Dystopian stories can really get to the heart of what it means to be human and how fragile – and strong – our societies really are. I think there’s something so raw and honest about it. What inspired you to write a future dystopian novel? Was there any particular event or book that made you first think about the story that became The Elites? It’s a fascinating premise, and I asked Natasha a few questions about how she came up with this inventive story.ĬJ: Let’s start at the beginning. But when she’s forced to flee the city and fight to find her family and survive, she learns the truth about who she really is, and who she really loves. Fifteen-year-old Silver is an Elite, chosen to guard the city because of her superior DNA. Only one city has survived: Neo-Babel, a city full of cultures – and racial tension. The plot sounds amazing: Hundreds of years into the future, wars, riots, resource crises and rising sea-levels have destroyed the old civilisations. There’s a lot of buzz about this future dystopia novel set in a world driven to the brink of destruction by a changing climate, and it’s easy to see why. Today is the official publication date for Natasha Ngan’s thrilling debut novel, The Elites. Happy Book Birthday Natasha Ngan and The Elites
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3,” as well as a darker thread that delves heavily into the past of Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), the unnaturally savvy and bloodthirsty anthropomorphic raccoon, conveying an unexpectedly poignant animal-rights message in the process. The key to Gunn’s earlier movies relied on a mix of abundant visual energy, distinctive characters, cleverly incorporated songs and no small amount of sheer goofiness. As evidence look no further than “Eternals,” another super-team that (while meriting an asterisk due to the pandemic) didn’t fare nearly as well. 3” drives home that point, with a boisterous and often emotional sequel that feels very much like a true conclusion, fueled in no small part by writer-director James Gunn having migrated his talents over to rival DC.īuilding franchises around more obscure heroes always represented the biggest risk in Marvel’s cinematic plans, which made the success of “Guardians” in 2014 and its less-satisfying sequel a minor miracle. In hindsight, the most unlikely hit among Marvel’s parade of them was all about the unlikeliest of families. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping account of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, showing how American evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism. How did a libertine who lacks even the most basic knowledge of the Christian faith win 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in 2016? And why have white evangelicals become a presidential reprobate's staunchest supporters? These are among the questions acclaimed historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez asks in Jesus and John Wayne, which explains how white evangelicals have brought us to our fractured political moment. My mother probably would have never called herself a feminist, but she definitely shared many of the same ideals. I have one brother and three sisters, and my brother had to do all the same things that my sisters and I had to do. I look back, and I see that the idea that being a girl would hold you back was never a part of our family. I think I was raised a feminist, even though that word wasn’t used in our household. Have you always considered yourself a feminist? Your latest book, The Natural Way of Things, has a powerful feminist message about female sexuality and its treatment by society. It seems to be a central concern of the city, to make beauty, but with a really original take on things. Yesterday, I went to the monument to the Berlin Wall, and I thought it was so incredibly moving and powerful and restrained. It’s a city that respects creativity, which is not the case in many places. Why do you think Berlin feels vital?Įverything I’d heard about Berlin was how exciting it is, and how great it is for art and artists. In our Author Spotlight, you said that you wished we had asked you to stay in Berlin for another year, and that you associate the word “vitality” with Berlin. Fresh off her 2016 Stella Prize for her novel, The Natural Way of Things, Australian author Charlotte Wood talked to us about Berlin, feminism, and the immersive power of fiction writing. officials knew most of his victims were entirely innocent. Perhaps even more striking: As the documents show, U.S. While the newly declassified documents further illustrated the horror of Indonesia’s 1965 mass murder, they also confirmed that U.S. diplomatic cables covering that dark period. This week, the non-profit National Security Archive, along with the National Declassification Center, published a batch of U.S. He then took power and ruled as dictator, with U.S. Over the months that followed, he oversaw the systematic extermination of up to a million Indonesians for affiliation with the party, or simply for being accused of harboring leftist sympathies. In Indonesia in October 1965, Suharto, a powerful Indonesian military leader, accused the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) of organizing a brutal coup attempt, following the kidnapping and murder of six high-ranking army officers. A trove of newly declassified diplomatic cables reveals a surprising degree of American involvement in a brutal anti-communist purge in Indonesia half-a-century ago. But before the development of the discipline of archaeology, people used what scraps there were, gleaned from Biblical and classical texts, tocreate a largely mythological origin for the British. Underlying this narrative throughout is the story of the sea, which allowed the islanders and theircontinental neighbours to be