Today’s the day the lights go out.  Justin Cronin’s much-awaited summer blockbuster THE PASSAGE finally goes on sale.  The reviews have been rolling in and we can’t be more thrilled, because we’ve been singing its praises for some time now.

TIME said “The Passage can stand proudly next to Stephen King’s apocalyptic masterpiece The Stand, but a closer match would be Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: a story about human beings trying to generate new hope in a world from which all hope has long since been burnt.” Read the full article HERE.

 “Cronin has given us what could be the best book of the summer.” -USA Today

Unshelved is running a fun Twitter contest and featured THE PASSAGE as their Book Club strip last week.

We even had a fabulous review from one of our faithful blog readers, The Boston Bibliophile.

So, we hope you are convinced that it is a book not to be missed.  We want to encourage you to enter the Unshelved Twitter contest, so we’ll add a little extra incentive.  Post your tweet entry in our comment section also, and we’ll choose an additional 3 winners who will receive an autographed copy of THE PASSAGE.

What exactly is going on this video? We found it at the Find Subject Zero website. Someone there posted the video with this cryptic message: “We’ll show you what the media won’t. We have recovered video footage from Colorado. The danger is real.”

Every once in a while, a book comes along that stands out from the pack early on.  RH staff reads early ebook galleys and soon everyone is buzzing about the same title. It has been some time since I remember so many in-house people LOVING the same book–3 of us in the Library Marketing Dept alone! Dare I say it?  It was perhaps The DaVinci Code and we all know what ended up happening there, so don’t say I’m not giving you a heads up here.

You may recognize Justin Cronin’s name, he was the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for his radiant novel in stories, Mary and O’Neil.  His next novel, The Summer Guest was also lauded.  Cronin has decided to go down a different path with his next novel The Passage.  I loved The Summer Guest, but it was a literary novel where the action took a back seat.  Not so here.  The Passage is adrenalin-filled, twisty, suspense-packed, and rich in characters–and did I mention?–the writing is absolutely amazing. 

I’m afraid to tell you too much about the plot, because it is tough to explain with any brevity, but an anecdote related to us at our marketing meeting sets it up nicely.  Supposedly, the award-winning author asked his young daughter what it would take for her to read one of his novels.  She thought for a moment and finally replied that it would have to be about a little girl who saves the world.  From that germ of an idea was born this epic, post-apocalyptic story of humankind struggling to survive. 

The fact that is an amazing book, makes it a GOOD thing that the novel is more than 1000 pages AND the first in a trilogy.  I honestly did not want it to end.  It is the kind of book that you want to just force on people to read (oh come on, you know you’ve done it) and since I’m pretty much done with my co-workers (except for Dave Eicke who still needs to read it!!), friends and family, I’m moving on to you, faithful blog readers.  I have some excerpt booklets available and will send them out to anyone who leaves a comment, while supplies last. 

I’ll have galleys to give away at ALA Midwinter, but wouldn’t it be cool to get a sneak peek now?  That way you’ll be In The Know before you arrive in Boston this January.  I’m telling you: this is going to be BIG.

Jen