Failing antibiotics have shifted society online. As big tech companies begin to dominate life, the boundaries between real and virtual have blurred. At 14, Jess is attending school for the first time. Meeting other children and making real friends is something she's dreamed of for years. But Jess misses her family, especially her sister Chloe, who is in poor health.
With Chloe's sickness worsening and her medication getting more expensive, Jess turns to the digital world to fix things. She is a brilliant coder and programmer. Desperate to help her sister, Jess dives into classified territory and discovers explosive truths. Truths which reveal just how manipulated reality has become.
With her family's lives in the balance, Jess must defy everything she's been told to help them - before it's too late.
Praise for Ele Fountain -- :
[Melt is] a marvellously compulsive story. The unbelievable made believable. Now there's the test of a great story -- Michael Morpurgo
Fans of Ele Fountain, author of Boy 87 and Lost, will find plenty of white-knuckle drama in Melt ? Telegraph
Fountain writes with verisimilitude and verve ? Observer
Exceptional... vivid, convincing and empathetic... [Boy 87] grips us with the need to know how the heart-stopping events will turn out ? The Times
A breathless adventure of courage and survival in a warming climate.
United by greed and self-interest. But not their own. A boy lives in a remote, snow-bound village with his elderly grandmother. Their traditional way of life is threatened by the changing snow and ice: it melts faster every year. When the sea-ice collapses while he is out hunting, he only just escapes with his life and is left stranded in the Arctic tundra. Meanwhile a girl is trying to adapt to another new school. Her father promises his new job at an oil company will mean they never have to move again, but not long after he starts, his behaviour becomes odd and secretive. When their fates take a drastic turn the girl's world collides with the boy's and they find themselves together in a desperate search for survival, and for the truth.
Praise for the author: "Exceptional... vivid, convincing and empathetic... it grips us with the need to know how the heart-stopping events will turn out... a tale of our time, imparting understanding and sympathy... powerfully told, without sentimentality" SUNDAY TIMES
The powerful story of two siblings struggling to endure extreme poverty, by the author of the multi-award-winning, BOY 87.
Lola's life is about to become unrecognisable. So is Lola. Everything used to be comfortable. She lived in a big house with her family, where her biggest problems were arguing with her little brother or being told she couldn't have a new phone. But as one disaster follows another, the threads of her home and family begin to unravel. Cut off from everything she has known before, Lola must find a new way to survive. Now, an ordinary girl must become extraordinary.
Shif is just an ordinary schoolboy who loves chess and playing with his best friend. But, one day, he is forced to leave home to avoid conscription into the army. He embarks on an epic journey, in which he encounters dangers and cruelties - and great acts of human kindness - as he bravely makes his way to a future he can only imagine.
