{"product_id":"world-of-trouble-isbn-9781594746857","title":"World of Trouble","description":"\u003cb\u003e“A genre-defying blend of crime writing and science fiction.”—Alexandra Alter, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe explosive final installment in the Edgar® Award winning Last Policeman series. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith the doomsday asteroid looming, Detective Hank Palace has found sanctuary in the woods of New England, secure in a well-stocked safe house with other onetime members of the Concord police force. But with time ticking away before the asteroid makes landfall, Hank’s safety is only relative, and his only relative—his sister Nico—isn’t safe. Soon, it’s clear that there’s more than one earth-shattering revelation on the horizon, and it’s up to Hank to solve the puzzle before time runs out...for everyone.\u003cb\u003eNominated for the 2015 Edgar® Award for Best Paperback Original\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It’s funny, it’s thrilling, it’s crazy, it’s interesting.”—Jenna Bush Hager, \u003ci\u003eTODAY with Hoda \u0026amp; Jenna\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Stubborn, earnest, self-deprecating and decent, [Winters’s] protagonist, Hank Palace, is a brilliantly realized character you want to follow to the very end—and beyond.”—\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Winters, a major talent, gives us the best realized world on the verge of annihilation that this reviewer has seen since Cormac McCarthy.”—\u003ci\u003eSci Fi Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Winters’ style is a slow burn....His cadence is a steady beat rather than a roller coaster, and his words sparing and simple. They will stay with you.” —William O’Connor, \u003ci\u003eThe Daily Beast\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Riveting entertainment.”—\u003ci\u003eThe A.V. Club\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eWorld of Trouble\u003c\/i\u003e is a page turner, a book that is riveting and humane, suspenseful rather than frenetic, and moving rather than depressing; and the key to it all is our guide through this crumbling world. Palace is a brilliant creation, the perfect hero for our eschatological age.”—\u003ci\u003eTor.com\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“More than a shining example of how to write about the apocalypse—it’s one of the most well-written mysteries of any era...\u003ci\u003eWorld of Trouble\u003c\/i\u003e is a book you don’t want to miss.”—\u003ci\u003ePaste\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“That Winters can paint for us a world that is so bared-boned, raw and honest is why this is one of the best books of the year so far.”—\u003ci\u003eCleveland Plain Dealer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eWorld of Trouble\u003c\/i\u003e demonstrates a greater confidence in the storytelling, richer supporting characters, and an ending that I wanted to both race toward and hold off as long as possible.”—\u003ci\u003eIndianapolis Business Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eCountdown City\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“I always appreciate novels that have new and interesting approaches to traditional genres, and Ben H. Winters’ two novels featuring Hank Palace fill the bill.”—\u003ci\u003eNancy Pearl\u003c\/i\u003e, NPR\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Winters is brilliant in conveying the ways in which people look for their best impulses but often end up as the victims of other people’s most base instincts.”—\u003ci\u003eToronto Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Don’t miss this series!”—\u003ci\u003eSci Fi Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Winters is a deft storyteller who moves his novel effortlessly from its intriguing setup to a thrilling, shattering conclusion.”—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Last Policeman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2013 Edgar® Award Winner for Best Paperback Original\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne of \u003ci\u003eSlate’s\u003c\/i\u003e Best Books of 2012\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"[The] weird, beautiful, unapologetically apocalyptic Last Policeman trilogy is one of my favorite mystery series.\"—John Green, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Fault in Our Stars\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ePaper Towns\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Winters’s apocalyptic detective story contains an earth-shattering element of science fiction that lifts it beyond a typical procedural.”\u003ci\u003e—New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“An appealing hybrid of the best of science fiction and crime fiction.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In his acclaimed \u003ci\u003eLast Policeman\u003c\/i\u003e trilogy, Winters showed off his mastery of edgy, sardonic wit — there’s nothing like an asteroid speeding toward Earth to bring out the black humor in people.”—\u003ci\u003eNewsday\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eBen H. Winters\u003c\/b\u003e is the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e best-selling, Edgar Award–winning, and Philip K. Dick Award–winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Quiet Boy, Golden State, Underground Airlines\u003c\/i\u003e, the Last Policeman trilogy, and the mash-up novel \u003ci\u003eSense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters\u003c\/i\u003e. Ben has also worked extensively in television; he was a writer on the FX cult hit \u003ci\u003eLegion\u003c\/i\u003e as well as \u003ci\u003eManhunt \u003c\/i\u003eon Apple TV+, and he is the creator of the CBS drama \u003ci\u003eTracker.\u003c\/i\u003e He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, three kids, and one large dog.