A damaged teenage tech prodigy meets an enigmatic waitress in a tiny Tokyo café , sparking an epic journey across Japan that will change everything, forever ? a captivating, masterful novel with an extraordinary mystery at its heart?

? Set against a tech heavy backdrop Beautiful Shining People blooms into an emotional and soulful tale that reckons with the isolation we can all feel as outsiders? SciFi Now Book of the Month

? That Beautiful Shining People isn? t just a slipstream novel with pretensions to being literature is in great part down to the deftness and tenderness with which Grothaus draws his central relationship ? to let us explore a world of robots and deepfakes that? s just unfamiliar enough to be exotic? SFX Magazine Book of the Month

? A fascinating exploration of what it means to be human in a world where everything can be faked ? wonderful, insightful and thoughtful? James Oswald

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This world is anything but ordinary, and it? s about to change forever?

It? s our world, but decades into the future?

An ordinary world, where cars drive themselves, drones glide across the sky, and robots work in burger shops. There are two superpowers and a digital Cold War, but all conflicts are safely oceans away. People get up, work, and have dinner. Everything is as it should be?

Except for seventeen-year-old John, a tech prodigy from a damaged family, who hides a deeply personal secret. But everything starts to change for him when he enters a tiny café on a cold Tokyo night. A café run by a disgraced sumo wrestler, where a peculiar dog with a spherical head lives, alongside its owner, enigmatic waitress Neotnia?

But Neotnia hides a secret of her own ? a secret that will turn John? s unhappy life upside down. A secret that will take them from the neon streets of Tokyo to Hiroshima? s tragic past to the snowy mountains of Nagano.

A secret that reveals that this world is anything ordinary ? and it? s about to change forever?

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? Poetically written, every word of this adventure leaps off the page with passion. A wonderful and enlightening trip? The Sun

? Cyberpunk meets bildungsroman ? a real joy? Oscar de Muriel

? Exquisite world-building, this book had me invested from the very first page. Vivid plot and irresistible characters and a real tug at the soul ? you'll drown in it? Lisa Bradley

? A life-affirming, epic book about what it is to be human: to live, to dream, to hope, to love ? at a time when we most need reminding of these things? David F Ross

? Totally engrossing from the start ? the story, characters and settings will linger in your imagination long after you're finished ? truly wonderful? Jonathan Whitelaw

? Masterful ? truly breathtaking and achingly beautiful. It builds anticipation and suspense before coming together in a thrilling, captivating conclusion? The Bookbag

? Outstanding! Sci-fi showing how the past might impact on the future ? a glimpse into a (very plausible) terrifying future? Michael J Malone
What readers are saying?

*****

? A beautiful, emotional and thought-provoking read?

? A striking and strange novel ? and a searing statement about the dangerously thin lines between utopia and dystopia?

? Just devastatingly beautiful?

? My book of the year ? no question?

? Masterful storytelling?

? Grothaus has a bewitching ability to stop time in a moment, and then run seemlessly into action with unstoppable momentum?

? Succinctly captured the feeling of Japanese fiction. I was very much put in mind of Haruki Murakami or Toshikazu Kawaguchi?