I am an Australian writer living in Europe. Returning to my hometown on the East Coast of Australia post-COVID, I confronted relentless rain and king tides threatening the beach promenade cafes. Witnessing the potential demise of these familiar spots sparked the idea for my novel. Opening with a dystopian scene of future tourists exploring submerged coastal cafes with snorkels, my work delves into the realm of "cli-fi" (climate fiction). Against the backdrop of imminent climate danger, my characters, a lovable yet obstinate Australian ensemble, navigate a world profoundly altered by the impacts of climate change. I hope what I have written is an exaggeration. I fear it may not be.
Humans can be brave, and humans can be stubborn. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is both.
Refusing to leave New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina built strength out at sea in 2005, he stays and finds himself stranded in an eerily flooded city, seemingly alone and without help. He paddles the watery “streets” in an old kayak and finds others who could not or did not leave, offering help, and for his efforts, is arrested as a suspected terrorist and looter.
This book is not a simple tale of an everyday hero. We meet a character that downplays the dangers of a brewing storm but, despite his stubbornness, is also capable of great selflessness and bravery. The negligence of the institutions we expect to protect us is an insidious theme that runs throughout.
WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD AND THE LA TIMES BOOK AWARD
'Masterly. Brilliantly crafted, powerfully written and deftly reported' Guardian
The urgent and unforgettable true story of post-Katrina New Orleans . . .
In August 2005, as Hurricane Katrina blew in, the city of New Orleans has been abandoned by most citizens. But resident Abdulrahman Zeitoun, though his wife and family had gone, refused to leave. For days he traversed an apocalyptic landscape of flooded streets by canoe. But eventually he came to the attention of those 'guarding' this drowned city. Only then did Zeitoun's nightmare really begin.
Last summer, I visited Saint-Malo in Brittany, France, an extraordinary walled city on the Atlantic Coast where this beautiful novel is set.
Wars breed everyday heroes, and this book introduces us to one, the blind, young Marie-Laure. Despite Saint-Malo being under German occupation in WW2, she courageously risks her own life by using a radio to send daily dispatches from her attic to the Allied Forces. Her stoic heroism and valuable intelligence ultimately play a pivotal role in the Allies liberating Saint-Malo and afterward, the whole of France.
A well-deserved international bestseller, the book powerfully underscores the notion that ordinary individuals can indeed change history.
WINNER OF THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR FICTION
A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II
Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.'
For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic…
I am sure everyone remembers where they were on the day of September 11, 2001. I was in Mexico, having flown past the Twin Towers the day before.
This is the first real-life account I have read about what happened on the ground that day and is a moving depiction of an everyday hero. As a reader, you can only imagine if you could have acted in the same way.
This non-fiction account introduces us to Welles Crowther, an equities trader and former firefighter who always carried a red bandanna in honor of his father. In the South Tower that day, directly after the attack, he used that bandanna to shield his face from smoke as he led people to safety, returning into the South Tower over and over again until it collapsed.
He sadly didn't survive, but his legacy as the "Man in the Red Bandanna" lives on in the pages of this book.
The story of Welles Crowther, whose actions on 9/11 offer a lasting lesson on character, calling and courage
One Sunday morning before church, when Welles Crowther was a young boy, his father gave him a red handkerchief for his back pocket. Welles kept it with him that day, and just about every day to come; it became a fixture and his signature.
A standout athlete growing up in Upper Nyack, NY, Welles was also a volunteer at the local fire department, along with his…
I first heard about this story of extraordinary heroism while listening to a podcast interview with one of the survivors of a plane crash in 1972.
The plane was carrying an entire football team and their families between Uruguay and Chile. A search party could not find them in the icy ridges of the Andes, and it came down to two of the survivors who, despite malnutrition and the extreme weather and terrain, made a days-long trek to find help. Thanks to them, the remaining survivors could be located and rescued.
While many readers might shudder at the lengths the group went to in order to survive (cannibalism), what shone for me was the selflessness of the two survivors who trekked for days to find help.
On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the forty-five original passengers and crew, only sixteen made it off the mountain alive. For ten excruciating weeks they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, they were forced to do what would have once been unthinkable ...
This is their story -- one of the most astonishing true adventures of the twentieth century.
Climate change may well be increasing the frequency and intensity of violent storms and hurricanes, but they are certainly nothing new.
This is a vividly written account of what has been dubbed one of the worst natural disasters to have ever hit the United States, the hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas, in 1900. The narrative is constructed using the letters and reports from Isaac Cline, a meteorologist working at the US Weather Bureau at the time.
The storm described in this book occurred 124 years ago, yet readers will find eerie precursors to the issues we hear being discussed globally today: despair at our seeming hubris and disturbing unpreparedness in the face of increasingly volatile and unpredictable natural events.
From the bestselling author of The Devil in the White City, here is the true story of the deadliest hurricane in history.
National Bestseller
September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history--and Isaac Cline…
My debut novel pays tribute to Australia's everyday heroes, or first responders, who displayed remarkable bravery during the 2022 La Niña summer. Faced with relentless rain and sudden flooding along the East Coast, ordinary citizens emerged as brave saviors, utilizing kayaks, paddleboards, and small aluminum boats to rescue lives, both human and animal.
My novel considers one core question: if erratic and violent storms (and wildfires, for that matter) keep hitting, how long will it be before families start leaving their homes? When will businesses no longer find it viable to stay open? When and how will communities start to unravel, creating climate ghettos deemed too dangerous to reside in?
Historical fiction inspired by the story of Mary Leakey, who carved her own path to become one of the world's most distinguished paleoanthropologists.
It's 1983 and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania. Here, seventy-year-old Mary Leakey enlists Grace to sort and pack her fifty years of work and memories.
Their interaction reminds Mary how she pursued her ambitions of becoming an archeologist in the 1930s by sneaking into lectures and working on excavations. When well-known paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey…
Historical fiction inspired by the story of Mary Leakey, who carved her own path to become one of the world's most distinguished paleoanthropologists.
It's 1983 and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania. Here, seventy-year-old Mary Leakey enlists Grace to sort and pack her fifty years of work and memories.
Their interaction reminds Mary how she pursued her ambitions of becoming an archeologist in the 1930s by sneaking into lectures and working on excavations. When well-known paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey…
