<div>This &ldquo;delightfully whimsical novel riffs on the premise that ordinary lives stubbornly resist the tidy order that a fiction narrative might impose on them&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). Can a story save your life? Meg Carpenter is broke. Her novel is years overdue. Her cell phone is out of minutes. And her moody boyfriend&rsquo;s only contribution to the household is his sour attitude. So she jumps at the chance to review a pseudoscientific book that promises life everlasting. But who wants to live forever? Consulting cosmology and physics, tarot cards, koans (and riddles and jokes), new-age theories of everything, narrative theory, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, and knitting patterns, Meg wends her way through Our Tragic Universe, asking this and many other questions. Does she believe in fairies? In magic? Is she a superbeing? Is she living a storyless story? And what&rsquo;s the connection between her off-hand suggestion to push a car into a river, a ship in a bottle, a mysterious beast loose on the moor, and the controversial author of The Science of Living Forever? Smart, entrancing, and boiling over with Thomas&rsquo;s trademark big ideas, Our Tragic Universe is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, how we can rewrite our futures (if not our histories), and how stories just might save our lives.</div>

Our Tragic Universe

<div>&ldquo;The code-breaking and -making heroine of [this] smart, engaging novel takes a critical view of the corporate marketing of cool . . . a captivating heroine.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly Twentysomething Alice Butler is a bit of an introvert, but it hasn&rsquo;t stopped her from landing a job at the UK office of globally successful&mdash;if slightly sinister&mdash;toy company PopCo. There&rsquo;s no dress code, but that doesn&rsquo;t keep Alice&rsquo;s coworkers from commenting on her &ldquo;Bletchley Park look&rdquo; outfits. Now the CEO wants the creatives on the staff to attend what the organization calls &ldquo;Thought Camp&rdquo; and invent an insidious product that will part as many teenage girls from their allowances as possible. Alice isn&rsquo;t feeling so comfortable about her supposedly cool new job. But she has another problem to solve first. She&rsquo;s started to receive bizarre encrypted messages, and they may have something to do with her cryptanalyst grandfather; her long-disappeared father; a centuries-old manuscript; and the possibility of buried treasure. Alice is convinced the engraving on the necklace she&rsquo;s been wearing since she was ten years old holds the key to it all. But the secrets she uncovers may take her by surprise, in this highly original novel that blends code, mathematics, marketing, mystery, and more, &ldquo;a sort of Harriet-the-Spy-meets-Douglas-Coupland with a Treasure Island twist&rdquo; (Daily Candy). &ldquo;How many novels can you think of that leave the reader with an intriguing puzzle to solve, plus a cake recipe, plus a crossword and a list of the first thousand prime numbers? Clever, likeable, frothy, zeitgeist-chasing.&rdquo; &mdash;Time Out London</div>

PopCo

<div>A cursed book sends a young woman on a philosophical journey through an alternate dimension in this &ldquo;stylish and dizzying&rdquo; novel by the author of PopCo (The New York Times). Graduate student Ariel Manto has a fascination with nineteenth-century scientists&mdash;especially Thomas Lumas, the mysterious author of The End of Mr. Y, a book no one alive has read. When she uncovers a copy at a used bookstore, Ariel goes down an interdimensional rabbit hole of science and faith, consciousness and death, space and time, and everything in between. And to make matters worse, the CIA is onto her. Following in Mr. Y&rsquo;s footsteps, Ariel swallows a tincture, stares into a black dot, and is transported into the Troposphere: a wonderland where she can travel through time and space using the thoughts of others. There she begins to understand all the mysteries surrounding the book, herself, and the universe. Or is it all just a hallucination?</div>

Scarlett Thomas

Books By Scarlett Thomas (3 Books)

Our Tragic Universe

PopCo

The End of Mr. Y

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Scarlett Thomas

Books By Scarlett Thomas (3 Books)

Our Tragic Universe

PopCo

The End of Mr. Y

RELATED POSTS ABOUT SCARLETT THOMAS

Get weekly updates and deals from Early Bird Books

More from

Corporate

© 2021 OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA