I’m struck by the narrative elegance of a premise-based novel. Here’s the premise, now what happens? These stories succeed when the premise catches your attention and leads plausibly and compellingly to what the characters think, feel, and do next. Apocalyptic novels are premise-based (apocalypse!) but not all premise-based novels are apocalyptic, e.g., Elevation, Mystic River, and own Ghosts on the Red Line. My experience writing Ghosts on the Red Line has provided me with a good sense of how authors Perrotta, King, Lehane, Miller, and St. John Mandel went about building on their inspired premises to create their unforgettable stories.
Two percent of the population suddenly disappears. No one knows where they went or why, which doesn’t stop people from speculating. Building on this inspired premise, Tom Perrotta explores how the people who are left behind deal with their traumatic loss. Some join cults. Others try to hold things together. I was struck by how, in this masterful novel, even the survivors’ weirdest behaviors make a kind of sense given their situations and the culture that we share.
With heart, intelligence and a rare ability to illuminate the struggles inherent in ordinary lives, Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers—now adapted into an HBO series—is a startling, thought-provoking novel about love, connection and loss.
What if—whoosh, right now, with no explanation—a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down?
That's what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out.…
A famous actor dies on stage during a performance of King Lear, marking the arrival of a pandemic that kills more than 99% of the world’s population. The modern world collapses: No more electricity, Internet, cellphones, airplane flights, or any motorized transportation. How do the survivors cope? Some, including one of the actor’s ex-wives, his son, and his best friend, are trapped with a few dozen others in a small airport and learn to live together. Some journey on foot and in horse-drawn wagons to perform Shakespeare plays in small settlements along their route. Some join a cult, or revert to a feral existence living in the wild. A graphic novel written by the actor’s first ex-wife links each of the major characters. A powerful story that stayed with me long after I read its last page.
'Best novel. The big one . . . stands above all the others' - George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones
Now an HBO Max original TV series
The New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction National Book Awards Finalist PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.
One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in…
I read this apocalyptic novel many years ago, and found it as unforgettable as it was depressing. In the midst of death, disease, and anarchy after nuclear war destroys civilization, there remain small self-contained settlements that resemble monasteries in the middle ages. These settlements are the only pockets of knowledge in the devastated landscape. People who live in them struggle to understand formerly-common technologies, such as record players and other artifacts from the civilized world. One thing they do understand is that nuclear technology is dangerous and any development in this area is absolutely forbidden, under pain of death. But gradually, gradually, over centuries, the survivors learn, and eventually, the nuclear genie is once again summoned out of its bottle.
In the depths of the Utah desert, long after the Flame Deluge has scoured the earth clean, a monk of the Order of Saint Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: holy relics from the life of the great saint himself, including the blessed blueprint, the sacred shopping list, and the hallowed shrine of the Fallout Shelter.
In a terrifying age of darkness and decay, these artifacts could be the keys to mankind's salvation. But as the mystery at the core of this groundbreaking novel unfolds, it is the search itself—for meaning, for truth, for love—that offers hope for humanity's rebirth…
Elevation grabbed me from its starting premise until its last memorable scene. A flabby protagonist reveals to a doctor friend that his weight, as shown on his scale, is steadily dropping despite his unchanged appearance. In effect, he is less and less affected by gravity. Because his muscles have adapted to manage his large size, as his gravitational weight decreases he gains disproportionate agility and stamina, to the extent that he becomes a formidable marathon runner which amazes everyone who sees him. He develops close bonds with two women with whom he previously conflicted and they and his doctor friend help him to deal with his situation which becomes perilous as his weight approaches zero.
From legendary master storyteller Stephen King, a riveting story about “an ordinary man in an extraordinary condition rising above hatred” (The Washington Post) and bringing the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine together—a “joyful, uplifting” (Entertainment Weekly) tale about finding common ground despite deep-rooted differences, “the sign of a master elevating his own legendary game yet again” (USA TODAY).
Although Scott Carey doesn’t look any different, he’s been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are. Scott doesn’t want…
Beautifully written, I found this tragic story almost operatic in its intensity. A working-class girl in South Boston is murdered. Her violent ex-con father vows revenge. He focuses his suspicions on a former friend who was sexually molested as a boy and subsequently was shunned as damaged goods. Meanwhile another of the ex-con’s former boyhood friends, now a cop, races to solve the crime before the father takes justice into his own hands.
This New York Times bestseller from Dennis Lehane is a gripping, unnerving psychological thriller about the effects of a savage killing on three former friends in a tightly knit, blue-collar Boston neighborhood.
When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up to their street. One boy got into the car, two did not, and something terrible happened—something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever.
Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to…
Riders see their Departed on Boston's Red Line trains. As word spreads about the ghostly visitations, seekers crowd the Red Line, disrupting transit service. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority hires consultant Harry West to investigate. When Harry discovers the source of the visitations, the MBTA acts to put an end to them. Harry’s ex-wife Alexandra has a brilliant idea: Replicate in “Visitation Rooms” the ghost-welcoming attributes of Red Line train cars so people can continue to meet their loved ones. But the Archbishop of Boston condemns Visitation Rooms as sacrilegious and pushes to get them banned. And a notorious gangster frets that his victims might reappear in the Visitation Rooms, pointing accusatory fingers. He warns Harry and Alexandra: Drop the Visitation Room project, or else.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
