I’m taking part in the annual ’24 Festive Tasks’ game with a group of folks on line. One of the tasks for Thanksgiving is:

Be thankful for yourself and treat yourself to a new book. 

How could I resist a task like that?

I’ve pre-ordered the audiobook version ‘Radio Life’ by Derek B Miller which will be published on 21st January 2021.

Derek B. Miller never disappoints, always makes me think and frequently surprises me.

‘Norwegian By Night’ was the first book Derek Miller book to capture my imagination, back in 2015, with a young boy and an old man on the run in Norway-

With ‘The Girl In Green’ he took me somewhere quite different, the wars in the Middle-East and the mess we Westerner’s make there.

‘American By Day’ transplanted the Norwegian policewoman I’d met in ‘Norwegian By Night’ into the through-the-looking-glass experience of working with law enforcement in the United States.

‘Radio Life’ promises to take me into new territory. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, it’s a political thriller that explores the tension between preserving and using knowledge and the fear of the unknown.

Here’s my adaption of the publisher’s summary.

The Commonwealth, a post-apocalyptic civilisation on the rise, is locked in a clash of ideas with the Keepers, a fight which threatens to destroy the world . . . again.

Over the past fifty years the Commonwealth has created The Central Archive, the greatest repository of knowledge in the known world, protected by scribes copying every piece of found material – books, maps, even scraps of paper 

Now thousands of Keepers have gathered on the Commonwealth’s borders, each of them sworn to burn the Central Archives to the ground. 

The Keepers  believe that, by bringing back the ancient knowledge, the Commonwealth will destroy the world for a second time.

They will do anything to prevent that, including bringing down a forbidden Gone World Tower to kill the young Archive Runner hiding in it.

But she doesn’t die. She finds an ancient Theunmapped bomb shelter with food, water, a two-way radio and something that calls itself ‘the internet’.

So, if you’re looking to thank yourself with a new book, ‘Radio Life’ might be just the thing to brighten up your January.