Open yourself to possibility with this week’s QBD Book-A-Like.
A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray:
A thousand lives. A thousand possibilities. One destiny.
As the daughter of two prominent physicists, Marguerite Caine is no stranger to wild scientific theories. Her mother’s latest invention is a device called the Firebird, which allows people to leap into other dimensions-and has catapulted them to instant fame. But then Marguerite’s father is murdered, and her parent’s research stolen. All the evidence points to their enigmatic assistant Paul, but before the law can touch him, he slips into another dimension.
Marguerite decides to take matters into her own hands and go after Paul. As she chases him through various dimensions, Marguerite encounters different versions of herself-there’s a futuristic London where she’s a club-hopping orphan, a Tsarist Russia where she’s royalty, and a dimension eerily similar to her own where her father is alive. But as she gets closer to Paul, she realizes she may be chasing the wrong guy…and the truth behind her father’s death is more sinister than she could ever imagine. And Marguerite is swept into an epic love affair that feels both deeply fated and terribly dangerous.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell:
The highly anticipated new novel of mindbending imagination and scope by the Booker-shortlisted author.
A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation – the narrators of ‘Cloud Atlas’ hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways both great and small.
In his captivating novel, David Mitchell surpasses the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’s dangerous desire for power, and where it may lead us.
