Books by Natasha Pulley

“Valery K has a single, linear timeframe. It opens in a Siberian prison camp in 1963. Valery K, a scientist, is told by the commandant that he’s being sent to a nuclear research facility. He has no idea why, but his old boss who heads the team there has obviously asked for him. There are layers of hypocrisy, and everyone is telling lies. Gradually we get to understand what it was that caused the meltdown, the huge explosion that wiped out the original facility and caused the radiation damage. Scientifically, it’s brilliant. And it’s right on a knife edge. Is Valery going to survive? Is he going to be sent back to the camp? So this book is an eco-thriller, although it’s not looking at the climate emergency. For me, it looks deeply at the root cause of why we are where we are.” Read more...

The Best Eco-Thriller Books

Manda Scott, Novelist

“The Mars House follows a very unlucky man called January, who begins the novel as a lucky person. He is the principal dancer at the Royal Ballet in London about 250 years from now. Unluckily, London is sinking and, at the beginning of the novel, it finally sinks – it is sunken, pluperfect. And he ends up as a climate refugee in the only place that is open to refugees and is safe at the same time: a new colony on Mars called Tharsis. He really struggles, because the gravity on Mars is only 1/3 of Earth, so people who are from Earth are kept very segregated from people who are born on Mars. It’s like having Superman visit, he could hurt people by accident. This is very difficult. There are big cultural differences, and social differences as well – they’ve abolished gender. So there’s a lot for him to get used to. One of the ways that all these issues get explored in the book is through – surprise, surprise – a central romance. January – through various mechanisms that will read convincingly I hope! – ends up in an arranged marriage to a fire-breathing nationalist, a local senator who doesn’t think that immigration should exist at all. And this arranged marriage plays out live on a reality show that is broadcast across the city.” Read more...

The Best Sci-Fi Romance Novels

Natasha Pulley, Novelist