Zen and the Art of Apocalypse — Cary Groner

Blending Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, this is the story of a battle-scarred survivor on a desperate, postapocalyptic road trip. In Cary Groner’s vision of the near future, the world has been ravaged by a lethal virus and only the young have survived. Cities and infrastructures have been destroyed, countries no longer exist as they once did, and the natural world has taken over the landscape in surprising ways, with herds of camels roaming the desert and crocodiles glowing in the rivers, the result of some CRISPR experiment gone awry. Against this treacherous backdrop, Will, a former caretaker of a Buddhist monastery in Colorado, receives a mysterious directive: to bring a potential cure to a scientist in California—though he doesn’t know if California still exists. And so Will sets out, haunted by dreams of the woman he once loved. Danger lurks everywhere. A hitman is on his tail. And the only way he’ll make it is with the help of a clever raven, an opinionated cat, and a tough teenage girl who’s grown used to being on her own. Both a page-turning adventure and, ultimately, a love story, Zen and the Art of Apocalypse is an imaginative and inventive novel whose wisdom will stay with readers long after they’ve turned the last thrilling page.