The Unburied · Book One · October 1, 2026
We Will Never Have to Bury Each Other
She lit a candle. He chose to answer.
About the book
She has thirty-one pills and no plan. He has eleven days and too many plans.
Ashlynn has spent eight days telling herself she will leave Manhattan tomorrow. She has thirty-one pills, a dead man outside the door, and a candle burning in the window of a city where light carries for nine blocks.
Leith knows New York has run out of time. Wounded, armed with an empty pistol, and carrying information that could save lives, he has one job: get north before the city is erased. Then he sees the candle in his mother’s apartment—and the woman who lit it.
Stopping for Ashlynn is the wrong choice. Taking eleven-year-old Katrina with them is worse. But as the three survivors cross a ruined Manhattan, the Bronx, and the fractured suburbs beyond, the shape of a family begins to form around them.
The dead are everywhere. Staying human is the hard part.
This adult novel includes active opioid addiction and withdrawal, domestic violence, pregnancy loss, child death, suicide, grief, blood and injury, undead violence, corpses, peril involving a child, alcohol use, and strong language. Recovery is ongoing work; love does not cure addiction.