Expiration Day is an insightful coming-of-age novel set in the near future by debut author William Campbell Powell.
It is the year 2049, and humanity is on the brink of extinction.
Tania Deeley has always been told that she’s a rarity: a human child in a world where most children are sophisticated androids manufactured by Oxted Corporation. When a decline in global fertility ensued, it was the creation of these near-perfect human copies called teknoids that helped to prevent the utter collapse of society.
Though she has always been aware of the existence of teknoids, it is not until her first day at the Lady Maud High School for Girls that Tania realizes that her best friend, Siân, may be one. Returning home from the summer holiday, she is shocked by how much Siân has changed. Is it possible that these changes were engineered by Oxted? And if Siân could be a teknoid, how many others in Tania’s life are not real?
Driven by the need to understand what sets teknoids apart from their human counterparts, Tania begins to seek answers. But time is running out. For everyone knows that on their eighteenth “birthdays,” teknoids must be returned to Oxted—never to be heard from again.
Told in diary format, Expiration Day is the powerful and poignant story of a young girl coming of age and discovering what it means to be truly human.
Download and start listening now!
“In a marvelously touching performance, narrator Gabrielle de Cuir embodies the fragility, determination, and curiosity of a fourteen-year-old English schoolgirl…De Cuir makes every last word of this first-person story come alive with an adolescent’s hopes, doubts, and dreams. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
“A remarkable and heart-filled look at what it means to be human. If you’re not in tears by the last chapter, you’ve a hard heart indeed.”
— Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling author“An in-depth exploration into a dystopian society and what it truly means to be human, with many universal teen themes as well: music, romance, body image, family issues…Fans of sci-fi and dystopian fiction will appreciate this tale.”
— School Library Journal“Through the diary of Tania Deeley, Powell has created a terrifyingly plausible future…and detailed worldbuilding with an unpredictably optimistic conclusion.”
— Kirkus Reviews“This dystopic future is a memorable one…While sci-fi buffs might be the likeliest audience, an extra push to realistic fiction fans may have them contemplating the ways in which Tania comes of age and how little it differs from what they are themselves experiencing.”
— Bulletin of the Center for Children’s BooksBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
William Campbell Powell was born in Sheffield, England, and grew up in and around Birmingham. He attended King Edward’s School in Birmingham and won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge, where initially he studied Natural Sciences and subsequently majored in Computer Science. He now lives in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, with his wife, Avis, and his two teenage sons. Expiration Day is his first novel.
Gabrielle de Cuir, award-winning narrator, has narrated over three hundred titles and specializes in fantasy, humor, and titles requiring extensive foreign language and accent skills. She was a cowinner of the Audie Award for best narration in 2011 and a three-time finalist for the Audie and has garnered six AudioFile Earphones Awards. Her “velvet touch” as an actor’s director has earned her a special place in the audiobook world as the foremost producer for bestselling authors and celebrities.