When you pick up a book by Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, you know you’re in for one hell of a ride – and so it proves with his latest offering, Shock Induction, which more than lives up to its title. If his most famous work is centred on establishing rules, then his newest is all about breaking them. 

Set in an American high school where the most gifted students keep dying at their own hand, the audacious novel sets out to uncover a nationwide conspiracy orchestrated by a sinister corporation known as Greener Pastures. Are they harvesting the academically bright to better humanity’s chances of survival, or to forcibly maintain the status quo? 

Our heroine throughout this darkly humorous, vividly rendered tale is Sam. A clever girl born into abject poverty and suffering from an addiction to opioids, she dreams of getting out; but when Greener Pastures offers her the chance to forge a new life, will the grass really prove more verdant on the other side? An engaging, surprising story that takes a mischievous delight in wrongfooting its readers, Shock Induction is a wholly unique experience and a welcome shot in the arm for the dystopian genre.