The Strange

Written by Nathan Ballingrud

Narrated by Sophie Amoss

“Stretches the boundaries of the genre.” —The New York Times

1931, New Galveston, Mars: Fourteen-year-old Anabelle Crisp sets off through the wastelands of the Strange to find Silas Mundt’s gang who have stolen her mother’s voice, destroyed her father, and left her solely with a need for vengeance in this “page-turner” (Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling author of Black Sun) from Nathan Ballingrud.

Since Anabelle’s mother left for Earth to care for her own ailing mother, her days in New Galveston have been spent at school and her nights at her laconic father’s diner with Watson, the family Kitchen Engine and dishwasher, as her only companion. When the Silence came, and communication and shipments from Earth to its colonies on Mars stopped, life seemed stuck in foreboding stasis until the night Silas Mundt and his gang attacked.

At once evoking the dreams of an America explored in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and the harsher realities of frontier life in Charles Portis True Grit, Ballingrud’s “brilliant” (Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World) novel is haunting in its evocation of Annabelle’s quest for revenge amidst a spent and angry world accompanied by a domestic Engine, a drunken space pilot, and the toughest woman on Mars.

Nathan Ballingrud’s stories have been adapted into the film Wounds and the Hulu series Monsterland, The Strange is his first novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Mar 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781797123288

Nathan Ballingrud

Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts in 1970, but spent most of his life in the South. Ballingrud is the author of the collections North American Lake Monsters and Wounds: Six stories from the Border of Hell. He’s been awarded two Shirley Jackson Awards, and have shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards. Among other things, he has been a cook on oil rigs and barges, a waiter, and a bartender in New Orleans. He now lives in North Carolina.

Reviews for The Strange

[kasey lv · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A depressing read - it could have been so much more

[F Brugnano · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting sci-fi western, love the setting, loved the main characters, first half of the book is a great hook. Gets a little too graphically violent for me, so if that bothers you, maybe think twice. Payoff isn't quite there at the end, sadly, lots of unanswered questions.