The first novel in Justin Cronin’s series, The Passage, generated a bidding war among publishers and became an instant bestseller. Film rights were snapped up reportedly for seven figures, and an apocalypse trilogy was born. Author Jennifer Egan hailed it as “a wildly headlong, sweeping extravaganza of a novel. . . . a bona fide thriller that is sharply written, deeply human, ablaze with big ideas, and absolutely impossible to put down.” The first two novels in the series, The Passage and The Twelve, depict the fall of civilization and humanity’s desperate fight to survive.
At last, this bestselling series races to its breathtaking finale with City of Mirrors (to be released May 24), which begins with quiet calm on the horizon and challenges the reader to determine if the silence indicates the nightmare’s end or the second coming of unspeakable darkness. Cronin has said that the themes in the series are the same that engage him as a person and a writer—love, sacrifice, friendship, loyalty, and courage. He delves into the bonds between people, especially parents and children, while examining the pull of history, and the power of place and landscape to shape experience.
Cronin has won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Stephen Crane Prize, and the Whiting Writer’s Award, and received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Cronin earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is now a Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Rice University.