Justin Cronin Books In Order

The Passage Books In Publication Order

  1. The Passage (2010)
  2. The Twelve (2012)
  3. The City of Mirrors (2016)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Mary and O’Neil (2001)
  2. The Summer Guest (2004)

The Passage Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Justin Cronin Books Overview

The Passage

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

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear-of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.

As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he’s done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. He is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors. But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey-spanning miles and decades-towards the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun.

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.

Mary and O’Neil

A luminous work of fiction that celebrates the uncommon in common lives, and the redemptive power of love. Mary and O’Neil frequently marveled at how, of all the lives they might have led, they had somehow found this one together. When they met at the Philadelphia high school where they’d come to teach, each had suffered a profound loss that had not healed. How likely was it that they could learn to trust, much less love, again? In Justin Cronin’s tender, heartwise debut, eight stories trace the lives of these two vulnerable young people as they rediscover in each other a world alive with promise and hope. From the formative experiences of their early adulthood to marriage, parenthood, and beyond, each chapter illuminates the moments of grace that enable Mary and O’Neil to make peace with the deep emotional legacies that haunt them: the sudden, mysterious death of O’Neil’s parents, Mary’s long ago decision to end a pregnancy, O’Neil’s sister’s battle with illness and a troubled marriage. Like the work of Alice Hoffman, Cronin’s fiction resonates with magical nuance and unexpected encounters a beautiful young girl who appears to Mary one night, draped in a cloud of stars; an autistic child who reveals a life changing secret; a woman O’Neil mistakenly dials the night their first child is born that edify this young couple’s intimate bond and affirm their faith in the future.

The Summer Guest

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for his radiant novel in stories, Mary and O Neil, Justin Cronin has already been hailed as a writer of astonishing gifts. Now Cronin’s new novel, The Summer Guest, fulfills that promise and more. With a rare combination of emotional insight, narrative power, and lyrical grace, Cronin transforms the simple story of a dying man s last wish into a rich tapestry of family love.

On an evening in late summer, the great financier Harry Wainwright, nearing the end of his life, arrives at a rustic fishing camp in a remote area of Maine. He comes bearing two things: his wish for a day of fishing in a place that has brought him solace for thirty years, and an astonishing bequest that will forever change the lives of those around him.

From the battlefields of Italy to the turbulence of the Vietnam era, to the private battles of love and family, The Summer Guest reveals the full history of this final pilgrimage and its meaning for four people: Jordan Patterson, the haunted young man who will guide Harry on his last voyage out; the camp s owner Joe Crosby, a Vietnam draft evader who has spent a lifetime trying to learn what it means to be brave ; Joe s wife, Lucy, the woman Harry has loved for three decades; and Joe and Lucy s daughter Kate the spirited young woman who holds the key to the last unopened door to the past.

As their stories unfold, secrets are revealed, courage is tested, and the bonds of love are strengthened. And always center stage is the place itself a magical, forgotten corner of New England where the longings of the human heart are mirrored in the wild beauty of the landscape.

Intimate, powerful, and profound, The Summer Guest reveals Justin Cronin as a storyteller of unique and marvelous talent. It is a book to treasure.

From the Hardcover edition.

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