It took three weeks to destroy civilisation. It won’t be rebuilt in a day. A year after the outbreak, a sharp winter is followed by a sudden thaw. Spring has come early to Nova Scotia, bringing new hope. For the thirteen thousand survivors who’ve found sanctuary in northern Canada, and for the first time since the apocalypse, extinction isn’t imminent. But it looms large in the near future, a legacy of the nuclear war that destroyed civilisation. As the weather improves, some survivors quit the small community. Even more plan their departure. The old-world supplies of food, oil, and ammunition have been consumed. More will have to be grown, drilled, and made. Medicine, paper, clothes: in a few years there will be none left to salvage. If it can’t be manufactured, it will have to be forgone. What knowledge can’t be preserved will be lost. Humanity’s future appears bleak unless more people can be found. Hoping there is some truth in the rumours of a redoubt in Vancouver, an expedition to the Pacific is launched. The journey will be perilous as North America was ground zero for the outbreak, and for the nuclear war. Set in Canada and beyond, as survivors from the Atlantic and Pacific meet. Please note: this book features places and events, and heroes and villains from Life Goes On Books 1-3, the saga of survivors in the Pacific.
It took three weeks to destroy civilisation. It won't be rebuilt in a day. A year after the outbreak, a sharp winter is followed by a sudden thaw. Spring has come early to Nova Scotia, bringing new hope. For the thirteen thousand survivors who've found sanctuary in northern Canada, and for the first time since the apocalypse, extinction isn't imminent. But it looms large in the near future, a legacy of the nuclear war that destroyed civilisation.As the weather improves, some survivors quit the small community. Even more plan their departure. The old-world supplies of food, oil, and ammunition have been consumed. More will have to be grown, drilled, and made. Medicine, paper, clothes: in a few years there will be none left to salvage. If it can't be manufactured, it will have to be forgone. What knowledge can't be preserved will be lost.Humanity's future appears bleak unless more people can be found. Hoping there is some truth in the rumours of a redoubt in Vancouver, an expedition to the Pacific is launched. The journey will be perilous as North America was ground zero for the outbreak, and for the nuclear war.Set in Canada and beyond, as survivors from the Atlantic and Pacific meet.Please note, this book features places and events, and heroes and villains from the saga of the Pacific survivors told in the series Life Goes On.
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Nova Scotia has been abandoned. New York has fallen. The war for the Americas has begun. Bill Wright’s final evacuation is underway. A route to the bastions in the Pacific Northwest has been mapped out. Supply dumps have been created, and the first batch of evacuees have already departed. For those still waiting to leave, there’s little to do and less to eat, so it was inevitable that some might turn to theft and murder. With spies discovered in their midst, and another attack by the Atlantic pirates imminent, it will take all of Bill’s cunning to prevent this evacuation from becoming a rout. After the outbreak, most people either hid in their homes or fled towards safety. Maggs and Etienne opted to go to work. For over thirty years, they’d helped keep the electricity flowing in northern Quebec. As long as the power remained on, there was a chance the stay-at-home order could be obeyed and the outbreak stopped. The nuclear exchange ended that hope. In the chaos that followed, they were separated, but even as she fled, Maggs left a letter for husband, saying where she’d gone. Childhood is already a distant memory for Jay. Between helping run the orphanage and the attached chicken farm, he barely has time to sleep, let alone dream. When he does get a few hours free, he spends them scavenging among the ruins. On one such looting expedition, he and Heppy find a year-old letter left by Maggs for her missing husband. Though the chance of finding either of the missing couple is slim, both Jay and Heppy have buried too many not to feel compelled to search for them. Everyone deserves a chance to join the evacuation and to survive.
A murderer stalks the post-apocalyptic ruins of the Pacific Northwest. A year after the outbreak and nuclear war, very few in the Northern Hemisphere have survived. Fourteen thousand Europeans and Canadians found safety behind the great defensive walls built across Nova Scotia. When they are attacked by piratical bandits who now control the ruins of New York, they have no choice but to flee. Where the evacuation of Britain was a bloodbath, the Southern Pacific fared better. Survivors thrive in fortified enclaves in Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Thousands of Canadian refugees found a new home in Australia’s Northern Territory, albeit living in hastily built shanty towns where water is scarce and crime is rife. Now they want to return home. While Bill Wright organises the evacuation of Nova Scotia, Kim and Sholto remain in the Pacific Northwest, searching for a new home. Their plans are upended when a plane arrives carrying pilgrims travelling onward to the Middle East, a claimant for the presidency of the old United States, and a killer in disguise. After an assassination attempt on the pilgrims’ leadership, surveying British Columbia and Washington State is put on hold as the search for the killers begins. Finding the shot-caller behind the attack is the responsibility of Commissioner Tess Qwong, whose hunt takes her from crocodile-filled rivers of Australia’s Northern Territory to the densely packed refugee camp the exiled Canadians call home. Set among the radioactive desolation of British Columbia, the undead-filled ruins of Washington State, and the exiled Canadians’ capital in Australia’s Northern Territory, Bill and Kim’s dreams of creating a new and better world are fading, while the prospect of war only grows stronger.
