We’d like to launch or lunch time excerpt reading series with a sneak peak into the eagerly awaited follow-up to The Passage. So sit back, enjoy and spend the lunch break with Justin Cronin’s upcoming book The Twelve.
Excerpt:
76 Miles South of Roswell, New Mexico
On a warm September evening, many miles and weeks from home, Lieutenant Alicia Donadio—Alicia of Blades, the New Thing, daughter of the great Niles Coffee and scout-sniper of the Second Expeditionary Forces of the Army of the Republic of Texas, baptized and sworn—awakened to the taste of blood on the wind.
She was twenty-seven years old, five foot seven inches tall, solidly built in the shoulders and hips, red hair shorn close to her scalp. Her eyes, which had once been only blue, glowed with an orange hue, like twin coals. She traveled lightly, nothing wasted. Feet shod in sandals of cut canvas with treads of vulcanized rubber; denim trousers worn thin at the knees and seat; a cotton jersey with the sleeves cut away for speed. Crisscrossing her upper body she wore a pair of leather bandoliers with six steel blades ensheathed, her trademark; at her back, slung on a lanyard of sturdy hemp, her crossbow. A Browning .45 semiautomatic with a nine-shot magazine, her weapon of last resort, was holstered to her thigh.
Eight and one, was the saying. Eight for the virals, one for yourself. Eight and one and done.
The town was called Carlsbad. The years had done their work, sweeping it clean like a giant broom. But still some structures remained: empty husks of houses, rusted sheds, the becalmed and ruined evidence of time’s passage. She had spent the day resting in the shade of a filling station whose metal awning somehow still stood, awakening at dusk to hunt. She took the jack on her cross, one shot through the throat, then skinned and roasted it over a fire of mesquite, picking the stringy flesh from its haunches as the fire crackled beneath it.
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
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.
We’d like to launch or lunch time excerpt reading series with a sneak peak into the eagerly awaited follow-up to The Passage. So sit back, enjoy and spend the lunch break with Justin Cronin’s upcoming book The Twelve.
