Before he passed away back in 2017, the late horror legend George A. Romero had been working on a brand new zombie novel titled The Living Dead, which was set to bring his long-running zombie saga off the screen and into the world of print. Sadly, Romero never got the chance to complete the novel, but author Daniel Kraus was able to finish it using his notes.
Tor Books released the 656-page zombie epic last summer, and today we’ve learned that the paperback version of The Living Dead will now be released on September 7, 2021.
“Set in the present day, The Living Dead is an entirely new tale, the story of the zombie plague as George A. Romero wanted to tell it. Combining his extensive knowledge of Romero’s longtime themes and the filmmaker’s partial manuscript with prodigious research and his own talent and creativity, Daniel Kraus has created the ultimate gift to Romero and horror fans. It is a sprawling, action-packed work of epic scale, and Kraus and Romero have crafted compelling characters for readers to follow through a startlingly relatable global pandemic. Survivors must fight back not just against the monsters, but against mob-militia brutality, which ultimately turns against a peaceful march — a scene 50 years in the making with its roots in the finale of Night of the Living Dead.”
“The novel’s timeliness is uncanny, but then again, Romero always managed to be timely.”
In The Living Dead…
“On October 24th, John Doe rises from the dead. Assistant Medical Examiner Luis Acocella and his assistant Charlene Rutkowksi are vivisecting him when it happens, and so begins a global nightmare beyond comprehension.
“Greer Morgan is a teenager living in a trailer park, and when the dead begin their assault, the true natures of her neighbors are revealed. Chuck Chaplin is a pretty-boy cable-news anchor, and the plague brings sudden purpose to his empty life.
“Karl Nishimura is the helmsman of the U.S.S. Vindicator, a nuclear submarine, and he battles against a complete zombie takeover of his city upon the sea. And meanwhile, a mysterious woman named Etta Hoffmann records the progress of the epidemic from a bunker in D.C., as well as the broken dreams and stubborn hopes of a nation not ready to give up.
“Spread across three separate time periods and combining Romero’s biting social commentary with Kraus’s gift for the beautiful and grotesque, the book rockets forward as the zombie plague explodes, endures, and finally, in a shocking final act, begins to radically change.”
