59 Minutes
A Novel
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3.3 • 7 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
You have fifty-nine minutes until everything and everyone you love will be lost forever, what will you do with that time? The internationally bestselling author of the “brilliant, gripping must-read” (Glamour) Try Not to Breathe brings suspenseful thrills in this unputdownable novel following three women as they face an incoming nuclear attack.
Carrie is on her way home from work on an ordinary evening, looking forward to seeing her family, when her phone blares:
SEVERE ALERT. NUCLEAR MISSILE THREAT TO SOUTH ENGLAND. 59 MINUTES UNTIL IMPACT. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A TEST.
Chaos erupts around her. Her spouse and child, who are normally just a commute of a few minutes away, might as well be on Mars for all the chances she has of seeing them again.
When Frankie and her fiancé get the terrifying alert, they are on their way to a country retreat. Frankie is blissfully and newly pregnant, but her joy is shattered by the realization that there may be no world to bring her baby into.
Mrs. Dabb is already spiraling because her thirteen-year-old daughter is missing. Panicked, she is on a mission to track her down. Then she hears sirens wailing across the moor. The TV confirms that her evening is about to get a whole lot worse.
Three women, three families, one last chance to be together before the end. All they have is fifty-nine minutes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
South England plunges into nuclear panic in this unnerving doomsday thriller from Seddon (The Short Straw). When news breaks on a Friday afternoon that a nuclear missile will strike London within the hour, chaos erupts, and armed troops struggle to maintain order. Young advertising exec Carrie Spencer has already hit Waterloo Station, eager to unwind at home with her partner, Emma, and three-year-old daughter, when emergency alerts ping on her fellow passengers' phones. Meanwhile, artist Frankie and her boyfriend Otis receive the same alerts at the Dartmoor cottage they've booked for a romantic getaway—only seconds after Frankie shares the news she's pregnant. Finally, there's the widowed Mrs. Dabb, who grows frantic in her isolated cottage as her teenage daughter fails to arrive home from school. While the minutes tick down, the story lines overlap, and a panicked public succumbs to its worst instincts, unleashing predators like the Devon Militia, who drive around Dartmoor snatching girls and young women at gunpoint. Seddon's gift for cliffhangers takes the tension to unbearable heights, and the strong women characters who lead the action help paper over a plot convenience or two. It's easy to wolf this down in a single sitting.
