The islands of Prospera lie in a vast ocean, in splendid isolation from the rest of humanity --- or whatever remains of it. Citizens of the main island enjoy privileged lives. They are attended to by support staff who live on a cramped neighboring island, where whispers of revolt are brewing. But for the Prosperans, life is perfection. And when the end of life approaches, they’re sent to a mysterious third island, where their bodies are refreshed, their memories are wiped away, and they return to start life anew. Proctor Bennett is a ferryman, whose job it is to enforce the retirement process when necessary. He never questions his work, until the day he receives a cryptic message: “The world is not the world.” These simple words unlock something he has secretly suspected. They give him the unshakable feeling that someone is trying to tell him something important.

The Twelve have been destroyed, and the terrifying hundred-year reign of darkness that descended upon the world has ended. The survivors are stepping outside their walls, determined to build society anew. But far from them, in a dead metropolis, he waits: Zero. The First. Father of the Twelve. The anguish that shattered his human life haunts him, and the hatred spawned by his transformation burns bright. His fury will be quenched only when he destroys Amy --- humanity’s only hope, the Girl from Nowhere who grew up to rise against him.

In the present day: As three strangers attempt to navigate the chaos cast upon civilization by a U.S. government experiment gone wrong, their destinies intertwine. A hundred years in the future: Amy, Peter, Alicia and the others introduced in THE PASSAGE hunt the original 12 virals, unaware that the rules of the game have changed and that one of them will have to sacrifice everything to bring the Twelve down.

With THE PASSAGE, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterful prose and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction.

During the long, hot summer of 1888, an extraordinary friendship blossoms between Anton Chekhov and Zinaida Lintvaryova, a young doctor. Recently blinded by illness, Zinaida has retreated to her family’s estate in the lush countryside of Eastern Ukraine, where she is keeping a diary to record her memories of her earlier life. But when the Chekhov family arrives to spend the summer at a dacha on the estate, and she meets the middle son Anton Pavlovich, her quiet existence is transformed by the connection they share. What begins as a journal kept simply to pass the time becomes an intimate, introspective narrative of Zinaida’s singular relationship with this doctor and writer of growing fame.