The Wolves of Winter

By: Tyrell Johnson

Narrated by: Jayme Mattler

Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

Lynn McBride's guide to surviving in the Yukon:

Step One. Forget about life in Alaska. Don't think about microwaves, pizza, chocolate, movies, summer, the flu pandemic, or your dad - his sunken eyes, frail knuckles. That world's gone. Move on. You're a survivor.

Step Two. Learn to hunt, gut, clean, and cook animals without ralfing.

Step Three. Learn to live with the cold, the uncomfortable cabins, and the snow, snow, and more snow.

Step Four. Protect what's left of your family. Even if it means travelling with a stranger into the frozen north to help find and kill a man you know nothing about.

Step Five. Trust no-one.

Narrated by Lynn, a 23-year-old who was 12 when war and flu struck and she, her uncle, her mother and her brother left their town in Alaska for the remote Yukon territory. Since then she's grown up in isolation, a surly neighbour three miles away the only human contact outside her family.

When she runs into a stranger and his dog while out hunting one day everything changes. Jax stays with them while recovering from an injury and when, a week later, a group of four men show up looking for him he kills three of them and runs off to catch the fourth before he can bring more men back.

Lynn and her uncle Jeryl go with him, and Jax explains that they are bad men who want to run experiments on him because of his superhuman strength. Their eventual confrontation with the group of men changes their small family outpost forever.

©2018 Tyrell Johnson (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

‘Lynn is an intriguing heroine in a compelling environment. When the novel sends her off into the wilderness, it sings…’ Sci-Fi Now

‘With elements of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and TV's ‘The Walking Dead,’ the book gets off to a gripping start, blending visceral thrills with existential reflections….A stylishly written debut by a novelist to keep an eye on…..’ Kirkus Reviews

‘An exciting, fast-paced tale…Johnson is an excellent storyteller; the novel is full of action, suspense, and plot twists as the resilient characters fight for survival in a harsh winter wilderness.’ Publishers Weekly

‘If Jack London had written a post-apocalyptic, coming-of-age thriller, it might read something like this. Curl up with The Wolves of Winter by a warm fire, and set aside a day, because this is great, absorbing fiction, with one of the most appealing protagonists I’ve ever encountered. It deserves the widest possible audience.’ Blake Crouch, author of the New York Times bestselling Dark Matter and the internationally bestselling Wayward Pines Trilogy

‘This is fiction at its best: a gripping plot, imagery that arrests and illuminates, and characters that will haunt you well beyond the closing of the book…’Jill Alexander Essbaum, New York Times bestselling author of Hausfrau

‘I read The Wolves of Winter in one sitting because I couldn't stand to put it down. Gripping, fierce, and a sobering ‘what if’ for our unsure times, this fast-moving debut allies a Katniss Everdeen with a Jason Bourne, lands them in a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter, sets some serious bad guys on their tails, and never lets up.’ Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet and June

‘With The Wolves of Winter, Johnson has created a stark, brutal and all too believable new world.…A brilliant book, I loved it.’ Beth Lewis, author of The Wolf Road