Search results for ""author daniel shand""

'It has the pace and dynamism of a thriller, the metaphysical curiosity of the best science fiction and some judiciously-planted charges of wry humour' The Herald 'A dazzling novel' Edmund Gordon, award-winning authorAnd how to tell what the best things were? Well, that was easy: the best things were the ones with the most people looking at them.Alastair Buchanan has a comfortable life. It's been a year since he received his very own junior - a clone designed to help him escape the daily grind. So why does Alastair spend his days alone, online, obsessing over his status? When his long-term girlfriend Caitlin can't take it anymore, Alastair does his best to hold it together. But then, a remnant from his past appears and he is forced to confront the level of control that technology has over his life. Elsewhere, an anti-tech terrorist cell dedicated to yanking humanity back to the 1990s is building momentum. And looming over everyone is Kim Larson, inventor of the juniors. But when Kim realises that humanity's future lies in the stars, who will be left to hold him to account? From award-winning author Daniel Shand, Model Citizens explores a surreal world peopled by humans struggling with their dehumanising present. Full of suspense, it asks us what we give up when we exist online, and who we can trust to take care of us. Model Citizens is a subversive and darkly comic story of class, technology, and responsibility, offering a vision of the future that may be closer than we realise.

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'Shand has fashioned a gripping and original story - and he writes like a dream' The Times'It has the pace and dynamism of a thriller ... and his social commentary is funny and on target' The HeraldAnd how to tell what the best things were? Well, that was easy: the best things were the ones with the most people looking at them.Alastair Buchanan has a comfortable life. It's been a year since he received his very own junior - a clone designed to help him escape the daily grind. So why does Alastair spend his days alone, online, obsessing over his status? When his long-term girlfriend Caitlin can't take it anymore, Alastair does his best to hold it together. But then, a remnant from his past appears and he is forced to confront the level of control that technology has over his life. Elsewhere, an anti-tech terrorist cell dedicated to yanking humanity back to the 1990s is building momentum. And looming over everyone is Kim Larson, inventor of the juniors. But when Kim realises that humanity's future lies in the stars, who will be left to hold him to account? From award-winning author Daniel Shand, Model Citizens explores a surreal world peopled by humans struggling with their dehumanising present. Full of suspense, it asks us what we give up when we exist online, and who we can trust to take care of us. Model Citizens is a subversive and darkly comic story of class, technology, and responsibility, offering a vision of the future that may be closer than we realise.'A dazzling novel' Edmund Gordon, award-winning author'A consumerist hellscape is brilliantly evoked . . . the cloned self as ultimate consumer product is a compelling idea and Shand has such fun with it that the reader gets carried along' Irish Times

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She’s remembering curtains closed against whatever might harm them and all the knick- knacks: the porcelain fairy, the chain of rubber dolphins, CDs piled a metre high. This was what home meant. It’s the summer before high school and Chloe is being sent away. Her mother can’t cope and needs something that her daughter cannot provide. All Chloe wants is to get away from her grandparents and back to her mother, her friends, and the life she knows. That is until she falls in with a local gang of outsiders and begins to experience the world she has been missing. However, her mother’s influence is strong and, as her life increases in savagery and risk, the girl will be forced to decide how much danger she can stomach. Crocodile is a story about the powerful connection between parent and child, and the intensity of the final summer of childhood. As with his debut, Fallow, it is told in Shand’s trademark style, blending elements of the grotesque and tender, undercut by a current of dark comedy.

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Fallow is a tense, thrilling literary novel combining elements of dark comedy and surrealism. At its heart is the relationship between two brothers bound by a terrible crime. Paul and Mikey are on the run, apparently from the press surrounding their house after Mikey's release from prison. His crime, child murder, committed when he was a boy. As they travel, moving from one disturbing scenario to the next, they encounter a group of dishonest archaeologists, an unhinged born-again Christian, two American tourists researching their genealogy, the inhabitants of a peace camp and a religious cult headed by the powerful Brother Terry. Gradually, the brothers' relationship begins to change and we realise there is more to their history than Paul has allowed us to know.

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