Pills and Starships

"One of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation."—Los Angeles Times

In this richly imagined dystopic future brought by global warming, mass human migrations are constant, water and food are scarce, new babies are illegal, and the disintegrating society is run by corporates who feed the people a steady diet of "pharma" to keep them happy. Usually, seventeen-year-old Nat doesn't let it get her down too much: this, after all, is the life she's used to.

But now her family—her parents and her hacker brother Sam—have come to Hawaii for their parents' Final Week. The few Americans who still live well also live long—so long that older adults bow out not by natural means but by buying death contracts.

Counting down the days till her parents are scheduled to die, Nat keeps a record of everything her family does in the company-supplied diary that came in the hotel's care package. When Sam rebels against the corporates his parents have hired to handle their last days, Nat has to choose a side.

Lydia Millet is the author of seven novels as well as the story collection Love in Infant Monkeys--a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her first book for middle-grade readers, Fires Beneath the Sea, was a Kirkus Best Book and Junior Library Guild selection.