From the author of the acclaimed The World Wasn’t Ready for You comes a thrilling first novel, set in a near future where artificial intelligence runs the world, involving a young medical student who must unravel family secrets to uncover the truth of his father’s mysterious death.

In a time not so far from our own, society is run by a global AI system controlled by an all powerful corporation. The Shepherd Organization oversees every medical school in the country save one in New Orleans, the renegade Hippocrates which still insists on human-led medicine. It is the last choice school for an ambitious young New Yorker named Pok.

But after his father—himself a physician—dies under mysterious circumstance that seems connected to “the shepherds” and their megalomaniacal young CEO, Pok finds himself on a quest for answers that leads right to Hippocrates. Once enrolled, he stumbles upon a further mystery: a strange illness is plaguing newcomers to New Orleans who grew up under shepherd rule.

What is causing this fatal anomaly? And how does it relate to the mystery of Pok’s father’s death and his own mysterious past?

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A struggling teen discovers solace in technology that lets him view the erased memories of others. As he delves into the past of another boy harboring a dark secret, he embarks on a thrilling journey that uncovers a love he was forced to forget.

Seventeen-year-old Eli was in a near-fatal car crash. As the anniversary looms, his therapist and his family struggle to help him deal with the fallout. The accident has left him emotionally numb, with no memory of the months following the crash.

Desperate to feel something again, Eli discovers a black market for people’s memories. Erased memories that others can watch via a virtual reality simulation.

When he enters the story of a boy called Jack, he discovers a dark truth…a mind-blowing secret that sets him on a dangerous journey that could lead his heart back to where it belongs, or shatter his life forever.

Story Locale: Near-future dystopian England

The post Erase Me first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

For readers of Megan Nolan and Sheila Heti, a mesmerizing Borgesian literary debut about the frayed borders between our bodies and minds.

Ada lives a solitary life. She spends her days in her apartment building’s swimming pool, occasionally visiting with her cousin Francesca. Ada’s parents are recently divorced after her father became a bodybuilder: He spends his days at the gym, warm with human proximity. Her mother spends her days alone.

When Atticus turns up by the pool, Ada immediately feels an intimate connection between them: They share a life, maybe even a consciousness. Little by little, Ada’s estrangement from her familiar reality widens. She worries she may be losing her mind. After her mother entreats Ada to join her on a remote Greek holiday, Ada is jolted out of the physical world and into a new, artificial environment, one that a potentially otherworldly force has designed for her. The Facility makes real Ada’s every wish but hides secrets behind its closed doors and endless hallways. It asks: When a person’s life, in the odd space between mind and body, is inherently one of isolation, are our relationships merely projections of ourselves?

Albertine Clarke transforms the speculative into an entirely singular experience of deep interiority. With precision, subtlety, and confidence The Body Builders lands like a blow, widening a crack that allows us to perceive the world differently than we ever imagined.

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In this riveting small town thriller, Sheriff David Blunt is faced with a string of murders following the arrival of an alien life form—perfect for fans of Blake Crouch and Jeff Vandermeer, and soon to be a television series from Ron Howard!

When a massive asteroid hurtles toward Earth, humanity braces for annihilation—but the end doesn’t come. In fact, it isn’t an asteroid but a three-mile-tall alien that drops down, seemingly dead, outside Little Springs, Nebraska.

Dubbed “the giant,” its arrival transforms the red-state farm town into a top-secret government research site and major metropolitan area, flooded with soldiers, scientists, bureaucrats, spies, criminals, conspiracy theorists—and a murderer.

As the sheriff of Little Springs, David Blunt thought he’d be keeping the peace among the same people he’d known all his life, not breaking up chanting crowds of cultists or battling an influx of drug dealers. As a series of brutal, bizarre murders strikes close to home, Blunt throws himself into the hunt for a killer who seems connected to the Giant.

With bodies piling up and tensions in Little Springs mounting, he realizes that to find the answers he needs, he must reconcile his old worldview with the town he now lives in—before it’s too late.

The post Godfall first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

A comic novel for fans of Adelle Waldman about a tech startup that turns sand into rain clouds from Sami Rohr prize winner Iddo Gefen.

