents’ marriage–full of rage, despair, and often violence–reaches a breaking point, the only comfort Baadal can afford is a budding kinship with Meena, a divorced older woman he meets on the banks of the drying river.
Meena has only just escaped her abusive husband, but her resistance to remarry soon gives way to the promise of stability and companionship that Baadal offers. Together, they leave the Town in search of greater fortunes in the City. But even strong-willed, independent Meena finds herself bowed by the strain of Badaal’s punishing work schedule, her struggling beauty parlor, and the tension with Baadal’s mother, Raheela, who fights for control of her son as she seeks to leave behind a life of disappointments and discover a freedom she’s never known.
Told in rotating perspectives spanning from 1966 to 1998, THE RIVER, THE TOWN is an intimate portrait of a family unraveling in the throes of indigence, and a tribute to the wounded love that keeps them tethered to each other. With stark and candid prose, Farah Ali traces one family’s fortunes to illuminate the relentless cycle of inequity, juxtaposing the tragic and grueling realities of poverty with the enduring struggle for compassion and humanity.
Categories: literary fiction
Published by Dzanc Books (out now)
The Rewilding by Donna M Cameron
An exhilarating and unforgettable love song for our world. Heartbroken and in fear for his life, corporate whistle blower, Jagger Eckerman, escapes to hide out in a remote cave, but kick-arse radical, Nia Moretti, is furious a ‘capitalist suit’ has taken over her cave. It is hatred at first sight.
Yet Nia is hiding for reasons of her own, ones that drag Jagger closer to death as they are forced on the run together and he is unwittingly pulled deeper into Nia’s reckless mission to help save the planet. But who can save Jagger from the relentless pursuit of the man who wants him dead?
Both an electrifying cat-and-mouse-chase and an odd couple love story, The Rewilding captures the essence of what it means to be alive today in this cusp of change pulsing with possibilities.
It is a passionate intimation of hope.
Categories: contemporary fiction
Published by Transit Lounge Publishing (March 2024)
The Most Important Comic Book on Earth edited by Paul Goodenough
The Most Important Comic Book On Earth is a global collaboration for planetary change, bringing together a diverse team of 300 leading environmentalists, artists, authors, actors, filmmakers, musicians, and more to present over 120 stories to save the world.
Whether it’s inspirational tales from celebrity names such as Cara Delevingne and Andy Serkis, hilarious webcomics from War and Peas and Ricky Gervais, artworks by leading illustrators David Mack and Tula Lotay, calls to action from activists George Monbiot and Jane Goodall, or powerful stories by Brian Azzarello and Amy Chu, each of the comics in this anthology will support projects and organizations fighting to save the planet and Rewrite Extinction.
Categories: graphic novel, environment, satire, anthology
Published by DK Publishing (out now)
Land Marks: A Novel by Maryann Lesert
In the river-crossed northwoods of Michigan, Kate, Brett, Sonya, and Mark, mentored by their former professor Rebecca, keep watch as North American Energy (NorA) connects a corridor of frack well sites deep in the state forests. When NorA expands in unexpected directions and a bigger plan becomes clear, the action begins.
As grassroots activists prepare to stop NorA’s dangerous superfrac, stresses other than the fracturing of the bedrock appear. Sonya is arrested, Rebecca reveals her hidden past, and the one person who knows both women’s stories arrives in camp. Love and solidarity want to win, even if most showdowns with Big Oil don’t end well for those who take a stand.
Land Marks is a tribute to the waterways that connect us, the land that sustains us, and the moments that inspire us to rise up and say, “No more!”
Categories: contemporary adult fiction, eco-fiction, feminist, place-based, literature of resistance
Published by She Writes Press (April 2024)
The Last Good Summer by J.J. Green
In the summer of 1986, Belle McGee is thirteen. The arrival of Fionn Power at her family home sets in motion a tragic chain of events. Now a forty-something investigative journalist living in Dublin, Belle returns home one night to find Fionn standing in the hallway before inexplicably vanishing. Unsettled, Belle immediately phones her sister, who tells her that Fionn was found dead that very morning. In her journey to find answers, Belle exposes corruption and scandal and is forced to stop running from the shameful truth of 1986.
