The Last Murder at the End of the World

by Stuart Turton

There are so few humans left; they must be protected, and the village is the key to that. It must be safeguarded at any cost.

“Why doesn’t anybody question anything?” she asks her grandfather, focusing on him once again. “They like being happy,” he says simply. “I’m not trying to change that.” “Yet answers nearly always do,”

Love is simply a matter of what people need and what they lack. It’s two broken things fitting together for a time.

“You’re not human,” replies Thea. “You’re a product, Emory. Something Blackheath made and sold, like dishwashers and phones. Underneath that decorative flesh, you have more in common with these plants than me or Hephaestus.”

Humans are never more thrilling than when they’re under pressure like this. Electricity is crackling through her brain; epinephrine and cortisol are coursing through her bloodstream. It’s an incredible alchemy of sentience and biology—evolution at its freewheeling best.