Each month, the Columbia Public Library offers selected books from its collection on a current bestseller or a timely topic. Public Services Librarian Seth Smith has compiled this month’s selection.

The genre known as “ecofiction” or “cli-fi” is not new. Once classified as speculative or science fiction works, writings on the subject of global warming or climate catastrophe include such venerable titles as JG Ballard’s 1962 parable “The Drowned World” (Liveright, 1963). One of Kurt Vonnegut’s first published works, the short story “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” (“Kurt Vonnegut: Novels and Stories 1950-1962”, Library of America No. 226, 2012)spoke about overpopulation and environmental disasters.

Ecofiction is a genre full of potential. Nature oscillates between desolation (in the depths of the last ice age, just 20,000 years ago, most of the Earth above 45 degrees latitude was a barren, icy wasteland) and the tranquil ecotopia that arguably characterized the last centuries of our era. Environmental disasters and species extinction seem to be just a catastrophe away.

Our One Read winner 2024, “Migrations” (Flatiron Books, 2020), by Charlotte McConaghyis set on such a dystopian Earth, where environmental destruction has outpaced hope for the future. This collapse is primarily due to overfishing, but also to general human insensitivity towards others and nature. Most of the characters in this book, including the protagonist Franny Stone, seem to be broken, disorientated souls.

A many-headed darkness of human and ecological brokenness also permeates McConaghy’s other works of adult fiction. “Once Upon a Time There Were Wolves” (Flatiron Books, 2021) deals with similar themes and ideas as “Migrations”, especially the resistance and callousness of human society towards other species whose existence has been wiped out due to inconvenience and neglect. This is a remarkable series of novels for McConaghey, which continues with the upcoming “Wild Dark Shore” (Flatiron Books, 2025).

According to the advance promo for the book, Wild Dark Shore is set on an Antarctic island where there are remnants of a colony of people running a seed bank. Imagine the real Svalbard Global Seed Vault, but on the other side of the Earth, where ecological end times are approaching, in this case due to rising sea levels (harkening back to Ballard’s prescient warning in The Drowned World).

In keeping with McConaghy’s other works, this promises to be a psychological thriller, riddled with complex characters experiencing severe trauma and loneliness.

McConaghy is no newcomer to the publishing world. While her latest trilogy is aimed at adults, she has written two other young adult series that are very popular with her readers. She has also trained as a screenwriter, which gives all of her books a cinematic quality.

And although the young adult titles have only been published in Australia, they are becoming increasingly popular around the world. I have always believed that the young adult genre is serious territory for serious authors; it is no coincidence that all of JRR Tolkien’s books can be found in our young adult section at the library.

“The Cure” (Random House Australia, 2014) is McConaghy’s first trilogy of books aimed at teenagers, offering readers a dark, fantastical journey to a totalitarian planet where human emotion has been officially silenced and rebellion against the ruling elite is rare.

The books of the second trilogy, “The Chronicles of Kaya” (Random House Australia, 2016)are named after their main protagonists, and each book (“Avery,” “Thorne,” and “Isadora”) depicts individual acts of courage in another bizarre and broken world. Critics have compared these novels to “The Hunger Games” (Scholastic Press, 2009) Series by Suzanne Collins.

September is packed with great One Read programs from the Daniel Boone Regional Library and other partners centered around the book “Migrations.” A list of these events can be found in the September/October program guide and online at http://www.dbrl.org/one-read.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Literary Links: Trek through the worlds of One Read Author Charlotte McConaghy