Fantastic story, a real page-turner. Impossible to put down." — Stephen King
“Forget a good night’s sleep. Aurora is epic, but personal and poignant, horrifying and darkly funny, and flat-out suspenseful.” — Linwood Barclay, New York Times bestselling author of Find You First
"With Aurora , David Koepp has firmly staked his ground as one of the best thriller writers working today. Come for the mind-blowing concept of a massive geomagnetic storm that wipes out nearly every power grid on Earth, stay for why this book truly soars—characters you’ll love, breakneck-pacing, and the question we’re all wrestling with in these wild, modern times: what happens when life slips out of our control?” — Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion
“David Koepp’s Aurora contains two great narratives on a collision course. When, where and how they collide will you keep you turning pages right up to The End.” — Brian De Palma
“There’s a reason David Koepp is the most successful screenwriter of all time. It’s because he’s one of the greatest storytellers of all time. Aurora is up there with his best: scary, funny, and thought provoking. Buy it immediately.” — Scott Frank, writer and director of The Queen’s Gambit
“Aurora is everything a great novel, and great thriller, should be. David Koepp’s story is frightening, surprising, wildly entertaining, but also full of heart. I don’t know of many writers who could keep that many plates spinning as deftly, or as successfully. Somehow Koepp does. Aurora is the work of one of our best storytellers, at the top of his game.” — Mike Lupica, co-author of The Horsewoman with James Patterson, and Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour
“David Koepp does it again! Mixing humor, terror, and an all-too-believable doomsday scenario, Aurora is at the top of my list this year.” — Christina Dalcher, author of Vox
"Engaging characters deal with disaster in this swiftly paced, well-written thriller… Koepp, a successful screenwriter (Jurassic Park , Spider-Man ), brings those skills to this novel, crafting carefully placed revelations about the characters’ relationships and the bursts of violence in their increasingly chaotic world into an exciting and satisfying tale." — Kirkus Reviews , starred review
★ 04/18/2022
In this chilling scientific thriller from Koepp (Cold Storage ), astronomers learn that “a giant cloud of solar plasma drenched with magnetic field lines” will strike Earth in less than a day and cause a devastating global blackout. Since the U.S. government doesn’t control power plants, it’s up to the states to shut down transformers to significantly mitigate the impact of the solar strike. Inevitably, the governors resist such a move, and the country is plunged into cascading chaos. With cell towers and electrical lines down, the president can’t even communicate with anyone not within shouting distance. The ordinary people who must deal with the extraordinary circumstances include Aubrey Wheeler, of Aurora, Ill., whose brutish ex-husband abandoned a teenage son from a previous relationship for her to parent; 88-year-old retired college professor Norman Levy, a neighbor of Wheeler’s; and Patrick Brady, the loyal assistant to a billionaire with some eccentric ideas for surviving the blackout. Koepp’s imaginative plotting will keep readers turning the pages to learn the fates of characters they readily become invested in. Michael Crichton fans will hope for more from Koepp. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA. (June)
Invokes classic horror films. . . . Scary, and a great deal of fun.
Associated Press on Cold Storage
David Koepp does it again! Mixing humor, terror, and an all-too-believable doomsday scenario, Aurora is at the top of my list this year.”
David Koepp’s Aurora contains two great narratives on a collision course. When, where and how they collide will you keep you turning pages right up to The End.
There’s a reason David Koepp is the most successful screenwriter of all time. It’s because he’s one of the greatest storytellers of all time. Aurora is up there with his best: scary, funny, and thought provoking. Buy it immediately.”
"With Aurora , David Koepp has firmly staked his ground as one of the best thriller writers working today. Come for the mind-blowing concept of a massive geomagnetic storm that wipes out nearly every power grid on Earth, stay for why this book truly soars—characters you’ll love, breakneck-pacing, and the question we’re all wrestling with in these wild, modern times: what happens when life slips out of our control?”
Forget a good night’s sleep. Aurora is epic, but personal and poignant, horrifying and darkly funny, and flat-out suspenseful.”
Aurora is everything a great novel, and great thriller, should be. David Koepp’s story is frightening, surprising, wildly entertaining, but also full of heart. I don’t know of many writers who could keep that many plates spinning as deftly, or as successfully. Somehow Koepp does. Aurora is the work of one of our best storytellers, at the top of his game.
Fantastic story, a real page-turner. Impossible to put down."
01/01/2022
Sure, Aubrey Wheeler has split from her bad-news husband and is trying desperately to corral a rebellious teenage son, but now she's got a bigger problem. A solar storm has knocked out power worldwide, and she's hustling to protect her neighborhood even as her estranged brother, a wealth-ridden Silicon Valley CEO, hunkers down in his fancy desert bunker. With a 200,000-copy first printing; from prolific screenwriter Koepp, also author of Cold Storage .
★ 2022-04-12 A billionaire and a suburban family struggle to survive when power goes out around the globe.
This brisk thriller is set a few years in the future, after the world has been through the coronavirus pandemic and thinks it’s learned how to handle disaster. It hasn’t. A coronal mass ejection on the sun isn’t an unusual event, but this time one sends out a massive cloud of solar plasma aimed straight at Earth. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration see it coming and know it will fry electrical grids around the globe. Their attempts to shut down systems to protect them are shrugged off by anti-science politicians, and the world goes dark. No electricity means no internet, no phones, no TV or radio, no supply chain—“Everything from a nuclear power plant to your coffeepot,” one expert says. “If it’s connected to the grid and turned on, it will blow.” Thom Banning is prepared for the catastrophe. A tech billionaire, he’s purchased a disused missile silo and spent $30 million to convert it to a secure underground bunker big enough to house a village—of Thom’s choosing. He and his family, plus selected employees, evacuate to the bunker and settle in, but things will not go exactly as Thom planned. Meanwhile, Aubrey Wheeler is not prepared at all. She’s been busy trying to steer her conference business through the pandemic, avoid her creepy ex-husband, Rusty, and cope with Rusty’s son, Scott. The boy is a typically surly teenager but wisely chose to stay with his stepmother when she and his father, who’s addicted to just about everything you can be addicted to, divorced. When the power goes out in their Illinois suburb, all Aubrey has on her emergency shelf is 11 cans of black beans. Koepp, a successful screenwriter (Jurassic Park , Spider-Man ), brings those skills to this novel, crafting carefully placed revelations about the characters’ relationships and the bursts of violence in their increasingly chaotic world into an exciting and satisfying tale.
Engaging characters deal with disaster in this swiftly paced, well-written thriller.