The Book of M

April 2, 2018
An apocalyptic future in which an epidemic dubbed the Forgetting robs large swaths of the world’s population of their shadows and memories—causing them to work dangerous magic—sets the scene for Shepherd’s exciting debut. Husband and wife Ory and Max have been holed up in an abandoned hotel outside Arlington, Va., for two years, living hand-to-mouth off beef jerky and scavenged goods, and hiding from the predatory world outside, where the shadowless wreak havoc and misremember the old world into a new one (in one instance, a shadowless forgets what a house looks like; it is rebuilt with its roof on the floor). Then Max’s shadow disappears. The couple devises protective rules, and Ory gives Max a tape recorder to document her memories. But when Max escapes, Ory sets out on a terrifying journey to find her. He is beset by enraged shadowless with electric guts; joins a book-collecting, shadowed army; and meets archer Mahnaz, who has a fascinating backstory of her own. Ory and Max separately gather stray rumors of a mythologized figure chasing a cure for shadowlessness in New Orleans, though it’s uncertain whether they’ll reach the city without dying. Though its characters sometimes slide into tropes, Shepard’s debut is graceful and riveting, slowly peeling back layers of an intricately constructed and unsettling alternate future.

With no warning, people around the world start losing their shadows. At first, this phenomenon is fascinating, but then the awful truth emerges: Once people lose their shadows, all of their memories--their entire selves--vanish, too. James Fouhey and Emily Woo Zeller narrate the story of Ory and Max's fight to survive in the aftermath of the forgetting epidemic. Fouhey's gravelly, measured voice captures Ory's grim resolve and perfectly conveys the stark, brutal world of Shepherd's imagined landscape. Zeller's depiction of Max, a woman helplessly sliding into oblivion, is chilling. Her narration of the desolation and heartbreak of this broken land is piercing and real. This haunting story, narrated with devastating clarity, is unsettling, thought-provoking, and utterly compelling. S.A.H. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

April 15, 2018

In a scary new world where losing one's shadow presages a complete loss of memory, Max runs from husband Ory when her shadow fades, afraid to bring him grief. Big debut: a 50,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2018
Hemu Joshi was the first to lose his shadow, on Zero Shadow Day as it later became known. As he stood in the streets of Mumbai for all to see, the world became fascinated with the shadowless man. Television channels live-streamed him; thousands made the pilgrimage just to be near the unexplainable. Untethered to the world, Joshi became a sign to many that they would all soon transcend to a higher existence. Then he started to forget?his family, the days of the week, how to eat?everything. When others began to lose their shadows, the curiosity turned into a worldwide epidemic, sparing no one. Cities were shut down and violence broke out as shadowless people attacked the shadowed, and what was known about the world changed as the Forgetting spread. Shepherd's near-future-set first novel flashes between the early days of the epidemic and the current story of Ory and Max, a couple trying to escape it. Eerie, dark, and compelling, this will not disappoint lovers of The Passage (2010) and Station Eleven (2014).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)