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The Martian
The Martian
Aug 10, 2025 1:48 PM

Author:Andy Weir

The Martian

In the Young Readers Edition of The Martian:

Classroom-appropriate language

Discussion questions and activities

Q&A with Andy Weir

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive – and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. Damaged machinery, the unforgiving environment, or plain old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit, he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

Reviews

Andy Weir's masterpiece!

—— Tom Hanks , Twitter

Watney's gallows humour and his brushes with death as he uses every ounce of his intelligence and astronaut's training to claw his way out of the pit will have you laughing and gasping by turns. I read this book in a weekend. I didn't think I'd have the time to - but Andy Weir's edge-of-the-seat storytelling didn't leave me any choice.

—— Richard Madeley, Richard and Judy Book Club

Andy Weir's terrific 'lost in space' novel is an absolute page turner from first to last ... Tautly-written, full of extraordinary and fascinating detail about life in a frozen red desert so far from home, The Martian is one of the best thrillers either of us has read in years. Highly recommended.

—— Judy Finnigan, Richard and Judy Book Club

The best book I've read in ages. Clear your schedule before you crack the seal. This story will take your breath away faster than a hull breech. Smart, funny, and white-knuckle intense, The Martian is everything you want from a novel.

—— Hugh Howey , New York Times bestselling author of Wool

Ellroy has never been a five-pages-before-bed kind of writer; his vision is more the fever dream after lights out.

—— Observer

This Storm, a baroqueand playful masterwork, is repulsive and propulsive, obsessive and compulsive. The juvenile delinquent has become nothing lessthan a giant of American literature.

—— Evening Standard

Epic crime writing from a master

—— Daily Mail

Like Tolstoy, the American crime writer’s novels are big and bold affairs […] however, Ellroy is probably closer to Dostoevsky, whose work consistently exposed the darker side of human nature and the perpetual temptation between good and evil.

—— Belfast Telegraph

Historical crime doesn’t get more exciting than this.

—— The Times

Master thriller writer

—— The Times

A compelling read

—— The Financial Times

a book that you won’t ever want to reach the final page of. All good things must come to an end but Walker’s tale of courage and fortitude will linger on

—— Culturefly

This is a wonderful book. The author brings an almost cozy domesticity to the end of the world, as his protagonist struggles to come to terms with what it means to be a husband and a father as the world falls apart around him. The central journey is a glorious roar of defiance against the brutality of a broken world and a shattered society, woven together with a lament for things lost and things left undone and unsaid. Adrian Walker breaks your heart in unexpected ways, and leaves you with a sense of stories still to be told. An end-of-the-world tale that is anything but an ending

—— Anne Corlett , author of The Space Between the Stars

A fresh and frighteningly real take on what "the end" might be . . . quite an exciting and nerve-wracking ‘run’, with characters you believe in and feel for.

—— New York Times bestselling author Robert McCammon

Creepy and disturbing right from the start.

—— Spooky Mrs Green

A disturbing but brilliant narrative . . . a rare treat.

—— WOMAN'S WEEKLY

A pitch perfect novel, fond and atmospheric. It reads as if Gill Hornby was born to write Cassandra’s story, and she brings her whole witty and sympathetic self to the task.

—— KIRSTY WARK

Utterly absorbing. The lives of the Austen sisters are recreated with a brilliant sureness of touch that can only be achieved by deep study of the period.

—— ARTEMIS COOPER

Gill Hornby weaves a magnificent work of the imagination, a pastiche of Regency style and manners, fabricating a solution to a problem that has long mystified scholar . . . Hornby’s portrayals of Cassandra and Jane are tantalising . . . All devotees of Austen’s novels will want to join Hornby, and Cassandra, in this enjoyable act of piety to Jane.

—— THE SPECTATOR

Austen aficionados have looked askance at Cassandra’s wilful destruction of her famous sibling’s letters, but here, in a tender and touching recreation of their relationship, the (imagined) correspondence is the key that unlocks the plot... Hornby deftly describes the psychological toll that such uncertainly took on Jane, and movingly celebrates the fortitude of Cassandra whose greatest love was her sister.