Categories: cli-fi, Mystery, thriller
Published by Book Guild (out now)
The 86th Village by Sena Desai Gopal
Throughout Southern India, eighty-six villages are set to completely submerge due to a government-sanctioned dam across the Krishna river. Nilgi, one such village on the banks of the mighty River Krishna, has so far escaped unscathed from the illegal iron-ore mining and floods that have ravaged the rest of the district for decades. The village believes itself to be indestructible and incorruptible despite residents warn of impending doom. With whole mountains disappearing from the mining around Nilgi over time, the threat of a big flood submerging the entire village is imminent.
One night, Reshma, a young orphan girl appears in the village, alone and without any possessions. The villagers, not knowing what else to do, take her to Raj Nayak―the patriarch of the leading family in the village who has been organizing and leading anti-dam movements. For several years he’s been lobbying the corrupt government for fair compensation to be paid to the people who will lose their livelihoods and property to the mines and the flood. But Reshma’s presence, and the mystery of her origins, sets off a chain of events threatening the protests, the family, and Nilgi itself. Soon, secrets and corruption flood the village along with the waters.
In this poignant and beautiful debut, the reader discovers the damage―both to people and the environment―wrought by human hubris and greed, and asks whether it is ever too late to right a wrong?
Categories: cli-fi, crime fiction, poltiical thriller
Published by Polis/Agora (out now)
No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save the Planet edited by D.A. Baden
A collection of inspiring, funny, dark, mysterious, tragic, romantic, dramatic, upbeat and fantastical short stories.
These 24 stories are written by a variety of authors, with the aim to inspire readers with positive visions of what a sustainable society might look like and how we might get there.
The stories are diverse in style, ranging from whodunnits to sci-fi, romance to family drama, comedy to tragedy, and cover a range of solution types from high-tech to nature-based solutions, to more systemic aspects relating to our culture and political economy.
One night, Reshma, a young orphan girl appears in the village, alone and without any possessions. The villagers, not knowing what else to do, take her to Raj Nayak―the patriarch of the leading family in the village who has been organizing and leading anti-dam movements. For several years he’s been lobbying the corrupt government for fair compensation to be paid to the people who will lose their livelihoods and property to the mines and the flood. But Reshma’s presence, and the mystery of her origins, sets off a chain of events threatening the protests, the family, and Nilgi itself. Soon, secrets and corruption flood the village along with the waters.
In this poignant and beautiful debut, the reader discovers the damage―both to people and the environment―wrought by human hubris and greed, and asks whether it is ever too late to right a wrong?
Categories: anthology
Published by Habitat Press (out now)
The climate apocalypse has come and gone, and in the end it wasn’t the temperature climbing or the waters rising. It was the trees. The world became overgrown, creating enough pollen to render the air unbreathable.
In the decade since the event known as the Turning, humanity has rebuilt, and Izabel has gotten used to the airtight domes that now contain her life. She raises her young daughter, Cami, and attempts to make peace with her mother’s death. She tries hard to be satisfied with this safe, prosperous new world, but instead she just feels stuck.
And then the peace of her town is shattered. Someone starts slashing through the domes at night, exposing people to the deadly pollen—a serial killer. Almost simultaneously, Cami begins sleep-talking, having whole conversations about the murders that she doesn’t remember after she wakes. Izabel becomes fixated on the killer, on both tracking him down and understanding him. What could compel someone to take so many lives after years dedicated to sheer survival, with humanity finally flourishing again?
Categories: cli-fi, sci-fi, dystopia, utopia, post-apocalyptic
Published by Algonquin Books (out now)
The Change Agents: Whispers in the Wind by Sarah E. Lewis
Discover an optimistic climate fiction story of animals seeking an extraordinary partnership with humans and racing together against the climate crisis to save their shared world.
Eliza fears for her sanity as she stares at the assemblage of creatures before her, stunned at being invited to join their life-or-death climate mission. Struggling with whether she can juggle their mission with her demanding job as a local TV reporter, she accepts the challenge and begins an epic adventure. Collaborating with her previous canine companion, Bebop, Eliza explores the non-human part of our earth, a wondrous refuge called NoHoSap, and teams with a flamboyant array of creatures to engage people more broadly and deeply in the climate fight. Embarking together on a series of escapades, they forge an unprecedented alliance uniting humans and nature in the desperate race to save the earth from a changing climate.
