Mark
Morton’s debut YA novel, The Headmasters, called “a brilliant
science-fiction debut”
by Robert
J. Sawyer, releases February 6 from Shadowpaw Press
Noted
Canadian non-fiction author and long-time CBC columnist Mark Morton makes his
debut as a novelist with The Headmasters, coming February 6 from
Shadowpaw Press; a gripping, provocative post-apocalyptic dystopian young adult
tale that asks the question, “How do you learn from the past if there isn’t
one?”
Sixty
years ago as The Headmasters opens, something awful happened. Something
that killed everyone except the people at Blue Ring, a research facility in
northern Ontario. Something that caused the Headmasters to appear. But young
Maple doesn’t know what is was. Because talking about the past is forbidden.
Everyone
at Blue Ring has a Headmaster. They sink their sinewy coils into your skull and
control you, using your body for backbreaking toil and your mind to communicate
with each other.
When
someone dies, their Headmaster transfers to someone new. But so do the dead
person’s memories, and if one of those memories surfaces in the new host’s
mind, their brain breaks. That’s why talking about the past is forbidden.
Maple
hates this world where the past can’t exist and the future promises only more
suffering. And she hates the Headmasters for making it that way. But she
doesn’t know how to fight them – until memories start to surface in her mind
from someone who long ago came close to defeating the Headmasters.
But
whose memories are they? Why aren’t they harming her? And how can she use them
to defeat the Headmasters? Maple has to find the answers herself, unable to
tell anyone what she’s experiencing or planning—not even Thorn, the young man
she’s falling in love with.
Thorn,
who has some forbidden secrets of his own . . .
Praise for The Headmasters
“Mark Morton’s The Headmasters is a brilliant science-fiction
debut from one of Canada’s best-loved nonfiction writers. This compelling YA
novel is a spot-on updating of Robert A. Heinlein’s classic The Puppet
Masters for the new millennium, with intricate world-building, a great
science-fiction puzzle, and — ironic for a novel about suppressed memories — a
main character you’ll never forget. I loved it.” — Robert J. Sawyer,
Hugo Award-winning author of The Downloaded
About the author
MARK MORTON (markmorton.ca)i s also the author of four nonfiction titles: Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities (nominated for a Julia Child Award and to be reissued soon in a new edition from Shadowpaw Press Reprise); The End: Closing Words for a Millennium (winner of the Alexander Isbister Award for nonfiction); The Lover’s Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex (republished in the UK as Dirty Words), and Cooking with Shakespeare. He’s also written more than fifty columns for Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture (University of California Press) and has written and broadcast more than a hundred columns about language and culture for CBC Radio. Mark has a PhD in sixteenth-century literature from the University of Toronto and has taught at several universities in France and Canada. He currently works at the University of Waterloo. He and his wife, Melanie Cameron, (also an author) have four children, three dogs, one rabbit, and no time.
About Shadowpaw Press
Shadowpaw Press was founded in 2018 by Edward Willett. A member of Literary Press Group (Canada) and the Association of Canadian Publishers, Shadowpaw Press publishes an eclectic selection of books by both new and established authors, including adult fiction, young adult fiction, children’s books, non-fiction, and anthologies. In addition, Shadowpaw Press publishes new editions of notable, previously published books in any genre under the Shadowpaw Press Reprise imprint.
-30-
For more information:
Edward Willett
306-536-5421
No comments:
Post a Comment