'An ambitious, cinematic thriller' Observer
'Stunning' Publishers Weekly
'Absolutely captivating' Booklist
What if the only hope for survival becomes the greatest threat?
From the brilliant, bestselling author of Child 44 comes a suspenseful and fast-paced novel about a colony of global apocalypse survivors seeking to reinvent civilisation under the most extreme conditions imaginable.
The world has fallen. Without warning, a mysterious and omnipotent force has claimed the planet for their own. There are no negotiations, no demands, no reasons given for their actions. All they have is a message: humanity has thirty days to reach the one place on Earth where they will be allowed to exist… Antarctica.
Cold People follows the journeys of a handful of those who endure the frantic exodus to the most extreme environment on the planet. But their goal is not merely to survive the present. Because as they cling to life on the ice, the remnants of their past swept away, they must also confront the urgent challenge: can they change and evolve rapidly enough to ensure humanity's future? Can they build a new society in the sub-zero cold?
Original and imaginative, as profoundly intimate as it is grand in scope, Cold People is a masterful and unforgettable epic.
Praise for Tom Rob Smith
'A remarkable achievement' Jeffrey Deaver
'Amazing' Lee Child
'Chilling, hypnotic and thoroughly compelling' Mark Billingham
'Truly original and chilling' Jojo Moyes
'Tom Rob Smith's mastery of suspense will make any reader's heart pound' Financial Times
'A thrilling, intense piece of fiction' Observer
'Ingeniously plotted... a high voltage story' New York Times
'Perfectly plotted, utterly terrifying' Daily Mail
'A mind-blowing, addictive plot that will have you on the edge of your seat' Stylist
'A powerful page-turner' GQ
'Taut and atmospheric' Irish Independent
'Masterly... read this and shiver' Telegraph Tom Rob Smith is the author of the acclaimed Child 44 trilogy. Child 44 itself was a global publishing sensation, selling over two million copies. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Prize and won the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His most recent novel, The Farm, was a Number One international bestseller. Tom also writes for television and won a Writer's Guild Award for best adapted series and an Emmy and Golden Globe for best limited series with American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. 'Much more than a work of science fiction, this is a human tale, filled with emotionally driven plots that weave together into the most satisfying of climactic events. It also boasts locational descriptions that fill the mind with dazzling visual landscapes of the frozen tundra. Cold People is a captivating piece of fiction, moving across different time periods – the past, present, and future – ultimately, exploring the age-old question of human nature: if everything changes, does anything or anyone really change?' 'Cold People is a vastly ambitious novel, tackling the weightiest questions of our time in a form that rarely loses the tension of a thriller, despite the complexity of its subject matter' Observer
'What lines, if any, shouldn't be crossed to save humanity from extinction? That question is at the heart of this stunning post-apocalyptic thriller from bestseller Smith (Child 44). Twenty years after an alien invasion has decimated Earth's human population, those who remain have been struggling to survive in Antarctica, the only region not deemed off-limits by the invaders… The central story line, a clever homage to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, unfolds in a way to ensure readers become attached to Echo and her family. Smith, the author of brilliant historical and psychological suspense novels, shows his range is even broader in this triumph of imagination and empathy' Publishers Weekly