Nature cries for help as the climate changes. Will you heed its whispers in the wind? The Change Agents: Whispers in the Wind provides a unique perspective on the topic of climate change, delivering a hopeful message that we can make a difference if we work together.
Categories: optimistic climate fiction; general fiction
Published by Spotlight Publishing (out now)
Katja’s World Game by J Ekstam
It is 2022. What can six students at a university in Bath, England, do to turn the tables and save the Earth from imminent destruction? Who will be saved? Is technology the solution or our downfall? The past and present are intertwined as the six students, from China, Iran, Northern Ireland, Norway, The Gambia, and the U.S.A try to make sense of their world and save what can be saved.
The story Katja tells is not only her own – it is also ours. It is a story of fear, despair and anger but also of hope and love.
Katja’s World Game is the first novel in a trilogy which explores the natural world, the supernatural, and the world of stories and games.
Categories: University, new adult, fantasy
Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future by Danielle Celermajer
A different kind of nature writing, for a different kind of landscape.
I went and sat alone where Jimmy has been lying. It is way down in the bush. The light is soft, the air and the earth are cool, and the smell is of leaves and the river. I cannot presume to know what he is doing when he lies here, but it seems that he is taking himself back to an ecology not wrought by the terror of the fires, not fuelled by our violence on the earth. He is letting another earth heal him.
Philosopher Danielle Celermajer’s story of Jimmy the pig caught the world’s attention during the Black Summer of 2019-20.
Gathered here is that story and others written in the shadow of the bushfires that ravaged Australia. In the midst of the death and grief of animals, humans, trees and ecologies Celermajer asks us to look around – really look around – to become present to all beings who are living and dying through the loss of our shared home.
At once a howl in the forest and an elegy for a country’s soul, these meditations are lyrical, tender and profound.
Categories: Narrative Non-fiction, Australian bushfires
Published by Penguin Random House (out now)
Worms have more purpose than Tim, and a better love life. They break waste down into rich fertile soil; Tim just makes the rich richer. Worms copulate for three hours at a time whereas the closest thing Tim has to love is his lesbian friend Jo. Salvation comes from Jo’s flaky niece Charlotte who asks him three profound questions. Inspired, he sheds his old life to become Habitat Man, giving advice on how to turn gardens into habitats for wildlife. Each new garden offers unique challenges, from Dawn the polyamorist who wants hedgehogs (and Tim) to the Wizard of Woolston wanting a habitat for bats and frogs. But the biggest challenge is Tim’s first client, the lovely Lori. Tim is smitten, but first he has to win round Ethan her 15 year old son. Tim loves his new life until he digs up more than he bargained for, something that threatens to bring out all the skeletons in his cupboard. Only Jo, Tim’s long-time best friend knows his secret, but can she be trusted?
Categories: eco-themed rom-com
Published by Habitat Press (out now)
The Hunter’s Walk by Nabeel Ismeer
Generations of prolonged drought and hunger have allowed the harsher voices of the Zarda tribe to set edicts of discrimination against their fair skin members. Ghar, a dark skin cave painter and Dun, his fair skin brother, push back on this discrimination, not only for food rations and hunting rights, but also to ensure that Dun and the fair skins can take part in the Hunter’s Walk, a Zardan rite of passage. When a fair skin is caught defying the ban on hunting, the fair skins are expelled from the tribe. Ghar has trouble coming to terms with the expulsion, and eventually he himself is cast out. After a giant wolf attack leaves him close to death, he is saved by Mai, a healer from the Khamma tribe. A new unseen kind of storm hits the Khamma. Ghar and Mai try to prepare their tribe for the new challenges the storm brings, but the same forces that mislead the Zarda now grow in the Khamma. Can Ghar and Mai push back on tribalism and exclusion by being inclusive and willing to take on ‘foreign’ ideas? Will Ghar ever meet Dun and the fair skins again? Will they ever complete the Hunter’s Walk?
Categories: Prehistoric fiction
Published by Penguin RH (out now)
In Dreamtime Venetia Welby paints a terrifying and captivating vision of our near future and takes us on a vertiginous odyssey into the unknown. A thrilling work of speculative fiction for our times.
‘So, where is he then, your dad?’
The world may be on a precipice but Sol, fresh from Tucson desert rehab, finally has an answer to the question that has dogged her since childhood. And not a moment too soon. With aviation grinding to a halt in the face of global climate meltdown, this is the last chance to connect with her absentee father, a US marine stationed in Okinawa.
To mend their broken past Sol and her lovelorn friend Kit must journey across poisoned oceans to the furthest reaches of the Japanese archipelago, a place where sea, sky and earth converge at the forefront of an encroaching environmental and geopolitical catastrophe; a place battered by the relentless tides of history, haunted by the ghosts of its past, where the real and the virtual, the dreamed and the lived, are ever harder to define.
Categories: Literary fiction, Speculative
Published by Quartet Books (out now)
La Vieja: A Journal of Fire by Deena Metzger
When the Writer began to receive “inexplicable communications” from La Vieja, she knew very little about her. Over time, it became clear that the old woman was a seer, seemingly real, but spirit-like, who had taken permanent residence in a fire lookout tower in the Sierras of California. Her watch there took on a great significance in this time of climate destruction, pandemic, and the possibility of the extinction of the natural world. There, La Vieja’s senses began to sharpen, turning toward a greater connection with the intelligence of the natural world, including the bears and the surrounding trees. Two other characters emerged from this contact: Lucas, a doctor who also loves to retreat to a little-used fire tower, and Léonie, a librarian/stonemason who has a lifelong dreaming connection to the Bears. The two meet and fall in love, and retreat to a similar forest world as their story becomes entwined with the world of La Vieja in an overlapping of realities. Part dream, part real, part memoir, Metzger’s La Vieja blurs the boundaries between human consciousness and animal consciousness, of imagination and reality, to create a “Journal of Fire,” a recording of the process of living with the constant threat of the destruction of the natural world. And yet, it finds hope by making new connections that lead us toward a liberation from human domination, toward renewal and a vision of the future where humans and the natural world are integral parts of a whole, intermingling and interdependent, where human nature and animal nature are inclusive of each other.
Categories: Literary fiction, environmental
Published by Hand to Hand Publishers (out now)
What Willow Says by Lynn Buckle
Sharing stories of myths, legends and ancient bogs, a deaf child and her grandmother experiment with the lyrical beauty of sign language. Learning to communicate through their shared love of trees they find solace in the shapes and susurrations of leaves in the wind.
A poignant tale of family bonding and the quiet acceptance of change.
Categories: Literary fiction
Published by époque press (out now)
Blaze Island by Catherine Bush
For those who loved Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior comes a new climate-themed, Shakespeare-inspired novel from bestselling author Catherine Bush.
The time is now or an alternate near now, the world close to our own. A mammoth Category Five hurricane sweeps up the eastern seaboard of North America, leaving devastation in its wake, its outer wings brushing over tiny Blaze Island in the North Atlantic.
Just as the storm disrupts the present, it stirs up the past: Miranda’s memories of growing up in an isolated, wind-swept cove and the events of long ago that her father will not allow her to speak of. In the aftermath of the storm, she finds herself in a world altered so quickly and so radically that she hardly knows what has happened. As Miranda says, change is clear after it happens.
Categories: magical realism
Published by Goose Lane Editions (out now)
A Spy in the Struggle by Aya de León
Success used to be this savvy lawyer’s only rule. But now she’s putting everything on the line to bring a killer corporation to justice.
Since childhood, Yolanda Vance has forged her desire to escape poverty into a laser-like focus that took her through prep school and Harvard Law. So when her prestigious New York law firm is raided by the FBI, Yolanda turns in her corrupt bosses to save her career—and goes to work for the Bureau. Soon she’s sent undercover at Red, Black, and Green—an African-American “extremist” activist group back in her California college town. They claim a biotech corporation fueled by Pentagon funding is exploiting the neighborhood. But Yolanda is determined to put this assignment in her win column, head back to corporate law, and regain her comfortable life…
Until an unexpected romance opens her heart—and a suspicious death opens her eyes. Menacing dark money forces will do anything to bury Yolanda and the movement. Fueled by memories of who she once was—and what once really mattered most—how can she tell those who’ve come to trust her that she’s been spying? As the stakes escalate, and one misstep could cost her life, Yolanda will have to choose between betraying the cause of her people or invoking the wrath of the country’s most powerful law enforcement agency.
