Suspended is a stunning speculative debut. A vividly imagined exploration of grief, perceived reality, and the longing for immortality—perfect for fans of Emily St. John Mandel, Ted Chiang, and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Painter and single mother Fila Flostone is gunned down in a grocery store shooting, leaving her young son behind. Fifty years later, she wakes with a gasp—revived through a cryogenics program she barely remembers enrolling in.

Reanimated at Triskelen, a tech-driven, water-worshipping New Age sect, Fila is told nothing about her son’s fate. The facility’s leaders insist she isn’t emotionally stable enough to handle the truth—and may never be. Refusing to accept their judgment, Fila uses her artist’s eye for detail to orchestrate a daring escape.

On the outside, survival is brutal for a fugitive “Reheat.” Climate collapse and runaway technology have transformed the American she knew into a surreal, fractured landscape. Hunted and disoriented, Fila’s only ally is the one thing she doesn’t trust: an “emotional prosthesis” issued by Triskelen—an AI rendering of her son.

As she journeys toward a mysterious artificial island off California’s ravaged coast—where her real son may be living in seclusion—Fila realizes that awaits her at the journey’s end is not just reunion, but an impossible reckoning between love and truth.