Best of All Worlds
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
From award-winning author Kenneth Oppel a startling, can't-wait-to-talk-about-it-with-someone novel that defies genre to create a survival thriller unlike any you've read before. For fans of Leave the World Behind, A.S. King, M.T. Anderson, and Margaret Atwood.
Xavier Oaks doesn't particularly want to go to the cabin with his dad and his dad's pregnant new wife, Nia. But family obligations are family obligations, and it's only for a short time. So he leaves his mom, his brother, and his other friends behind for a week in the woods. Only... one morning he wakes up and the house isn’t where it was before. It's like it's been lifted and placed... somewhere else.
When Xavier, his dad, and Nia go explore, they find they are inside a dome, trapped. And there's no one else around...
Until, three years later, another family arrives.
Is there any escape? Is there a reason they are stuck where they are? Different people have different answers -- and those different answers inexorably lead to tension, strife, and sacrifice.
In this masterpiece, award-winning author Kenneth Oppel builds to a heart-stopping pitch in drawing a story that feels very much of our moment, where our very human choices collectively lead to humanity’s eventual fate.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thirteen-year-old Xavier "Zay" Oak is on a weekend trip to a vacation cottage outside Montreal with his father and his pregnant stepmother when he notices that everything he thought he knew about the area has changed. The familiar nearby lake is gone, and in its place are a red barn, a pasture filled with goats, a cornfield, and other crops. As Zay and his parents investigate, they realize they're alone and, further into the countryside, they discover an invisible wall, which seems to be part of a transparent, apparently indestructible dome. Failed attempts to escape the dome lead the trio to instead focus on survival. Three years later, another family appears: Tennessee teenager Mackenzie Jackson, her younger sister, and their parents. Zay is initially thrilled to meet someone his age—especially someone as pretty as Mackenzie—until Mackenzie's father reveals himself to be a dangerous man with even more terrifying ideals. Oppel (Ghostlight) centers a persistent and intelligent protagonist in this unassuming but riveting novel. Compact yet brimming with tense atmosphere, it's a sharp examination of society and isolation presented as a thriller set in a deceptively bucolic landscape. All characters cue as white save Zay's Haitian Canadian stepmother. Ages 12–up.