Categories: Mystery, Thriller
Published by Kensington Books (out now)
Set in the Indonesian rainforest, Blind Eye is a fast-paced political environmental thriller exploring moral predicaments and personal choices. Ben is an economist whose life is falling to pieces. The last thing he needs right now is to compile a report for the government on sustainable exportation of timber from Indonesia. But he has got to keep the pennies rolling in. Everyone seems to have an angle. The Government want trade, the businessmen want low-cost products, the environmentalists want to maintain endangered habitats and one young woman, Yulia, is determined to protect communities. Ben rushes through the report, but then tragedy hits. A community is shattered, and Ben realises, there is no staying neutral. He has a part to play in the global picture.
Categories: environmental political thriller
Published by The Book Guild (out now)
Antarctica is getting hotter …
Summer Wright, hippie turned TV production assistant, organises her life down to the minute. And when her project-management-guru boyfriend, Adrian, proposes marriage — right on schedule — she will reach the peak of The Cone of Certainty.
At least, that’s the plan – until adventure-show queen Cougar Gale intervenes. Suddenly Summer is impersonating Cougar in Antarctica: learning glaciology and climate science on the fly, building a secret igloo, improvising scripts based on Dynasty, and above all trying not to be revealed as an impostor.
Categories: Rom-Com
Published by Lacuna (out now)
Category: Contemporary, Near-future
Published by Melliodora Publishing (out now)
In 2031, Zanna is housesitting a beachside house in Byron Bay, living the kind of life that inspires gloating selfies. She isn’t thinking about climate change – it’s just something in the background squeezing her life choices. She has much more immediate concerns, like whether she should let her parents meet her new boyfriend. Her sister Kat has worries much closer to home too, like dealing with difficult personalities in her eco-village in the hills. Their parents in Melbourne are nervously watching the stock market and debating whether it’s time to do a sea change.
For all of them though, the good life is uneasy, fragile, and about to come undone.
Three Ways to Disappear by Katy Yocom
Leaving behind a nomadic and dangerous career as a journalist, Sarah DeVaughan returns to India, the country of her childhood and a place of unspeakable family tragedy, to help preserve the endangered Bengal tigers. Meanwhile, at home in Kentucky, her sister, Quinn–also deeply scarred by the past and herself a keeper of secrets–tries to support her sister, even as she fears that India will be Sarah’s undoing.
As Sarah faces challenges in her new job–made complicated by complex local politics and a forbidden love–Quinn copes with their mother’s refusal to talk about the past, her son’s life-threatening illness, and her own increasingly troubled marriage. When Sarah asks Quinn to join her in India, Quinn realizes that the only way to overcome the past is to return to it, and it is in this place of stunning natural beauty and hidden danger that the sisters can finally understand the ways in which their family has disappeared–from their shared history, from one another–and recognize that they may need to risk everything to find themselves again.
With dramatic urgency, a powerful sense of place, and a beautifully rendered cast of characters revealing a deep understanding of human nature in all its flawed glory, Katy Yocom has created an unforgettable novel about saving all that is precious, from endangered species to the indelible bonds among family.
Categories: Historical, Literary Fiction, Asia
Published by Ashland Creek Press (out now)
Waiting for the Night Song by Julie Carrick Dalton
Cadie Kessler has spent decades trying to cover up one truth. One moment. But deep down, didn’t she always know her secret would surface?
An urgent message from her long-estranged best friend Daniela Garcia brings Cadie, now a forestry researcher, back to her childhood home. There, Cadie and Daniela are forced to face a dark secret that ended both their idyllic childhood bond and the magical summer that takes up more space in Cadie’s memory then all her other years combined.
Now grown up, bound by long-held oaths, and faced with truths she does not wish to see, Cadie must decide what she is willing to sacrifice to protect the people and the forest she loves, as drought, foreclosures, and wildfire spark tensions between displaced migrant farm workers and locals.
Waiting for the Night Song is a love song to the natural beauty around us, a call to fight for what we believe in, and a reminder that the truth will always rise.
Categories: Contemporary, Mystery, Drama, Thriller
Published by Forge (out now)
The Year Without Summer by Guinevere Glasfurd
In 1815, a supervolcanic eruption led to the extraordinary ‘Year Without Summer’ in 1816: a massive climate disruption causing famine, poverty and riots. Lives, both ordinary and privileged, changed forever.
