By Justin Cronin
784 pages; Ballantine

Part apocalyptic tale, part allegory, and all great storytelling, Justin Cronin's The Passage is a genre-whirling novel that includes such characters as a PTSD-scarred African nun, a female warrior with a heart of titanium, and a villain who threatens victims through their dreams. The novel—the first volume in a planned trilogy—begins with a desperate woman abandoning her little girl, Amy, at a convent. Amy winds up in the care of an FBI agent named Wolgast and the pair must flee the "virals"—humans turned vampires during a military experiment gone awry. For all the semihuman characters and disastrous military subterfuge, The Passage is ultimately a very long novel about a young woman's journey to understanding herself: "Amy felt their sorrow, but it was different now. It was a holy soaring. A thousand recollected lives were passing through her, a thousand thousand stories—of love and work, of parents and children, of duty and joy and grief...." Let others quibble over whether The Passage is thriller or literature; we see it as vital, tender, and compelling.

— Bethanne Patrick