His book spares us heavy scenes of mass violence and rotting bodies, sticking instead to the stories of a few people trying to find their way through it all. But Koepp, a screenwriter (“Jurassic Park”) and novelist (“ Cold Storage”), focuses less on global problems than local responses. Society’s fabric quickly unravels, as it tends to do in stories that dance at the edges of apocalypse. (In a neat trick, the cataclysm barely touches the countries nearest to the Equator, which immediately offer humanitarian aid to the struggling nations of Europe and North America.) In AURORA (Harper, 292 pp., $27.99), David Koepp offers a new unpleasant scenario, a solar storm called a coronal mass ejection that summarily knocks out most of the world’s power. “The Agatha Christie of our generation” (David Baldacci, #1 New York Times bestselling author) proves once again that she is “as ingenious and indefatigable as the Queen of Crime” ( The Washington Post) with this propulsive murder mystery that will keep you on the edge of your seat.Nuclear Armageddon, killer viruses, massive tidal waves, alien attacks, apocalyptic space debris - there are so many ways it could go wrong for our battered little planet. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April’s death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide…including a murder. Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah’s world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent.

Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends-Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily-during their first term. Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the “claustrophobic spine-tingler” ( People) One by One returns with an unputdownable mystery following a woman on the search for answers a decade after her friend’s murder.Īpril Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford.

The It Girl by Ruth Ware