1815, Sumbawa Island, Indonesia
Mount Tambora explodes in a cataclysmic eruption, killing thousands. Sent to investigate, ship surgeon Henry Hogg can barely believe his eyes. Once a paradise, the island is now solid ash, the surrounding sea turned to stone. But worse is yet to come: as the ash cloud rises and covers the sun, the seasons will fail.
1816.
In Switzerland, Mary Shelley finds dark inspiration. Confined inside by the unseasonable weather, thousands of famine refugees stream past her door. In Vermont, preacher Charles Whitlock begs his followers to keep faith as drought dries their wells and their livestock starve. In Britain, the ambitious and lovesick painter John Constable struggles to reconcile the idyllic England he paints with the misery that surrounds him. In the Fens, farm labourer Sarah Hobbs has had enough of going hungry while the farmers flaunt their wealth. And Hope Peter, returned from Napoleonic war, finds his family home demolished and a fence gone up in its place. He flees to London, where he falls in with a group of revolutionaries who speak of a better life, whatever the cost. As desperation sets in, Britain becomes racked with riots – rebellion is in the air.
Categories: Historical, Literary Fiction
Published by Two Roads Books (out now)
My Last Continent by Midge Raymond
In unforgettable debut with an irresistible love story, My Last Continent is a big-hearted, propulsive novel set against the dramatic Antarctic landscape
It is only at the end of the world—among the glacial mountains, cleaving icebergs, and frigid waters of Antarctica—where Deb Gardner and Keller Sullivan feel at home. For the few blissful weeks they spend each year studying the habits of emperor and Adélie penguins, Deb and Keller can escape the frustrations and sorrows of their separate lives and find solace in their work and in each other. But Antarctica, like their fleeting romance, is tenuous, imperiled by the world to the north.
A new travel and research season has just begun, and Deb and Keller are ready to play tour guide to the passengers on the small expedition ship that ferries them to their research destination. But this year, Keller fails to appear on board. Then, shortly into the journey, Deb’s ship receives an emergency signal from the Australis, a cruise liner that has hit desperate trouble in the ice-choked waters of the Southern Ocean. Soon Deb’s role will change from researcher to rescuer; among the crew of that sinking ship, Deb learns, is Keller.
As Deb and Keller’s troubled histories collide with this catastrophic present, Midge Raymond’s phenomenal novel takes us on a voyage deep into the wonders of the Antarctic and the mysteries of the human heart. My Last Continent is packed with emotional intelligence and high stakes—a harrowing, searching novel of love and loss in one of the most remote places on earth, a land of harsh beauty where even the smallest missteps have tragic consequences.
Categories: Romance, Literary Fiction, Mystery
Published by Scribner (out now)
South Pole Station by Ashley Shel
Do you have digestion problems due to stress? Do you have problems with authority? How many alcoholic drinks do you consume a week? Would you rather be a florist or a truck driver?
These are some of the questions that determine if you have what it takes to survive at South Pole Station, a place with an average temperature of -54°F and no sunlight for six months a year. Cooper Gosling has just answered five hundred of them. Her results indicate she is sufficiently resilient for Polar life.
Cooper’s not sure if this is an achievement, but she knows she has nothing to lose. Unmoored by a recent family tragedy, she’s adrift at thirty and—despite her early promise as a painter—on the verge of sinking her career. So she accepts her place in the National Science Foundation’s Artists & Writers Program and flees to Antarctica—where she encounters a group of misfits motivated by desires as ambiguous as her own. There’s Pearl, the Machiavellian cook with the Pollyanna attitude; Sal, an enigmatic astrophysicist whose experiment might change the world; and Tucker, the only uncloseted man on the continent, who, as station manager, casts a weary eye on all.
The only thing the Polies have in common is the conviction that they don’t belong anywhere else. Then a fringe scientist arrives, claiming climate change is a hoax. His presence will rattle this already imbalanced community, bringing Cooper and the Polies to the center of a global controversy and threatening the ancient ice chip they call home.
A winning comedy of errors set in the world’s harshest place, Ashley Shelby’s South Pole Station is a wry and witty debut novel about the courage it takes to band together, even as everything around you falls apart.
