Warm Bodies and The New Hunger: A Special 5th Anniversary Edition - Couverture souple

The New Hunger


THIS IS NOT the beginning.

The beginning is darkness and fire, microbes and worms—the very first of us, killing by the billions on their way up the ladder. There is little to learn from the beginning. We prefer the middle, where things are getting interesting.

Who are we? We are everyone. We are every thought and action. Time is just a filing system for the vastness of our Library, but we linger in the present with the unfinished books, watching them write themselves. The world is changing. The globe is bulging and straining, erupting and blazing with miracles, and we don’t know what shape it will take when it cools. Even with all of history inside us, we don’t know, and this is a little scary.

So we narrow our focus. We zoom in on a country, then a city, then the white rooftop of a stadium, where three young people are sitting on a blanket.

The sky is dark. They are the only ones awake for miles around. It’s hard to catch a sunrise in the middle of summer—the sun barely sets before bouncing back up—but today the need to see beauty was urgent. They have seen too much ugliness. Their lives are smeared with it like blood and shit, so thick they can barely breathe, so today they’re on the roof in the cold morning air, waiting for the sun to wash them.

Who are these people? Why do they interest us? They are not special—no one is—but there is something in them that draws our gaze. A short, pale girl full of strange dreams. A tall, dark girl with a promise carved on her heart. And a half-alive man whose head buzzes with voices, who talks to us and listens without knowing we exist.

We want them to know we exist. We want them to read our Library and share it with the world, because there is nothing sweeter than being known. But first we have to know them. We are books that read our readers, not a story but a conversation, and we open it with a question:

Who are you?

We circle around them, peering in the windows of their souls.

What’s in there? Where did it come from? Show us and we’ll show you.

Up and down the Library, from its bright ceiling to its black basement, pages begin to flutter.

Warm Bodies, Isaac Marion’s bestselling tale of a zombie’s return to humanity through an unlikely encounter with love, has captured hearts worldwide, appearing in twenty-seven languages and inspiring a major film along with a passionate fandom. This special five-year anniversary edition includes the powerful prequel novella, The New Hunger, which sheds light on the saga’s past while setting the stage for its epic conclusion.

In the “highly original” ( Seattle Times) Warm Bodies, “R” is a man with an existential crisis: he is dead. He shuffles through an America destroyed by war, social collapse, and the mindless hunger of his fellow zombies, but he craves something more than brains and the memories he gains when he eats them. He wants a life of his own.

After absorbing the poignant life of a troubled young man, R makes a choice that begins the unlikeliest of relationships—with his victim’s ex-girlfriend. Julie is angry and scared but fiercely alive, a blast of color in R’s grey existence, and as they struggle to protect each other from the grim society around them, they begin to set off dangerous sparks—the kind that could revive their lifeless world, or start a war that destroys it.

But their story doesn’t end—or begin—there. The New Hunger takes us back seven years to a crucial crossroads in three young lives. Julie and her parents drive across the wastelands of America in search of a new home. Her future friend Nora struggles to protect her brother, a boy with a secret that might one day change the world. And in the darkness of a forest, a dead man opens his eyes. Who is he? What is he? As R unravels these grim mysteries and Julie and Nora scour the world for hope, each step brings them closer to an encounter of beauty and tragedy that will change the course of their lives.

Together, Warm Bodies and The New Hunger form a richly layered tale of love and hope in the darkest of times, while also opening the doors to an epic saga that continues with The Burning World, an excerpt of which is included in this edition for current fans and newcomers alike.