The final evacuation begins. A year and a half after the collapse of civilisation, pirates plague the Atlantic, the Saint Lawrence River is a radioactive dead-zone, and the forests of Quebec are succumbing to disease. With insufficient supplies to last until autumn, the survivors in Eastern Canada have no choice but to flee. A final evacuation is planned, to migrate across the breadth of irradiated North America to what they hope will be permanent safety on the Pacific coast. Until they leave, life goes on, and children grow up. For Jay, that means getting a job. Apprenticed to old George Tull, he’s tasked with scouting the Digby Peninsula for roadworthy vehicles left behind during the first evacuation of Canada. Instead, he finds signs that an old foe has returned. For the Canadian evacuation not to become a deadly tragedy like its British forebear, safe roads and intact bridges must be found. Tuck and Sorcha join the soldiers mapping the tracks and trails through the dying forests of Quebec. It should be a straightforward mission, but the starving bears and predatory wolves are not as great a danger as the desperate survivors who wish to be forgotten by the world. With increasing desertification on land, and rising toxicity in the oceans, it is unclear for how much longer the planet can sustain life. With imminent annihilation a real possibility, the more populous group of survivors in the Pacific plan a multi-faith expedition to Jerusalem and Mecca. For the devout, it is an opportunity to complete a pilgrimage. For the politicians, it is a chance to diminish the power of the ascendant crusaders, extremists, and death cults. For a few, it is an opportunity to hunt for the friends and family abandoned during the escape from Europe.
Fourteen months after the outbreak, thirteen months after the nuclear war, the old world is gone, but a new world is emerging. The evacuation of Britain failed, but other evacuations were a success. In Canberra, a new civilisation is being born, but in Canada, the survivors bid a last and final farewell to the Atlantic. While a final evacuation of Nova Scotia is planned, the search for lost communities begins. The journey takes Bill and Kim to the very end of the Earth, and to a meeting with familiar strangers. Crossing the border, Sholto endures a bittersweet return to the country he’d embraced so many decades ago. The United States he remembered is gone, and yet he can see its shadow among the burned ruins and desolate towns of the American Northeast. But the rains soon turn to a flood that washes away the few bridges not destroyed during the failed quarantine. With no other escape from the deluge, they take to the river. On the Hudson, they sail into the middle of a civil war. When they learn one faction is led by the last surviving member of the political conspiracy that spawned the apocalypse, it is obvious which side to take. Set among the thawing wilderness of Quebec and Ontario, the swollen rivers and flooded roads of New York, and in the courtrooms of Canberra, this novel includes characters and events from the five-part Pacific-based series Life Goes On.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. Appearing in paperback for the first time—with twenty arresting new photos and an extensive Q&A with the author—Unbroken is an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit, brought vividly to life by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand. Hailed as the top nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and the Indies Choice Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year award “Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring.”—New York “Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take your eyes off the page.”—People “A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life.”—The Washington Post “Ambitious and powerful . . . a startling narrative and an inspirational book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . incredible . . . [Hillenbrand] has crafted another masterful blend of sports, history and overcoming terrific odds; this is biography taken to the nth degree, a chronicle of a remarkable life lived through extraordinary times.”—The Dallas Morning News “An astonishing testament to the superhuman power of tenacity.”—Entertainment Weekly “A tale of triumph and redemption . . . astonishingly detailed.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “[A] masterfully told true story . . . nothing less than a marvel.”—Washingtonian “[Hillenbrand tells this] story with cool elegance but at a thrilling sprinter’s pace.”—Time “Hillenbrand [is] one of our best writers of narrative history. You don’t have to be a sports fan or a war-history buff to devour this book—you just have to love great storytelling.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Zombies. The outbreak began in New York. Soon it had spread to the rest of the world. People were attacked, infected, and they died. Then they came back. No one is safe from the undead. As anarchy and civil war took grip across the globe, Britain was quarantined. The British press was nationalised. Martial law, curfews and rationing were implemented. It wasn't enough. An evacuation was planned. The inland towns and cities of the United Kingdom were to be evacuated to defensive enclaves being built around the coast, the Scottish Highlands, and in the Irish Republic. Bill Wright, a Westminster insider and an advisor to a future Prime Minister, broke his leg on the day of the outbreak. Unable to join the evacuation, he watched from his window as the streets filled with refugees. He watched as the streets emptied once more. He watched as they filled up again, this time with the undead. Then the power went out. He is trapped. He is alone. He is running out of food and water. He knows that to reach the safety of the enclaves he will have to venture out into the wasteland that once was England. On that journey he will ultimately discover the horrific truth about the outbreak, a decades old conspiracy, and his unwitting part in it. This is the first volume of his journal. (73,000 words)