Categories: Adventure, Literary Fiction, Travel
Published by Picador (out now)
Back to the Garden by Clara Hume
Clara Hume’s speculative ecofiction, Back to the Garden, is told from the perspective of a group of “tipping point” survivors–a generation of mountain folks who have experienced the collapse of late-stage capitalism, along with widespread ecosystem degradation due to climate change. It is within the framework of a unique time, when these characters live through two worlds, vastly different from one another, that they tell their tales, a way of documenting their journeys in life.
While the friends and family in this novel struggle to survive, and overcome personal losses and grief, they do so with the strength of character that allows people to gracefully succeed during times of societal failure. They understand that true riches of life come from the great outdoors and from their relationships with each other. They learn to survive and adapt to a climate-changed world. Part “road” novel, part survival tale, and part romance, this literary novel looks into the human psyche as people similar to how we imagine ourselves find hope in the face of disaster.
Back to the Garden presents a frightening and tragic possibility for our future but doesn’t ignore our affirmative connection to the wilderness and to other people. The novel attempts to open people’s eyes to the importance of respecting limits, before it’s too late.
Categories: Speculative fiction, friendship, family
Published by Dragonfly Publishing (out now)
The Tourist Trail by John Yunker
An environmental novel about endangered species and those who risk their lives to protect them…
Biologist Angela Haynes is accustomed to dark, lonely nights as one of the few humans at a penguin research station in Patagonia. She has grown used to the cries of penguins before dawn, to meager supplies and housing, to spending most of her days in one of the most remote regions on earth. What she isn’t used to is strange men washing ashore, which happens one day on her watch. The man won’t tell her his name or where he came from, but Angela, who has a soft spot for strays, tends to him, if for no other reason than to protect her birds and her work. When she later learns why he goes by an alias, why he is a refugee from the law, and why he is a man without a port, she begins to fall in love-and embarks on a journey that takes her deep into Antarctic waters, and even deeper into the emotional territory she thought she’d left behind.
Against the backdrop of the Southern Ocean, The Tourist Trail weaves together the stories of Angela as well as FBI agent Robert Porter, dispatched on a mission that unearths a past he would rather keep buried; and Ethan Downes, a computer tech whose love for a passionate activist draws him into a dangerous mission.
Categories: Mystery, Romance, Ecology
Published by Byte Level Books (out now)
Side Chick Nation by Aya de León
She’s beautiful, unpredictable-and on the run from dangerous men. But this ex-side chick is ready to risk everything to help others in trouble . . . Fed up with her married Miami boyfriend, savvy Dulce has no problem stealing his drug-dealer stash and fleeing to the Caribbean. Between her special skills-and an eye for very rich and/or very smokin’ men-Dulce stays a hustle ahead of trouble and makes her new life one endless party in Puerto Rico. Until she’s caught in Hurricane Maria-and witnesses both the heartbreaking disaster of climate change, and the international vultures who plunder the tragedy for a financial killing, making shady use of relief funds to devastate the island even more . . .
New York-based mastermind thief Marisol already has her hands full fleecing a ruthless CEO who’s stealing her family’s land in Puerto Rico, while trying to get her relatives out alive. An extra crew member could be game-changing, but she’s wary of Dulce’s unpredictability and reputation for drama. Still, Dulce’s determination to get justice draws Marisol in, along with her formidable Lower East Side Women’s Health Clinic’s heist squad. But their on-the-fly race-against-the-clock plan is soon complicated by a sexy crusading journalist-not to mention powerful men who turn deadly when ex-side chicks step out of the shadows and demand to call the shots . . .
Categories: Feminism, Political
Published by Dafina Books (out now)
The Wilder Path by Deborah Tomkins
Caught between the cliffs and an unforgiving storm, Rosalie’s fight for survival becomes a reckoning with her troubled past. Trapped in a cave overlooking the roiling sea, Rosalie is forced to confront the storms within, as much as those outside. With time slipping through her fingers and danger closing in, she faces the ultimate question: can she find a way back—not just to safety, but to herself?
