Survive the Night

A Novel

By: Riley Sager

Narrated by: Savannah Gilmore

Length: 9 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

One of New York Times Book Review's "summer reads guaranteed to make your heart thump and your skin crawl"; An Amazon Best of the Month Pick; Named a must-read summer book by The Washington Post, USA Today, Vulture, BuzzFeed, Forbes, Entertainment Weekly, CNN, New York Post, Good Housekeeping, E!, PopSugar, CrimeReads, Thrillist, and BookRiot.

It’s November 1991. Nirvana's in the tape deck, George H. W. Bush is in the White House, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer.

Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it’s guilt and grief over the shocking murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. For Josh, it’s to help care for his sick father - or so he says.

The longer she sits in the passenger seat, the more Charlie notices there’s something suspicious about Josh, from the holes in his story about his father to how he doesn’t want her to see inside the trunk. As they travel an empty, twisty highway in the dead of night, an increasingly anxious Charlie begins to think she’s sharing a car with the Campus Killer. Is Josh truly dangerous? Or is Charlie’s jittery mistrust merely a figment of her movie-fueled imagination?

One thing is certain - Charlie has nowhere to run and no way to call for help. Trapped in a terrifying game of cat and mouse played out on pitch-black roads and in neon-lit parking lots, Charlie knows the only way to win is to survive the night.

©2021 Riley Sager (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"This tale almost reads as an allegory for the lofty demands set upon women, particularly during the young adult years, albeit with an R.L. Stine ‘Fear Street’ feel, mixed with Hitchcockian noir and all the top music numbers of the nineties.... And it wouldn’t be a Sager novel without an ode to films woven throughout, plus multiple twists along the way....The novel satisfies like a summer blockbuster, nearly demands you stay until the final scenes and the lights come up.” (USA Today)

“A fast-paced, twisty thriller.... A first-rate read.... But then, with four final pages, Sager reveals a final surprise that is stunning yet somehow feels exactly right.” (Associated Press)

“With every mile, the tension rises toward a deliciously unbearable pitch.” (Good Housekeeping)