books
A HOUSE BETWEEN EARTH AND THE MOON
March 29, 2022!
The Penguin Random House website has pre-order links to SEVERAL different retailers.
You can also add A House Between Earth and the Moon to Goodreads.
“Part sci-fi, part dreamy drama, The House Between Earth and the Moon follows the residents of Parallaxis (a luxury space station developed by tech giant Sensus) as they try to build a home for billionaires to escape Earth's increasing inhospitality. Meanwhile, the people they leave back home—particularly the family of Alex, a researcher seeking to create a carbon-guzzling algae—are struggling with both their present and futures.”
—Marie Claire, “The Most Eagerly Anticipated Fiction by Women in 2022”
“If you read just one novel about future billionaires funding scientists to try to save a select few from global warming by making it possible to live in outer space, definitely let it be A House Between Earth and Moon.”
—Glamour, “The Best Books of 2022 to Add to Your Reading List”
“Addictive. . . . Fast-paced. . . . Scherm's character-driven sf story centers on individuals working against the clock to find a solution to climate change. . . . Scherm beautifully captures emotion in her writing as she shows how important connection is to our shared humanity.”
—Booklist
“A high-concept domestic novel that merges science fiction and eco-fiction tropes. . . . Scherm [gives] the climate change novel a wider yet still realistic scope and . . . nuanced characters in Alex and Mary Agnes, who are both eager to do the right thing but undone by humanity, its fickle nature, and its allegedly liberating but often self-imprisoning technologies.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Inventive and thrilling, A House Between Earth and the Moon dives into the near-future climate apocalypse with eerie prescience, startling humor, and, somehow, hope. I couldn't put it down.”
—Brit Bennett
“Rebecca Scherm is a treasure of a novelist: searching, inventive, her scope both everyday and expansive, her work marked by a tender but merciless psychological acuity. In A House Between Earth and the Moon, she has the near future—or the present—of perpetual emergency firmly within her grasp. It’s a thrill to read this novel, which punctures, urgently and humanely, the technocrat fantasy that space might save us; it brilliantly vivifies the terrors of love and surveillance and ambition, the dream and impossibility of escape.”
—Jia Tolentino
“A House Between Earth and the Moon is a compelling, urgent book. I couldn’t put it down. Rebecca Scherm brilliantly, and with such heart and tenderness, imagines a frightening future for our planet and our flawed, complicated species, and the worlds she imagines are so vivid, and feel so real I wondered if she owns a crystal ball. I loved these characters and their struggles and desires, and I rooted for them, and worried about them, and I can’t stop thinking about them. This is a remarkable novel.”
—Edan Lepucki
“I loved A House Between Earth and the Moon—a smart, propulsive, sharply observed psychological novel set in a convincingly detailed near future, as well as an insightful examination of how rapid advances in communication technology can inadvertently render us indecipherable to each other.”
—Dexter Palmer
UNBECOMING
The New York Times: “Startlingly inventive… As for Grace herself, she’s a real work of art — even if she is a fake.”
The New Yorker calls Unbecoming a “lively debut.”
People: “Can we change who we are–or who we become?…Intricately detailed and rich with art and deception, Scherm’s novel is a treat.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Unbecoming inverts everything we expect from a heist story: The pacing is deliberate, the characters are recognizably human, and even small acts of deception leave victims in their wake…By introducing complex themes and one of the most compelling characters in recent fiction, Scherm has elevated the heist novel beyond entertainment. Like a painting that becomes more intriguing the longer you study it, Unbecoming is a genuine work of art.”
“From the first page, you know Rebecca Scherm is the real thing. Unbecoming is an assured exploration of the intricate, intense, risky processes that go into creating identity—and into dismantling it.”
—Tana French
“Rebecca Scherm’s extraordinarily confident voice and style, this novel’s depth of detail—great characters and a terrifically engaging plot—are a sheer delight to read. There is something very fresh and captivating about this book, and best of all I had no idea what was going to happen from one page to the next.”
—Kate Atkinson
“Some characters who go bad find that it’s against their nature, and some who go bad discover that dishonesty is the central truth about themselves. Rebecca Scherm’s wonderful novel Unbecoming has a mesmerizing narrator, Grace, who discovers that her gift (and it is a real gift) is for deceit. A thriller, a psychological study, and a love story, this novel is an unusually intelligent and suspenseful book. The dark arts have rarely been so brightly lit.”
—Charles Baxter
“Unbecoming is the story of a heist, and especially what happens afterwards. No one thinks beyond the maps and the timetables and the moment of sale, its narrator tells us, but Rebecca Scherm has done just that, showing us the tense, suspenseful aftermath of an unraveled plan. Unbecoming is a novel of voice, invention, and momentum, as tautly plotted as any Hitchcock movie and focused on the central question any lover and any jewel thief must eventually ask: How do you tell what’s fake from what’s real?”
—Karen Joy Fowler
“‘Self-assured’ doesn’t begin to describe the skill with which Rebecca Scherm develops her central character—Grace—and the tangled web she weaves, which is her life itself. It’s a completely compelling read from start to finish, beautifully researched and brilliantly constructed. I loved it.”
—Elizabeth George
“Artfully constructed and beautifully nuanced, Unbecoming is an elegant, page-turning mystery of theft, betrayal, and young love, which brilliantly reveals that the very worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves.”
—Kimberly McCreight
Order Unbecoming online:
Add Unbecoming to Goodreads
about
Photo: Tony Chew
I am the author of two novels, A House Between Earth and the Moon, which will be published March 29, 2022, and Unbecoming in 2015. I live in California with my family.
If you must know more? Some of my favorite things unrelated to books and writing are California native plants and ecology, praying mantids, the drink Corpse Reviver #2, fake fur, and my heating pad. I change this list whenever someone reminds me of it and I am embarrassed, and it only exists here at all because my bio is so short that it sometimes frustrates people.
Literary Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. Email for rights inquiries
Film & TV Rights: Jasmine Lake and Addison Duffy at United Talent
For press queries, please contact:
Sarah Delozier: sdelozier at prh dot com
Instagram: @rebecca_scherm_books
Twitter: @SchermUndDrang
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebeccascherm/
Email: contact@rebeccascherm.com
writing on the internet
Long ago, I had time to write occasional essays and stories in addition to books. My children gobbled up that time, but here are a few oldies:
“This Is Your Grandmother”
The New York Times“Charm School”
The Toast“The Worm-in-the-Apple Tale”
Electric Literature“Retellings of the Endings of the Classics, Now with More Hell-catting"
Book Riot“Unto Thee, O Erykah! The Year I Found Badu”
The Hairpin“Manly Me”
The HairpinFICTION
“Cockfighting: or, Overcoming Adversity”
Subtropics“Thunderbirds: Who, Why, and How”
HobartGOOF-NUGGETS
“This Old House Erotic Fan Fiction”
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
events
3/30: Literati Bookstore Virtual Event
In conversation with Jia Tolentino
7:30pm ET
4/6: Book Passage Virtual Event
In conversation with Edan LePucki
5:30pm PT