Product Description
New York Times BestsellerThe new must-read epic from master storyteller Ken Follett: more than a thriller, it’s an action-packed, globe-spanning drama set in the present day. “A compelling story, and only too realistic.” —Lawrence H. Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary “Every catastrophe begins with a little problem that doesn’t get fixed.” So says Pauline Green, president of the United States, in Follett’s nerve-racking drama of international tension.\
A shrinking oasis in the Sahara Desert; a stolen US Army drone; an uninhabited Japanese island; and one country’s secret stash of deadly chemical poisons: all these play roles in a relentlessly escalating crisis.\
Struggling to prevent the outbreak of world war are a young woman intelligence officer; a spy working undercover with jihadists; a brilliant Chinese spymaster; and Pauline herself, beleaguered by a populist rival for the next president election.\
Never is an extraordinary novel, full of heroines and villains, false prophets and elite warriors, jaded politicians and opportunistic revolutionaries. It brims with cautionary wisdom for our times, and delivers a visceral, heart-pounding read that transports readers to the brink of the unimaginable.
Review
“Urgent and fiercely compelling . . .
Never is first-rate entertainment that has something important to say. It deserves the popular success it will almost certainly achieve.”\
—The Washington Post\
“Superstar novelist Ken Follett’s what-if political thriller . . . is so exciting—and so plausible—you won’t want to look away.”\
—Apple Books (Best Book of the Month)\
“Settle in for a thrilling ride.”\
—CNN.com \
“Terrific . . . A powerful, commanding performance from one of the top writers in the genre.”\
—Publishers Weekly (starred)\
“A complex, scary thriller that feels too plausible for comfort. You’ll be so absorbed in the story threads that you’ll follow them anywhere—and you’ll suddenly realize you’ve read hundreds of pages. . . . On one level, it’s great entertainment; on another, a window into a sobering possibility.”\
—Kirkus (starred)\
“Absolutely compelling . . . A smart, scary, and all-too-plausible thriller.”\
—Booklist
About the Author
Ken Follett is one of the world's best-loved authors, selling more than 170 million copies of his thirty-two books. Follett's first bestseller was
Eye of the Needle, a spy story set in the Second World War. In 1989,
The Pillars of the Earth was published and has since become Follett's most popular novel. It reached number one on bestseller lists around the world and was an Oprah's Book Club pick. Its sequels,
World Without End and
A Column of Fire, proved equally popular, and the Kingsbridge series has sold more than forty million copies worldwide. Follett lives in Hertfordshire, England, with his wife, Barbara. Between them they have five children, six grandchildren, and two Labradors.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1\
Seen from a plane, the car would have looked like a slow beetle creeping across an endless beach, the sun glinting off its polished black armor. In fact it was doing thirty miles per hour, the maximum safe speed on a road that had unexpected potholes and cracks. No one wanted to get a flat tire in the Sahara Desert.\
The road led north from N'Djamena, capital city of Chad, through the desert toward Lake Chad, the biggest oasis in the Sahara. The landscape was a long, flat vista of sand and rock with a few pale yellow dried-up bushes and a random scatter of large and small stones, everything the same shade of mid-tan, as bleak as a moonscape.\
The desert was unnervingly like outer space, Tamara Levit thought, with the car as a rocket ship. If anything went wrong with her space suit she could die. The comparison was fanciful and made her smile. All the same she glanced into the back of the car, where there were two reassuringly large plastic demijohns of w

Categories:

• Literature & Fiction
  
  
  • Action & Adventure
    • Mystery, Thriller & Suspense