Categories: Adult Contemporary Fiction, Literary Fiction, Grief, Climate Activism
Published by Aurora Metro Books (available June 6th, 2025)
Send Flowers by Emily Buchanan
Fiona, better known as eco-influencer @FoliageFifi, hasn’t left her apartment since her boyfriend, Ed, died. It’s easy to self-isolate when your heart’s shattered and the planet you’ve spent your whole life trying to save is dying right outside your window. But when a houseplant randomly appears on her doorstep with an anonymous note, Fiona feels a flicker of hope—it’s not just any plant; it’s Ed’s favorite. Thinking it’s a sign, Fiona pours Ed’s ashes into the soil, only to wake up to find the plant has vibrantly flowered. And can…talk? There’s only one logical explanation: Ed is back. This time as a houseplant.
As Fiona knows all too well, plants have needs—sunlight, water and fresh air—all of which she can’t adequately provide from her dark, stuffy apartment. Intent on keeping Ed alive, Fiona slowly ventures back out into the world, the plant’s voice and budding flowers her guiding compass. But when Ed becomes more demanding in his botanical needs, urging her toward the people and places that left her scarred, Fiona realizes that preserving Ed’s life could mean risking her own. How far will she go to keep him blooming?
Set in a future that feels all too real, Emily Buchanan’s startlingly original debut explores the right to protest amidst climate chaos, the importance of community in weathering life’s storms, and the resilience of love and hope in a world that seems beyond saving.
Categories: Adult Contemporary Fiction, Magical Realism, Speculative Magical Realism, Dystopian Fiction, Action & Adventure Fantasy
Published by Verve Books (UK), Park Row (US) (July 1st, 2025)
In Makoko, the floating slum off mainland Lagos, Nigeria, nineteen-year-old Baby yearns for an existence where she can escape the future her father has planned for her.
With opportunities scarce, Baby jumps at the chance to join a newly launched drone-mapping project, aimed at broadening the visibility of the informal settlement and her community.
When a video of her at work goes viral, Baby finds herself with options she could never have imagined – including the possibility of leaving her birthplace to represent Makoko on the world stage.
But will life beyond the lagoon be everything she’s dreamed of? Or has everything she wants been in front of her all along?
Categories: Adult Contemporary Fiction, Literary Fiction, Coming-of-age, Women’s Literary Fiction
Published by Quercus (available April 11th, 2024)
When Tia accidentally overhears a whispered conversation between her mother—terminally ill and lying in a hospital bed in Port Harcourt, Nigeria—and her aunt, the repercussions will send her on a desperate quest to uncover a secret her mother has been hiding for nearly two decades.
Back home in Lagos a few days later, Adunni, a plucky fourteen-year-old runaway, is lying awake in Tia’s guest room. Having escaped from her rural village in a desperate bid to seek a better future, she’s finally found refuge with Tia, who has helped her enroll in school. It’s always been Adunni’s dream to get an education, and she’s bursting with excitement.
Suddenly, there’s a horrible knocking at the front gate…
It’s only the beginning of a harrowing ordeal that will see Tia forced to make a terrible choice between protecting Adunni or finally learning the truth behind the secret her mother has hidden from her. And Adunni will learn that her “louding voice,” as she calls it, is more important than ever, as she must advocate to save not only herself but all the young women of her home village, Ikati.
If she succeeds, she may transform Ikati into a place where girls are allowed to claim the bright futures they deserve—and shout their stories to the world.
Categories: Adult Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
Published by Dutton (August 6th, 2024); Sceptre (available June 19th 2025)
Categories: Adult Contemporary Fiction, Climate Fiction, Disaster Fiction, Adult Fiction
Published by Green Writers Press (October 1st, 2024)
ARROYO CIRCLE starts with wildfires, filling Boulder, Colorado with smoke, as Shelley, a white, middle-aged handmaiden to a hoarder is violently confronted by police who believe she put a baby in the trunk of her car. Shelley winds up in the legal system, and in her absence the hoarder’s house and occupants burn to the ground. Unemployable, Shelley rents out her home and is forced to sleep in an unheated garage. Les, an alcoholic, shape-shifting scientist, lives in the creek bed behind her house and helps her navigate this new world, even as Covid sweeps through town. With a strange mix of quantum physics, Buddhism, and Tito’s, Les teaches her about the healing powers of nature and the deeper meanings of home. Into their midst comes a dazed walker who is more closely connected to Shelley than she can imagine. When the warm Chinook winds blow through the mountains and melt the heavy snows, everyone, including the police, has one last shot at redemption.
Climate Fiction Writers League 