—— DAILY MAIL

A wonderfully original, emotionally complex novel that delves into why Cassandra burned a treasure trove of letters written by her sister, Jane Austen – an act of destruction that has troubled academics for centuries.

—— IRISH EXAMINER

A beguilingly persuasive book that no Austen fan will want to miss.

—— READERS DIGEST

A beautifully wrought drama that find Cassandra, now an elderly spinster, looking back on the life they shared. Utterly charming.

—— BEST

Fans will delight in this new novelby Gill Hornby, which ingeniouslyimagines what Jane’s sister Cassandra Austen’s own life might have been like.

—— VELVET MAGAZINE

This complex story reveals a clever and warm-hearted character in Cassandra, and brings us closer to one of the greatest of all English writers.

—— WOMEN'S WEEKLY

A novel that will delight Pride and Prejudice fans.

—— i News

This is an engaging story about love, loss, and finding one's place in the world. A must-read for Jane Austen fans.

—— The Austenite (Instagram)

Through her spry, witty portrait of Jane Austen’s sister, Hornby mounts a lively defence of single women’s liberty.

—— Waterstones Weekly Newsletter

Fans of Pride and Prejudice and Emma will enjoy this touching story[…] In her meticulously researchedthird novel, Gill Hornby skilfully imagines the correspondence between the sisters.

—— SUNDAY EXPRESS

Hornby does amazingly well in the riskiest area of all, the invention of letters ostensibly written by Jane […] The television rights to this novel were sold at birth. No surprise: the dialogue is ready to roll […] People are going to love it, but I wonder if any screen adaptation will be able to convey the hidden treasure within this thoughtful story.

—— LITERARY REVIEW

‘It won’t surprise me if this is one of the books of the year, it’s a delight, one of those that you don’t want to end.’

—— RTE

Many of the themes familiar from Austen’s novels are deftly revisited by Hornby, and the letters that are reimagined are pitch-perfect, with deeply touching confidences shared in family correspondences. You can tell this book by its cover – it’s quite lovely.

—— IRISH TIMES

Beautiful novel[…] light hearted historical fiction which resembles Austen’s novels, a really lovely read very suitable for incoming spring

—— Excuse My Reading (Instagram)

Gill Hornby unfolds it all in her imagination.

—— The Times

Hornby combines a moving portrait of sisterly devotion with a comic depiction of the provincial life so brilliantly evoked in Austen's own novels

—— DAILY MAIL

[A]t the heart of it all there's a romantic twist..."Hornby is at her best describing the complex bonds between the excellent women of her story. She describes the horrors, but also the pleasures of spinsterhood"

—— THE TIMES

I've just started reading Anne Enright's Actress. I very much enjoyed her previous novel, The Green Road. This one has glorious lines even in the opening pages.

—— Tracey Thorn , i

I would definitely recommend Actress by Anne Enright, it is her at her very best.

—— Marjorie Brennan , Irish Examiner

Few reviews said how absolutely hilarious [Actress] is. Enright skewers beautifully those creepy provincial aesthetes of Dublin of the sixties and seventies.

—— Conor O'Callaghan , Irish Times

Enright is formidable in combining the concrete detail of lives – think of the extraordinary array of sibling portraits in her last novel, The Green Roadwith an acute understanding of the inchoate lives of families: the push and pull of loyalty; the projection of desires; the smothering of disappointment and unhappiness. Here she conjures [a] rollicking story.

—— Alex Clark , Oldie *Novel of the Month*

A rich, impressively imagined work about a stage and screen star who may never have existed but seems considerably more human than many real-life figures as seen through their own eyes or those of any but the finest biographers.

—— Philip Fisher , British Theatre Guide

This story is about mothers and daughters, but also secrets in families and women in Ireland. It's an easy read, with a quintessentially Irish tone... It's brilliant.

—— Jess Phillips , Observer

Anne Enright's brilliant novel is a darkly glittering account of the cost to both the mother and her daughter of Katherine's complicated fame.

—— Jane Shilling , Daily Mail

A gem from a former Booker winner.

—— Susie Mesure , i, *Summer Books of 2021*

Anne Enright['s]...writing is simply glorious. Comedy and tragedy in one.

—— Mary Lawson , Daily Mail, *Books of the Year*
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