Here’s a sweet comic novel for fans of Etgar Keret and Aimee Bender about a family’s tech startup that’s based on a miracle invention (it’s a souped up vacuum cleaner) that turns sand into rain clouds and creates family havoc and possible love for Eli Lilienblum, Sarai Lilienblum’s twenty-something son.

Our story opens with Mrs. Lilienblum discovered drinking a martini in a crater in the Israeli desert. Eli, her adult son, tries to understand what happened to his wacky mother, while he also tackles the legend of a missing hiker named McMurphy, and whether he might be in love with Tamara, a visitor to his family’s hostel on the edge of a crater.

The story races forward as the Lilienblum family builds a company around Eli’s mother’s invention and makes comedy out of startup culture, the obsession with company valuation and funding, the secrets families keep, romantic and family love–all with humor, warmth and compassion.

Story Locale: Israel

The post Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

What starts as a simple rescue mission for a crew of teen aliens to recover one of their own soon becomes an interstellar encounter no one will forget.

Captain Iona is organizing an impromptu retrieval for her brother, an undercover alien posing as a movie star. But her efforts go awry when a technical malfunction turns her heroic rescue into an unintentional invasion. With tales of disguised extraterrestrials stuck in theme parks, starship engineers hitchhiking to get home, and myth-inspired intergalactic sibling reunions, each story in this multi-author anthology explores the universal desire to be loved and understood, no matter where you come from. After all…aliens are just like us.

The post Why on Earth: An Alien Invasion Anthology first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

Funny thing, though—turns out there’s a benevolent confederation already out there. They’re called the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity. More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions.

When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser ends badly, Dalton finds himself marooned on an unfamiliar planet, caught between one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s less-than-friendly natives, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three. To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal he literally cannot refuse, all while convincing Neera he’s worth more to her alive than dead.

Part first contact story, part dark comedy, and part bizarre love triangle, The Fourth Consort asks an important question: how far would you go to survive? And more importantly, how many drinks would you need to go there?

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For most, Streetlight is a dot on the map you pass on your way to somewhere else. But if you live there, you’re either a Have-Not, like Kady, or a Have-Lot like her boyfriend, Nik, who also happens to be a member of the exclusive social club, The IV Boys.

Known for their powerful families and the coveted ball they host for a selective guest list, The IV Boys have always refused to accept Kady regardless of how much Nik loves her. All the Boys except for Aaron, who didn’t grow up in Streetlight and is one of the few who knows that life—real life—exists outside of it. But his stepmom has the kind of wealth and power even IV Boys can’t resist.

With Nik at college, Aaron stands by Kady’s side. But all Kady really wants is Nik, and when a chance encounter on Halloween hands her the power to twist and hold time, she doesn’t hesitate. Now she can keep Nik close for as long as she wants.

While Kady tries to relive her best moments with Nik, the IV Boys have her in their sights. A rumor’s spreading that Kady and Aaron are much more than friends—and not even twisting time is enough to defend against the power that the Boys were born with.

The more Kady changes the clock, the more dizzying reality becomes, until she stumbles upon a truth darker than anything she could have imagined. Streetlight is filled with monsters—and maybe she’s always been one, too.

The post Streetlight People first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

Seventeen-year-old Nell knows two things for sure—she’s never going to get out of her rural, dead-end hometown of Clawson, NY and her best friend Stevie B and longtime boyfriend Cole are never going to leave her. That is until Charlotte, a new girl, arrives at their school and their lopsided friend triangle is turned on its axis. While Nell and Stevie B are certain that Charlotte isn’t who she says she is, Cole is caught fully in her thrall. There are secret calls and meetings between the two, and Nell knows Cole is keeping something big from her. Now, for the first time in their lives, Nell worries she could lose Cole.

When Nell and Stevie B finally confront Cole and Charlotte, they learn the impossible—Charlotte is actually from the future, and for life altering reasons none of them could have imagined, she wants Cole to jump to the future with her, leaving Nell behind. It’s dangerous, it’s reckless, but Charlotte convinces them that it’s the only choice they have. The trio’s future has always seemed set—but with the knowledge that time travel is real, and with a multiverse of futures before them, they now have the option to live lives they could have only dreamed about. The only questions are, who will take the leap and who will be left behind?

The post Sixteen Minutes first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.

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