Beautiful Shining People: The extraordinary, EPIC speculative masterpiece... (ePub)

A damaged teenage tech prodigy meets an enigmatic waitress in a tiny Tokyo café, sparking an epic journey across Japan that will change everything, forever ... a captivating, masterful novel with an extraordinary mystery at its heart...

'Set against a tech heavy backdrop Beautiful Shining People blooms into an emotional and soulful tale that reckons with the isolation we can all feel as outsiders' SciFi Now Book of the Month

'A fascinating exploration of what it means to be human in a world where everything can be faked ... wonderful, insightful and thoughtful' James Oswald

'Cyberpunk meets bildungsroman - a real joy' Oscar de Muriel

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This world is anything but ordinary, and it's about to change forever...

It's our world, but decades into the future...

An ordinary world, where cars drive themselves, drones glide across the sky, and robots work in burger shops. There are two superpowers and a digital Cold War, but all conflicts are safely oceans away. People get up, work, and have dinner. Everything is as it should be...

Except for seventeen-year-old John, a tech prodigy from a damaged family, who hides a deeply personal secret. But everything starts to change for him when he enters a tiny café on a cold Tokyo night. A café run by a disgraced sumo wrestler, where a peculiar dog with a spherical head lives, alongside its owner, enigmatic waitress Neotnia...

But Neotnia hides a secret of her own - a secret that will turn John's unhappy life upside down. A secret that will take them from the neon streets of Tokyo to Hiroshima's tragic past to the snowy mountains of Nagano.

A secret that reveals that this world is anything ordinary - and it's about to change forever...

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'Exquisite world-building, this book had me invested from the very first page. Vivid plot and irresistible characters and a real tug at the soul ... you'll drown in it' Lisa Bradley

'A life-affirming, epic book about what it is to be human: to live, to dream, to hope, to love ... at a time when we most need reminding of these things' David F Ross

'Totally engrossing from the start - the story, characters and settings will linger in your imagination long after you're finished ... truly wonderful' Jonathan Whitelaw

'Masterful ... truly breathtaking and achingly beautiful. It builds anticipation and suspense before coming together in a thrilling, captivating conclusion' The Bookbag

'Outstanding! Sci-fi showing how the past might impact on the future ... a glimpse into a (very plausible) terrifying future' Michael J Malone

What readers are saying...

'A beautiful, emotional and thought-provoking read, peppered with action and the thrill of a chase, heavy in technology, but bound by compassion' Jen Med's Book Review

'A striking and strange novel - and a searing statement about the dangerously thin lines between utopia and dystopia' B S Casey

'Just devastatingly beautiful' From Belgium with Booklove

Praise for Michael Grothaus

***LONGLISTED for the CWA John Creasey NEW BLOOD Dagger***

'Gloriously funny but dark as hell, you will laugh and recoil in equal measure' Sunday Express

'An extraordinary debut from a striking new voice' Michael Marshall Smith

'Complex, inventive and a genuine shocker' Guardian

'One of the 25 Most Irresistible Hollywood Novels' Entertainment Weekly

'Engrossing ... a captivating story that manages to be funny, sinister and surprising' New York Daily News