Failing antibiotics have shifted society online. As big tech companies begin to dominate life, the boundaries between real and virtual have blurred. At 14, Jess is attending school for the first time. Meeting other children and making real friends is something she's dreamed of for years. But Jess misses her family, especially her sister Chloe, who is in poor health.
With Chloe's sickness worsening and her medication getting more expensive, Jess turns to the digital world to fix things. She is a brilliant coder and programmer. Desperate to help her sister, Jess dives into classified territory and discovers explosive truths. Truths which reveal just how manipulated reality has become.
With her family's lives in the balance, Jess must defy everything she's been told to help them - before it's too late.
Praise for Ele Fountain -- :
[Melt is] a marvellously compulsive story. The unbelievable made believable. Now there's the test of a great story -- Michael Morpurgo
Fans of Ele Fountain, author of Boy 87 and Lost, will find plenty of white-knuckle drama in Melt ? Telegraph
Fountain writes with verisimilitude and verve ? Observer
Exceptional... vivid, convincing and empathetic... [Boy 87] grips us with the need to know how the heart-stopping events will turn out ? The Times
Shif is just an ordinary schoolboy who loves chess and playing with his best friend. But, one day, he is forced to leave home to avoid conscription into the army. He embarks on an epic journey, in which he encounters dangers and cruelties - and great acts of human kindness - as he bravely makes his way to a future he can only imagine.
