The New World

The New World is an innovative new reading experience, a novel that reveals itself as it is navigated.

Acclaimed author Chris Adrian (The Children's Hospital, The Great Night) joins the award-winning creators of The Silent History (Eli Horowitz and Russell Quinn) to create this pioneering story of memory, grief, hope, and cryogenics.

Dr. Jane Cotton is a pediatric surgeon; her husband, Jim, is a humanist chaplain. They are about to celebrate their eighth wedding anniversary when Jim suddenly collapses and dies. Pushing her way into the operating room, Jane finds her husband's lifeless body — except for his head, which has been removed. Only then does she discover that Jim has secretly enrolled with Polaris, a shadowy cryogenics company in Orlando.

Furious and grieving, Jane fights to reclaim Jim from Polaris. Revived in the future, Jim learns he must sacrifice every memory of Jane if he wants to fully enter the new world. Separated by centuries, each of them is challenged to choose between faith and fear, intimacy and solitude, timeless love and a life without end.


“The New World is a marvel. Even to describe this book feels like blasphemy but I promise you’ll exit agog, overjoyed, transformed.”
—Karen Russell (Swamplandia!)

"You have not read a truly digital book until you've read The New World. The novella is about a woman trying to reclaim her dead husband's head from a cult-like cryogenics company. But more than that, it is the most ambitious attempt I've seen at exploring a future where books lack physical form and are better for it. ...As I scrolled, then swiped backwards and forwards, through its digital chapters, I felt like I was sneaking a glimpse at what a book unencumbered by physical pages could be."
—Gizmodo

"Jane and Jim have such simple human desires — they want to live, they want to be good — and The New World tracks how these basic pursuits can so quickly turn absurd, sad and unforeseeably strange. It's a wild and fun book, yes, and also a precipitously imaginative and intelligent one. But maybe most importantly, its humor is profound, and seems to come from the heart of an angel."
—Rivka Galchen (Atmospheric Disturbances)

"Graphics, color transitions, fades, and even the way in which the text sweeps compliment and contribute to this engaging digital narrative."
—Publishers Weekly