Sealed

Delivering bone-chilling suspense, debut author Booth reimagines dystopian SF as a terrifying modern tale of motherhood. Alice is 36 weeks pregnant, brimming with worry and obsession. As her city is inundated with cases of cutis, a grotesque illness that causes skin to seal over bodily orifices, she and her husband, Pete, move to a remote mountain home. Pete thinks Alice is just obsessed with finding something to fret about, but Alice begins to recognize that their secluded new environment may not be secluded enough. Reeling from the anxiety of impending motherhood, unstoppable biological dangers, and a relationship under unendurable pressure, Alice is left to decide whether her fear is, in fact, unfounded—or whether her paranoia is the only thing that can save her family. Booth paints a picture of good, everyday people under attack from their own bodies; the consistently tense imagery and tone create a vulnerability within the characters that is about individual biology as much as widespread disaster. Readers looking for an all-too-real dystopian scare will find this subtle, intense, deeply unnerving novel makes their skin crawl in the best way. (July)