“Are you here about the dust? Please tell me you’re here to do something about the dust.”\u003cbr\u003e     I don’t answer. I don’t know what to say.\u003cbr\u003e     The girl’s voice is throaty and ill, her eyes looking out over a nose-and-mouth mask, staring hopeful and crazed at me as I stand baffled on her doorstep. Beautiful blonde, hair swept back out of her face, dirty and exhausted like everybody, panicked like everybody. But there’s something else going on here, something not healthy. Something biochemical in her eyes.\u003cbr\u003e     “Well, come in,” she says through her allergy mask. “Come on, come in, close the door, the door.”\u003cbr\u003e     I step inside and she kicks the door shut and whirls around to face me. Yellow sundress, faded and tattered at the hem. Starved-looking, sallow, pale. Wearing not just the allergy mask but thick yellow latex gloves. And she’s armed to the teeth is the other thing, she’s holding two semiautomatics and has a smaller gun tucked in her boot, plus some kind of heavy-duty hunting knife in a calf sheath at the hem of the sundress. And I can’t tell if it’s live or not, but there is unquestionably a grenade dangling from a braided belt at her waist.\u003cbr\u003e     “Do you see the \u003ci\u003edust\u003c\/i\u003e?” she says, gesturing with the guns, pointing into the corners. “You see how we’ve got a serious problem with the dust?”\u003cbr\u003e     It’s true that there are motes hovering in the sunbeams, along with the garbage scattered on the floor, heaps of dirty clothing and open trunks spilling over with all manner of useless things, magazines and electrical cords and wadded-up dollar bills. But she’s seeing more than what’s here, I can tell, she’s in the outer reaches, she’s blinking furiously, coughing behind her mask.\u003cbr\u003e     I wish I could recall this girl’s name. That would help a lot, if I could just remember her name.\u003cbr\u003e     “What do we do about this?” she says, rattling out words. “Do you just vacuum it, or—? Is that it—do you just suck it up and take it out of here? Does that work with cosmic dust?”\u003cbr\u003e      “Cosmic dust,” I say. “Huh. Well, you know, I’m not sure.”\u003cbr\u003e     This is my first trip to Concord, New Hampshire, since I fled a month ago, since my house burned down, along with much of the rest of the city. The chaos of those final frantic hours has died down to a grim and mournful silence. We’re a few blocks from downtown, in the abandoned husk of a store on Wilson Street, but there are no jostling anxious crowds outside, no frightened people rushing and pushing past each other in the streets. No klaxon howl of car alarms, no distant gunfire. The people are hidden now, those that remain, hidden under blankets or in basements, encased in their dread.\u003cbr\u003e     And the girl, disintegrating, raving about imaginary dust from outer space. We’ve met once before, right here at this same small shop, which was once a used-clothing store called Next Time Around. She wasn’t like this then, hadn’t fallen prey to it. Other people are sick in the same way, of course, to varying degrees, different kinds of symptomatology; if the \u003ci\u003eDSM-IV\u003c\/i\u003e were still being updated and applied, this new illness would be added in red. A debilitating obsession with the gigantic asteroid on a collision course with our fragile planet. \u003ci\u003eAstromania\u003c\/i\u003e, perhaps. \u003ci\u003eDelusional interstellar psychosis\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e     I feel like if I could only call her by her name, remind her that we have a relationship, that we’re both human beings, it would ease her unsettled mind and make me less of a threat. Then we could talk calmly.\u003cbr\u003e     “It’s toxic, you know,” she’s saying. “Really, really bad. The cosmic dust is real, real bad on your lungs. The photons burn your lungs.”\u003cbr\u003e     “Listen,” I say, and she makes a panicked gasp and rushes toward me, her assorted armaments jangling.\u003cbr\u003e     “Keep your\u003ci\u003e tongue \u003c\/i\u003ein your \u003ci\u003emouth\u003c\/i\u003e,” she hisses. “Don’t \u003ci\u003etaste\u003c\/i\u003e it.”\u003cbr\u003e     “Okay. I’ll try. I won’t.”\u003cbr\u003e     I keep my hands at my sides, where she can see them, keep my expression neutral, soft as cake. “I’m actually here for some information.”\u003cbr\u003e     “Information?” Her brows knit with confusion. She peers at me through clouds of invisible dust.\u003cbr\u003e     It’s not her I’m here to talk to, anyway; it’s her friend I need. Boyfriend, maybe. Whatever he is. That’s the guy who knows where I need to go next. I hope he does, anyway. I’m counting on it.\u003cbr\u003e     “I need to speak to Jordan. Is Jordan here?”\u003cbr\u003e     Suddenly the girl finds focus, snaps to attention, and the pistols come up. “Did he—did he send you?”\u003cbr\u003e     “No.” I raise my hands. “No.”\u003cbr\u003e     “Oh my God, he sent you. Are you with him? Is he in space?” She’s shouting, advancing across the room, the barrels of the semiautomatics aimed at my face like twin black holes. “Is he doing this?”\u003cbr\u003e     I turn my head to the wall, scared to die, even now, even today.\u003cbr\u003e     “Is he doing this to me?”\u003cbr\u003e     And then—somehow—miraculously—the name.\u003cbr\u003e     “Abigail.”\u003cbr\u003e     Her eyes soften, widen slightly.\u003cbr\u003e     “Abigail,” I say. “Can I help you? Can we help each other?”\u003cbr\u003e     She gapes at me. Heavy silence. Moments flying past, time burning away.\u003cbr\u003e     “Abigail, \u003ci\u003eplease\u003c\/i\u003e.”","brand":"Quirk Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301909254373,"sku":"NP9781594746857","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781594746857.jpg?v=1767744560","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/world-of-trouble-isbn-9781594746857","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}