Mean Higher High Water by D.S.G. Burke

“An island of hope in a rising sea.” Meg Elison, author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

Survival takes strange shapes, whether it’s a fledgling Viking queen with a habit of talking to birds or a scrappy nonprofit fundraiser who turns every date into a lesson on decarbonization.

But why bother when the seas won’t stop rising and the forests burn on a loop? In this version of the future that’s too rotten not to recognize, justice is a bedtime story for people who still sleep. For Nia, an aging, sharp-tongued forager with a grief problem, the hope of revenge is the only thing keeping her alive. Decades ago, her fiancé died in the explosion of the world’s first zero-emissions jet, an incident that put a fiery punctuation mark on global climate cooperation. Convinced that the crash wasn’t an accident, she followed the echoes west, chasing rumors, and discovering along the way that patience can turn nearly anything with leaves into liquor. 

Just as Nia’s resolve is starting to fray, the ocean coughs up an eerily familiar sneaker—with the foot still inside.

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Pub date: 13-Jan-2026

Page count: 292

ISBN: 978-3-98832-234-0