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  • Published: 27 August 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241555941
  • Imprint: Michael Joseph
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $45.00

Fight Me





A wry, affectionate and thrilling return to the world of the author’s critically acclaimed Soon I Will Be Invincible

Dr Rick Tower is a mild-mannered English professor easing into middle-age at a New England college. Even his vices are unremarkable. But it wasn’t always like this. Not until they changed his name, altered his looks and told him: ‘pretend you were never different’.

Because, decades earlier after a very bad day at high school, he was committed to a secret government facility with three other kids, Cat, Jack and Stephanie, each special in their own way. Tested, tutored and trained, this extraordinary quartet were then told to save the world.

It was the best thing that ever happened to them. Until it became the worst.

Now, twenty years later, a mysterious disappearance means Tower must reunite with his former comrades. But while great power come might come with great responsibility, there’s little of that on display from any of them.

Combining compelling storytelling and fierce imagination with a rich cast of characters, Fight Me is a page-turning and distinctive thriller, a unique tale of good, evil and one man trying to do the right thing. Against impossible odds …

  • Published: 27 August 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241555941
  • Imprint: Michael Joseph
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $45.00

Also by Austin Grossman

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Praise for Fight Me

A spiky, fierce, erudite riff on the wonderful world of silver age superheroes

Charles Stross, bestselling author of The Atrocity Archives

Hugely enjoyable. It kept me up till 3am

Conn Iggulden, Sunday Times bestselling author of Lion

The Avengers meets The Breakfast Club in this wry and engaging superhero drama

James Swallow, Sunday Times bestselling author of Nomad

A treasure that manages to be sad, funny, and hilariously fun at all once. A thrilling adventure but also a searing, intimate look at what it would really cost to have such incredible power, and yet still be human

Peng Shepherd, bestselling author of The Cartographers

Fight Me embraces the fun of the genre, while treating its battle-weary characters with heart and empathy. A noir-tinged Big Chill for the superhero set

Bob Proehl, author of The Nobody People

Grossman's novel of wealth, power, fraught loves and friendships flexes epic muscles beneath its superhero costume

D.B. Weiss, co-creator of Game of Thrones

A sucker-punch of sheer delight, and I couldn’t be happier to be on the receiving end

Adam Christopher, New York Times bestselling Author of Seven Wonders

There is a vibrancy to the writing, and a beating heart, reminiscent of my favourite coming-of-age novels

Nick Cutter, author of The Deep

Combining a coming-of-age story with costume thrills … it has sly, smart things to say

Herald

A superhero story unlike any I’ve read before … this is definitely worth checking out

Track of Words

Blending the lurid, anything-goes madness of Silver Age comic books with emotionally complicated characters and realistic consequences … where every argument or falling-out can potentially happen on a cosmic scale . . . but a melancholy tone gives its quieter moments a surprising impact

SFX

Truly exceptional … Fight Me is a wonderful, action-packed superhero sci-fi adventure . . . Funny, fierce and engaging, it’s an amazing journey through a strange world of very real humans (who are also superhuman)

The Bookbeard’s Blog

A gripping, often funny tale with an unusual twist . . . I would dearly love to see this adapted to the graphic novel form, but I highly recommend this in the meantime . . . It’s terrific

SF Crowsnest

For all the kapows and wisecracks, it is a strangely sweet and sentimental novel

Spectator
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