journey

2026 Independent Press Award—Distinguished Favorite Audiobook

Four teenagers and a feral cat navigate life in Gorbachev’s USSR, in this tragicomedy set against a backdrop of civilizations in decline. The Girl in the Water has launched the award-winning series Next Year’s Snow, a multigenerational saga about innocence, survival, oppression, and choice at the flashpoints of a madly fractured world.

At the centre of this debut is Nadia, a Soviet girl who witnesses her friend’s near-drowning on a remote northern beach. Nadia is an abstract thinker coming to terms with the harsh realities around her. She is a bookworm, a prankster, a wanderer, and a note-taker. She sees people gambling with life and soul for little apparent gain and wonders what she can do to make a difference. Progressively, her life is pulled apart by her family’s migration to Ukraine, a dubious courtship, the Chernobyl disaster, police surveillance, and an Afghan war.

As Nadia comes of age, she finds that the bonds of family and friendship create an inseparable fate: to rescue one another or to drown.

Featured Titles

Shop Genres

Special Features

PRE-ORDER Next Year’s Snow, Book 2: The Circus and the Atom

Next Year’s Snow, Book 1: The Girl in the Water