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Sign up todayThe Country of Ice Cream Star
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Learn moreIn the aftermath of a devastating plague, a fearless young heroine embarks on a dangerous and surprising journey to save her world in this brilliantly inventive thriller.
In the ruins of a future America, fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star and her nomadic tribe live off the detritus of a crumbled civilization. Theirs is a world of children; before reaching the age of twenty, they all die of a strange disease they call Posies—a plague that has killed for generations. There is no medicine, no treatment; only the mysterious rumor of a cure.
When her brother begins showing signs of the disease, Ice Cream Star sets off on a bold journey to find this cure. Led by a stranger, a captured prisoner named Pasha who becomes her devoted protector and friend, Ice Cream Star plunges into the unknown, risking her freedom and ultimately her life. Traveling hundreds of miles across treacherous, unfamiliar territory, she will experience love, heartbreak, cruelty, terror, and betrayal, fighting to protect the only world she has ever known.
A postapocalyptic literary epic as imaginative as The Passage and as linguistically ambitious as Cloud Atlas, The Country of Ice Cream Star is a breathtaking work from a writer of rare and unconventional talent.
Sandra Newman is the author of The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, which was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. She is also the author of the novel Cake, the memoir Changeling, The Western Lit Survival Kit, and with Howard Mittelmark, How Not to Write a Novel, an irreverent how-to guide. She lives in New York.
Lisa Renee Pitts is an award-winning actress in theater, television, and film, as well as an accomplished audiobook narrator. She has been seen Off-Broadway, in Europe, and in regional theaters across the United States, performing leading roles in such prominent plays as A Raisin in the Sun, Doubt, Waiting for Lefty, Valley Song, and Our Town. Her television appearances include The Shield and Law and Order, and she played the recurring role of Allison Sawyer on the hit family drama Lincoln Heights for the ABC Family Channel. Lisa's audiobook titles include biographies, fiction, nonfiction and children's novels, including Pushkin and the Queen of Spades by Alice Randall, for which she won an AudioFile Earphones Award for excellence in narration. Other notable titles are Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza, Better Than I Know Myself by Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant, and My Name Is Not Angelica by Scott O'Dell. Lisa is a graduate of Rutgers University, where she received her B.F.A. in Theater Arts. She lives in Burbank, California.
Reviews
“Haunting and heartbreaking…an epic about love and hope that will inspire.”
“Makes The Hunger Games seem wimpy.”
“Probably the next Divergent…An engrossing, thrilling read.”
“The Country of Ice Cream Star is in many ways a classic story, craftily retold and made contemporary…It’s possible that this intrepid girl is the Frodo Baggins our times deserve.”
“Full of supple metaphors and rhythmic lyricism.”
“What makes the novel so fascinating—and, yes, so challenging—is the language Newman has created.”
“A brave new/old world that delivers on multiple levels, especially Ice Cream Star’s alluring language.”
“What sets The Country of Ice Cream Star apart from its rivals is the extraordinary, blistering insistence of its language…By the last page I was emotionally battered but euphoric.”
“Newman manages to imbue her heroine with a hope and resiliency that will surpass the ravages of a woebegone time.”
“What sets the work apart is its unapologetic narrator, whose fantastically unbridled, wholly teenage point of view renders each page a pleasure to read.”
“This suspenseful, provocative tale is The Hunger Games meets Lord of the Flies and The Walking Dead, only much, much better.”
“This literary dystopia inhabits a fully imagined, remarkably inventive universe…The patient reader will be intrigued by the poetic prose and captivated by the exploits of Ice Cream Star.”
“Newman’s story is inventive, her characters memorable…praiseworthy for its solid efforts at world building.”
“Narrator Lisa Renee Pitts narrates this post-apocalyptic novel with feeling…Listeners who can move past the dialect will find the story of children surviving at world’s end engaging as Pitts’ melodic voice, full of warm undertones, brings them closer to the emotional core of Ice Cream Star’s struggle for survival.”
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