About this Event
We are hugely excited to be welcoming bestselling author ofThe Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley to the shop on Thursday 28th March at 7pm to discuss her exceptionally powerful and thoughtfully compelling queer romance set in a future where climate change is driving refugees to Mars, .
Timely and utterly unputdownable, The Mars House is an exceptional genre-blending story about privilege, strength, life, and love across class divisions.
In the wake of environmental catastrophe, January, once a principal in London's Royal Ballet, has become a refugee on Tharsis, the terraformed colony on Mars. In Tharsis, January's life is dictated by his status as an Earthstronger-a person whose body is not adjusted to Mars's lower gravity and so poses a danger to those born on, or naturalized to, Mars. January's job choices, housing, and even transportation options are dictated by this second-class status, and now a xenophobic politician named Aubrey Gale is running on a platform that would make it all worse: Gale wants all Earthstrongers to be surgically naturalized, a process that is always disabling and can be deadly.
When Gale chooses January for an on-the-spot press junket interview that goes horribly awry, January's life is thrown into chaos, but Gale's political fortunes are damaged, too. Gale proposes a solution to both their problems: a five year made-for-the-press marriage that would secure January's future without immediate naturalization and ensure Gale's political future. But when January accepts the offer, he discovers that Gale is not at all like they appear in the press. They're kind, compassionate, and much more difficult to hate than January would wish. But as their romantic relationship develops, the political situation worsens, and January discovers Gale has an enemy, someone willing to destroy all of Tharsis to make them pay - and January may be the only person standing in the way.
Natasha Pulley is the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and The Bedlam Stacks. An international bestseller, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award, the Locus Awards, and remained on the Sunday Times bestseller list for much of summer 2016. The Bedlam Stacks was longlisted for the Walter Scott Award and shortlisted for the Encore Award. Natasha has lived in Japan as a Daiwa Scholar, as well as China and Peru. She was a 2016 Glastone Writer in Residence, and she teaches on Bath Spa University’s Creative Writing BA, alongside short courses at the Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education.
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Doors: 6.30pm, event starts: 7pm, please arrive early to secure a good seat.
Tickets are £3 and there is a Ticket & Book option which includes a signed copy of The Mars House by Natasha Pulley.
The bookshop has level access, events are seated and speakers use microphones. If you have any concerns about accessibility, please do get in touch and we will do our best to accommodate your needs.
For more information or if you would like a signed copy because you can't make it to the event, please contact the Blackwell's events team on 0131 622 8222 or [email protected]
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Blackwell's Bookshop, 53-62 South Bridge, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
GBP 3.00 to GBP 20.00