First in the electrifying series set in “a dystopian future that feels relatable and real . . . Wonderfully entertaining” (InD’tale).
When Catrina moves to Cochtonville to work as a chemist for Cochton Enterprises, she has no idea how dangerous her life is about to become.
A chance meeting with Ulysses, owner of the Union Station bar, plunges her into a world of illegal condoms, vibrators, and art. As their loneliness draws them together, they become allies in what will become the fight of their lives in the sexually repressive and culturally backward dystopia.
Catrina’s invention, No Regrets—a scanner to test for pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections—brings increased scrutiny from the town’s Vice Patrol, made worse by an ambitious new agent who hangs around Union Station and takes up with Ulysses’s vindictive ex.
Catrina’s relationship with Ulysses and her company’s new products put them both in peril as she begins to understand the dark side of her employer, society, and science without humanity.
But science is all she’ll have to spare the men of Cochtonville a mortifying fate and to save the life of Ulysses.
If you like Megan Lynch, Jack Hunt, Robert J. Crane, James D. Prescott, and Grace Hamilton, you’ll love this unique and fun dystopian adventure!
Born under a half-illuminated quarter moon, Catherine Haustein is never sure if she favors light or shadow. Her Unstable States series contains ample portions of both. The author and chemist lives and teaches in a tidy town in Iowa on the shores of a lake which sometimes is cited for elevated fecal coliform levels. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Catherine weaves the passions and optimism of science with the absurdities of the present and dark possibilities of the future throughout her books.