NIC Reads Book Club

Summary: "On the surface, Alice is exactly where she should be. She's just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve, is nothing but supportive; and they've recently moved to a wealthy neighborhood in Toronto. And yet, Alice feels like an imposter. She isn't connecting with Dawn, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from her watchful white neighbors. Her growing self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story. At first, Alice is convinced her discomfort is of her own making, but then strange things start happening. She finds herself losing bits of time, hearing voices she can't explain, and speaking with things that should not be talking back to her, all while her neighbors' passive-aggressive behavior begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve assures her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong, and that in her creation story lies the key to her and Dawn's survival....She just has to finish it before it's too late.Told in Alice's darkly funny voice, And Then She Fell is an urgent and unflinching look at inherited trauma, womanhood, denial, and false allyship, which speeds to an unpredictable--and surreal--climax.."-- Provided by publisher.

Becky Chambers' two award-winning, bestselling, beloved, and uplifting Monk and Robot stories, A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, together in trade paperback for the first time! Becky Chambers' delightful, post-Utopian, Hugo Award-winning series gives us hope for the future. It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot. Becky Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter? This book includes both A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy in paperback for the first time!