We are delighted to announce that Redland Green will be hosting Amara Sage on Tuesday 21st January as she introduced her new novel Girl, Ultra-Processed.

We are happy to offer a 15% discount on Girl, Ultra-Processed for pre-ordered copies. Please place your order by midnight on Thursday 16th January to ensure your book is signed. Orders placed after this date, may not be signed and may need to be picked up from our shop at 47 Henleaze Road.

To purchase the book 

• Add the book or books to your Cart - do not use the purple Buy with Shop Pay button
• Add the pupil's name and class via the Add A Note button on the Cart page (email us on info@maxminervas.co.ukif you are unable to do this)
• Complete your purchase
• Books purchased by 11.:59 on Thursday 16th January will be delivered to the school on the day of the event. Books purchased after this date may not be signed and will need be collected from our shop at 47 Henleaze Road.

If you are having any questions please email us at info@maxminervas.co.uk 

ABOUT THE BOOKS

Girl, Ultra-Processed

New year, new me! That's what Saffron Saldana tells herself as the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve. Her resolution is the same every year: lose weight.

Because Saffron has it hard-wired that weight loss equals happiness. It's what she's been told her whole life - online, in magazines, especially by her own diet-obsessed mother. But dietingis hard.

So to escape her own reality, Saffron creates Sydney, a super-slim, AI-generated 'perfect'version of herself. Boys online love Sydney, and for Saffron, it's just a bit of harmless fun. Until the boundaries of her life online and offline begin to blur .

. . And one boy in particular makes her question her desire to be someone she's not.

Can Saffron find a way back to herself, and learn to love who she actually is? Girl: Ultra-Processed explores what it is like to be a teenage girl in our current body-obsessed world while juggling family drama, friend dynamics, dating, betrayals and major life changes.

Influential

Almond Brown has no friends in real life but 3.5 million followers online. A heart-felt, whip-smart deep dive into what it would really be like to be internet famous at 17: a cautionary tale for our time from a writer who has grown up with social media. Almond is forced into the spotlight when she was just a perfectly filtered bump: her mum has been documenting their family through social media since before she was born.

And her family enjoy all the rewards that come from that level of influence. Only, it's not the life Almond would have chosen for herself, and being on a platform all the time has made her anxious and insecure. When the darkest side of the internet begins to haunt her, Almond feels like she's going to lose everything. If only she could see that she has a real-life, too, full of friends and family who love her, and that it could save her.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amara Sage writes contemporary, own-voice YA fiction that explores issues of body image, mental health, racial identity, and the impact that social media has on all of the above.

After completing her BA in Creative Writing, Amara went on to earn a distinction for her MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University, where she wrote the early drafts of her first novel.

She lives in her hometown of Bristol with her fiancé, Barney, and their two dog-sons, Albert and Desmond. She’s an avid yogi, a vegan home-cook, and practices sustainable living to the point of panic. Amara is also a slightly neglectful (but no less loving) plant mum.

Amara’s debut YA novel, INFLUENTIAL (Faber) is a heart-felt, whip-smart deep dive into what it would really be like to be internet famous at 17. The Observer included INFLUENTIAL in their “2023 in Books: Highlights for the Year Ahead” article, as one of only five Children & Teen titles recommended amongst their picks for best fiction and non-fiction to look forward to in 2023, which includes authors from Zadie Smith to Margaret Atwood. INFLUENTIAL was also nominated for the 2024 Branford Boase Award, celebrating the most talented debut authors for children and their editors.

Alongside the publication of INFLUENTIAL, Amara also wrote an article for Grazia UK on “Why I (Probably) Won’t Be Sharing Pictures of My Child Online”, exploring the realm of “family vloggers”. You can read Amara’s full article for Grazia online here.