Roderick Townley is a local author of novels for young readers and poetry for all. His stories, though diverse in their settings and plots, might overall be described as elegant fantasies that balance whimsical and unsettling elements while exploring the nature of magic, dreams, reality, memories, identity, and stories.
In the beginning, I loved Love Love. The ordinary, every day struggles of Judy Lee and her bother Kevin resonated strongly with me. Both divorced and drifting through their lives, they are separately blindsided with challenges that would set anyone on a downward spiral. Judy, having walked out of her temp job has unknowingly lost her insurance. When she's bitten by a rattlesnake, the hospital bills mount and Judy is burdened with crushing debt . . . and she's still unemployed.
Alternating chapters tell the intertwined stories of Laia and Elias, who find their paths converging through Keris Veturius, Commandant of the Martial Empire's elite military academy. The Commandant loathes Elias, her accidental son whom she tried to abandon as a newborn, only to see him rescued by others and become the top student of her current graduating class. Elias wants nothing more than to escape his future as an enforcer of tyranny, but to cross the Commandant and the Empire is sure death.
We're so excited to share the Open Category winner of our #IHeartU contest: Heather McKenzie, for her work When Pluto was a Planet. We fell in love with its inventive and adept use of language as well as its creative imagery. Tell us what you love about When Pluto was a Planet in the comments!
Alix's exclusive school is targeted by an anonymous group of vandals who turn out to be radical activists out to get her father, putting her and her family in danger. The group claims that Alix's powerful father helps corporations that knowingly allow innocent victims to die in order to make enormous profits from unsafe products cover up their wrongdoings, and they want her to help blow the whistle on his misdeeds.
Ex Machina poses the question: "What makes us human?" Caleb, a young computer genius, is told he has won a week long stay at the house of Nathan, the CEO of the world's most popular search engine. Nathan has built a humanoid robot named Ava with Artificial Intelligence. He wants Caleb to administer the Turing Test to Ava, a test designed to measure artificial intelligence and its ability to persuade a human to believe it is real.
It's the 1940s and the world is at war. People are dying everyday in a land far, far away. And a group of scientists have military orders to figure out a way to stop the violence, end the war, and bring American soldiers back safely. That is the world of the Manhattan project. Physicists, members of the military and their families move to Los Alamos, New Mexico, expecting an exciting new life only to find themselves confined to a small, unknown town unable to reach anyone in the outside world. Dr.
The older I get, the more I think maybe I belong in jail.
Gerald has anger control issues. He's had them for as long as he can remember. Anger has always been his defining emotion. His retreat, his solace, his catalyst for action. His self-image.
If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently? If you could go back in time, would you kill Hitler? Life After Life is an inventive novel by Kate Atkinson that explores both questions, and much more.
