Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Returners | 2010 | Gemma Malley | Buy |
The Returners is a 2010 standalone novel by Gemma Malley that sits apart from her Declaration and Killables trilogies. The story centers on Will Hodge, a miserable London teenager whose mother is dead, whose father has drifted toward radical politics, and whose friends have pulled away. On top of everything, he is haunted by vivid nightmares about concentration camps and historical atrocities that feel far too real.
Will eventually learns that he is a Returner, one of a group of people who are reincarnated throughout history to witness and absorb the worst moments of human cruelty. The twist is that Will suspects he was not just a witness in his past lives but may have played a role in causing the horrors he remembers. Set against the backdrop of a near-future world sliding toward a new wave of ethnic violence, the novel asks big questions about free will, guilt, and whether people can break the patterns of their past.
The Returners is more philosophical and less action-driven than Malley’s trilogy work, but it shares the same interest in how societies justify cruelty and what it costs the individuals caught up in it. Readers who enjoyed the moral weight of The Declaration will find similar themes here, wrapped in a very different kind of story.