The Passage: A Novel (Book One of The Passage Trilogy)

Front Cover
Random House Publishing Group, Jun 8, 2010 - Fiction - 784 pages
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This thrilling novel kicks off what Stephen King calls “a trilogy that will stand as one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction.”

NOW A FOX TV SERIES!

NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST HORROR BOOKS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Esquire • U.S. News & World Report • NPR/On Point • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • BookPage • Library Journal 

“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.” 

An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival, The Passage is the story of Amy—abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Brad Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape—but he can’t stop society’s collapse. And as Amy walks alone, across miles and decades, into a future dark with violence and despair, she is filled with the mysterious and terrifying knowledge that only she has the power to save the ruined world.

Look for the entire Passage trilogy:
THE PASSAGE | THE TWELVE | THE CITY OF MIRRORS

Praise for The Passage

“[A] blockbuster.”The New York Times Book Review

“Mythic storytelling.”San Francisco Chronicle

“Magnificent . . . Cronin has taken his literary gifts, and he has weaponized them. . . . 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.”Time

“The type of big, engrossing read that will have you leaving the lights on late into the night.”The Dallas Morning News

“Addictive.”Men’s Journal

“Cronin’s unguessable plot and appealing characters will seize your heart and mind.”Parade
 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
1
Section 2
3
Section 3
23
Section 4
209
Section 5
211
Section 6
228
Section 7
234
Section 8
247
Section 21
443
Section 22
477
Section 23
495
Section 24
497
Section 25
541
Section 26
543
Section 27
615
Section 28
638

Section 9
249
Section 10
261
Section 11
263
Section 12
267
Section 13
275
Section 14
350
Section 15
357
Section 16
359
Section 17
369
Section 18
425
Section 19
430
Section 20
441
Section 29
646
Section 30
677
Section 31
679
Section 32
692
Section 33
704
Section 34
726
Section 35
737
Section 36
763
Section 37
769
Section 38
771
Section 39
773
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2010)

Justin Cronin is the New York Times bestselling author of The Passage, The Twelve, The City of Mirrors, Mary and O’Neil (which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize), and The Summer Guest. Other honors for his writing include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Whiting Writers’ Award. A Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Rice University, he divides his time between Houston, Texas, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Bibliographic information