-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
In this enthralling dystopian YA thriller where emotions become weapons, the fight for humanity's true essence takes centre stage.
In a near-future Britain, societyʼs calm facade conceals a sinister truth: the state maintains its control by meddling with the nationʼs water supply. The result? A population lulled into apathy. Lulled, apart from a courageous few known as the Resistors.
New Resistor Owyn and lifelong Resistor Tiegan face parallel struggles in their fierce quest for freedom. Spurred on by the promise of a mass Resistance, they ignite a chain of events that shakes the foundations of Britainʼs oppressive regime.
One thing is clear: the price of freedom is higher than they ever imagined.
"A gripping examination of our human need to feel." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"This fast-paced adventure is akin to dystopian classics that appear to focus on one aspect of toppling corrupt government regimes but also don't shy away from the minutiae of inequality such as classism or systemic racism." —Booklist
This information about Calm was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
S. J. Baker teaches English in a secondary school in Hull, where she does her best to pass on her own love for reading and writing to her students. Books have always loomed large in Ms. Baker's life, so it was perhaps inevitable that after completing a degree in English Literature at Cambridge she should train as a teacher and spend her career sharing her love of story-telling with young people. Reading aloud to her own children as they grew up confirmed her in the belief that we learn much about life and how to live well from the books that we read. She lives in East Yorkshire with her husband and two exuberant black Labradors.
If you liked Calm, try these:
by Natasha Brown
Published 2026
Remember—words are your weapons, they're your tools, your currency: a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of truth and power from a "powerful new voice in British Literature" (The Sunday Times).
by Tash Aw
Published 2020
From the author of The Harmony Silk Factory and Five Star Billionaire, a compelling depiction of a man's act of violence, set against the backdrop of Asia in flux.
by Miranda Richmond Mouillot
Published 2019
Romain Gary's bittersweet final masterpiece, a novel of courage and resistance - never before in English.
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
