Lydia Netzer – författare

A New York Times Notable Book!"Over the moon with a metaphysical spin. Heart-tugging…it is struggling to understand the physical realities of life and the nature of what makes us human….Nicely unpredictable…Extraordinary." —Janet Maslin, The New York Times When Maxon met Sunny, he was seven years, four months, and eighteen-days old. Or, he was 2693 rotations of the earth old. Maxon was different. Sunny was different. They were different together.Now, twenty years later, they are married, and Sunny wants, more than anything, to be "normal." She''s got the housewife thing down perfectly, but Maxon, a genius engineer, is on a NASA mission to the moon, programming robots for a new colony. Once they were two outcasts who found unlikely love in each other: a wondrous, strange relationship formed from urgent desire for connection. But now they''re parents to an autistic son. And Sunny is pregnant again. And her mother is dying in the hospital. Their marriage is on the brink of imploding, and they''re at each other''s throats with blame and fear. What exactly has gone wrong?Sunny wishes Maxon would turn the rocket around and come straight-the-hell home.When an accident in space puts the mission in peril, everything Sunny and Maxon have built hangs in the balance. Dark secrets, long-forgotten murders, and a blond wig all come tumbling to the light. And nothing will ever be the same.…A debut of singular power and intelligence, Shine Shine Shine is a unique love story, an adventure between worlds, and a stunning novel of love, death, and what it means to be human. Shine Shine Shine is a New York Times Notable Book of 2012.

Beyond the skyline of Toledo stands the Toledo Institute of Astronomy, the nation''s premier center of astronomical discovery and a beacon of scientific learning for astronomers far and wide. One of these is George Dermont, a dreamer and a man of deep faith, who''s trying to prove the scientific existence of a Gateway to God, and speaks to ancient gods and believes they speak back. Its newest star is Irene Sparks, a pragmatist and mathematician invited to lead the Institute''s work on a massive superconductor being constructed below Toledo. This would be a scientist''s dream come true, but it''s particularly poignant for Irene who has been in self-imposed exile from Toledo and her estranged alcoholic mother, Bernice. When Bernice dies unexpectedly, Irene resolves to return to Toledo, and sets in motion a series of events which place George and Irene on a collision course with love, destiny and fate.George and Irene were born to be together. Literally. Their mothers, friends since childhood, hatched a plan to get pregnant together, raise the children together and then separate them so as to become each other''s soulmates as adults. Can true love exist if engineered from birth? Lydia Netzer''s How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky is a mind-bending, heart-shattering love story for dreamers and pragmatists alike, exploring the conflicts of fate and determinism, and asking how much of life is under our control and what is pre-ordained in the stars.

Jenna and Billy are in love. He''s an app developer, a hyper-plugged-in citizen of the internet, with a big Scottish family and winning smile. She is a yoga teacher, tuned in to the vibes of the spiritual universe, who was abandoned by her mother as an infant and orphaned by her father''s recent death. When they meet, it''s electric, and it is no time before they are married and eager to start their own family. But when they can''t get pregnant, Billy devises a plan: they would raise funds for their in vitro fertilization on Kickstarter, offering donor perks like cutting the cord, naming the baby, and catching the baby when it takes its first steps. The good news is that they make their fundraising goal, get pregnant and have a baby! The bad news is that their marriage begins to fall apart when they have to deliver on all those perks. It''s hard enough to survive delivering a baby without a performance artist making a documentary of the cord cutting. It''s difficult enough to get baby to sit up and smile for a six month portrait without a local politician taking up half the lens. What does it mean to be owned by the internet? Lydia Netzer''s Everybody''s Baby explores how relationships grow and fail in public and private life, the hazards of living "in the cloud," and the nature of love online and off.