in constant contact.The story told by the archaeological evidence, in later periods augmented by historical texts, satisfies our need to know who we are and where we come from. Using the most up to date archaeological evidence together with new work on DNA and other scientific techniques which help us to trace theorigins and movements of these early settlers, Barry Cunliffe offers a rich narrative account of the first islanders - who they were, where they came from, and how they interacted one with another. From that time onwards Britain and Ireland have been continuously inhabited and the resident population has increased from a few hundreds to more than 60 million.Britain Begins is nothing less than the story of the origins of the British and the Irish peoples, from around 10,000BC to the eve of the Norman Conquest. The last Ice Age, which came to an end about 12,000 years ago, swept the bands of hunter gatherers from the face of the land that was to become Britain and Ireland, but as the ice sheets retreated and the climate improved so human groups spread slowly northwards, re-colonizing the land thathad been laid waste. In 1984, Childress moved to Kempton, Illinois, and established a publishing company named Adventures Unlimited Press, which is a sole proprietorship. Childress chronicled his explorations in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in his Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries series of books.Ĭhildress's first book, A Hitchhikers Guide to Africa and Arabia, was published in 1983 by Chicago Review Press. After several years in Asia and then Africa, Childress moved in 1983 to Stelle, Illinois, a community founded by New Age writer Richard Kieninger Childress had been given one of Kieninger's books while touring Africa. Biography īorn in France to American parents, and raised in Colorado and Montana, United States, Childress went to University of Montana–Missoula to study archaeology, but left college in 1976 at 19 to begin travelling in pursuit of his archaeological interests. His own works primarily concentrate on pseudoarchaeological and pseudoscientific topics such as " UFOs, secret societies, suppressed technology, cryptozoology conspiracy theory." Childress, having no degree, refers to himself as a "rogue archaeologist". David Hatcher Childress (born June 1, 1957) is a French-born American author, and the owner of Adventures Unlimited Press, a publishing house established in 1984 specializing in books on unusual topics such as ancient mysteries, unexplained phenomena, alternative history, and historical revisionism. The setting is perfect, in a desolate winter hideaway. One of the scariest things for people to face is the unknown and this film presents its plotting with just that thought in mind. This movie cuts through all the typical horror movies like a red-poker through a human eye, as it allows the viewer to not only feel the violence and psychosis of its protagonist, but appreciate the seed from which the derangement stems. Chilling, majestic piece of cinematic fright, this film combines all the great elements of an intellectual thriller, with the grand vision of a director who has the instinctual capacity to pace a moody horror flick within the realm of his filmmaking genius that includes an eye for the original shot, an ice-cold soundtrack and an overall sense of dehumanization. Yukawa has trouble with this one, and he must somehow find a way to solve an impossible murder and capture a very real, very deadly murderer. So she does what her boss has done for years when stymied-she calls upon Professor Manabu Yukawa.īut even the brilliant mind of Dr. While Utsumi's instincts tell her one thing, the facts of the case are another matter. His assistant, Kaoru Utsumi, however, is convinced Ayane is guilty. The lead detective, Tokyo Police Detective Kusanagi, is immediately smitten with her and refuses to believe that she could have had anything to do with the crime. His wife, Ayane, is the logical suspect-except that she was hundreds of miles away when he was murdered. Yoshitaka, who was about to leave his marriage and his wife, is poisoned by arsenic-laced coffee and dies. The first major English language publication from the most popular bestselling writer in Japan, it was acclaimed as "stunning," "brilliant," and "ingenious." Now physics professor Manabu Yukawa-Detective Galileo-returns in a new case of impossible murder, where instincts clash with facts and theory with reality. In 2011, The Devotion of Suspect X was a hit with critics and readers alike. From the author of the internationally bestselling, award-winning The Devotion of Suspect X comes the latest novel featuring "Detective Galileo" Slow Cooked charts her astonishing rise from bench scientist to the pinnacles of academia, as she overcame the barriers and biases facing women of her generation and found her life's purpose after age fifty. Slow Cooked recounts of how she built an unparalleled career at a time when few women worked in the sciences, and how she came to recognize and reveal the enormous influence of the food industry on our dietary choices.īy the time Nestle obtained her doctorate in molecular biology, she had been married since the age of nineteen, dropped out of college, worked as a lab technician, divorced, and become a stay-at-home mom with two children. In this engrossing memoir, Marion Nestle reflects on how she achieved late-in-life success as a leading advocate for healthier and more sustainable diets. Marion Nestle reflects on her late-in-life career as a world-renowned food politics expert, public health advocate, and a founder of the field of food studies after facing decades of low expectations. Description "A chronicle of hard work and a public health resource, Slow Cooked is also proof that it's never too late." - New York Times |