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New York City in 2057 — a metropolis divided. Sheltered by seawalls, Manhattan is green, clean, and thriving while Brooklyn and Queens have been given up to the hurricanes and the rising Atlantic. In this broken city, Jake and Shavir are like Romeo and Juliet, only that Jake works for Homeland Security and Shavir would be charged as an eco-terrorist should she ever get caught.

Jake works for Homeland because he is brilliant at securing critical medical drugs in a fragile world running out of everything. Haunted by the loss of his family and a job that forces him to choose life or death for others, Jake is a sensitive man with too much amphetamine in his blood. He cannot afford to care for anyone, least of all a woman who is keeping secrets from him.

Shavir thinks of herself as a part-time barista, a community farmer, and an underground activist fighting for the forgotten and discarded. Her heart beats for the people on a rooftop farm called Roots and the animals she rescues. The last thing she needs is a Homeland guy, but she can’t stay away from Jake. When she takes him across the East River to the community he was ordered to ignore, entirely new questions arise about who must be saved and who can be sacrificed.

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RECEPTION

“At the heart of this thought-provoking novel are two damaged people trying to build a relationship while working at cross purposes to help society amid dealing with a broken system’s inequities…. An engrossing book that holds out hope despite all the mistakes made by humans.“—KIRKUS REVIEWS

“This city comes to grand life throughout the novel, proving, just as New York always had, a center of change, creativity, and inequality. Despite elements of science-fiction and eco- thrillers, Fragile’s focus is on slice-of-life themes, the texture of existence in a possible world to come, and Shavir and Jake’s growing romance. That connection, and the resilience and dedication it takes to rebuild, is this smart, often touching novel’s heart..”—BOOKLIFE

“A compelling near-future dystopia about climate collapse and helping the vulnerable survive. Fragile is about living amidst surveillance cameras, barely survivable heat, and police who want to take your dog. It’s about compassion in hard times, working hard to improve the world, and cultivating hope.“—INDEPENDENT BOOK REVIEW

“Weik von Mossner’s gripping novel Fragile hits the target on the most urgent problems of scale that come with climate change…. Fragile takes climate fiction to a new level: a fast-paced, suspenseful must-read for anyone interested in our planet’s future.” —URSULA K. HEISE, Author of Imagining Extinction

“Part of the pleasure of reading Fragile is exploring a near-future world that’s treated with such detailed realism…. There are no villains, only messy humans. I enjoyed this book a lot.” —DEBBIE URBANSKI, Author of Afterworld

“In the past year I’ve read three books set in North America in post-apocalyptic landscapes, including Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Severance by Ling Ma. I enjoyed both, but Fragile had me spellbound. I was completely pulled in by the depth of Alexa Weik von Mossner’s descriptions of a devastated society that seems all too real. Superb climate fiction in a dystopian future New York. A thrilling debut.”—MARKET GARDEN READER

“Fragile is a thriller through and through. In addition to being a cautionary tale of climate disaster and continued non-human animal exploitation, it has sections worthy of any American action film; romance, police chases, underground resistance, and governmental sabotage. Yet, despite the plethora of genre conventions, Fragile somehow never feels preachy or cliche. A solid, complex page-turner, Alexa Weik von Mossner’s Fragile is worth the read.”—TOFU READER

“Alexa Weik von Mossner’s debut novel is, by turns, thrilling, thoughtful, romantic, terrifying, and imagi­native. Pick Fragile up at your own peril—I promise that you won’t want to put it down.” —KAREEM TAYYAR, Author of The Prince of Orange County

“Fragile is a scarily topical tale of what soon may come to be in our fast-changing world. And it’s also a moving love story between two people from opposite sides of the track, both trying desperately to save the world they love. I read it with huge enjoyment.”—SUSANNAH WATERS, Author of Cold Comfort

“One of the most exciting elements is how visual this near-future version of New York is, split between being greener, with less cars and gardens and plants everywhere, while also half the city has been swept under water.” —THE BLACK LIST