John Crowley’s New Wave sci-fi adventure Engine Summer. A beautifully written, trippy novella set in a post-apocalyptic America, where relics of the past confound and amaze our protagonist, young Rush That Speaks. He’s grown up in Little Belaire, an idyllic, tribalist community of “true...
While on vacation at a “Savage” (pre-Fordist) reservation in New Mexico, Bernard and Lenina discover John, a young man whose mother was from the World State; John sees everything in terms of Shakespearean characters, plots, and tropes. John makes attempts to intercede in the smooth ...
Twelve-year-old Jack runs away from Boston, during the California Gold Rush of 1848–55, to seek his fortune in the west; his family’s English butler, Praiseworthy, tags along. They stow away on a steamship, during which they encounter the novel’s villain, Cut-Eye Higgins, and manage...
Nat is conflicted by her parents’ decision, as we learn from her journal — which is heartbreaking but also very funny. Sam, meanwhile, rebels against the company his parents have hired to handle their last days and makes drastic plans; and Nat learns some shocking truths about her mother...