The Drift

Dust jacket illustration by François Vaillancourt.

We're thrilled to announce The Drift, C. J. Tudor's acclaimed apocalyptic thriller.

An overturned coach full of students.
Not all of them will survive.
A stranded cable car full of strangers.
One of them is a killer.
A remote chalet full of friends.
Soon they’ll be enemies.

While being evacuated from a secluded boarding school during a snowstorm, Hannah’s coach careers off the road, trapping her with a handful of survivors. If they can’t find a way out in time, the snow will bury them, but someone doesn’t want the students to escape.

Meg wakes up in a cable car stranded high above snowy mountains, with five strangers and no memory of how they got on board. They’re heading to a place known only as “The Retreat,” but as the temperature drops and tensions rise, Meg realizes they won’t all make it there alive.

Carter lives and works in a remote ski chalet with a mismatched bunch of companions. As their generator wavers in the storm, it risks releasing something lurking in the chalet's depths—and their fragile bonds will be tested when the power fails for good.

The terrors faced by Hannah, Meg, and Carter are each one part of the puzzle. What connects them is an even greater horror—one that threatens to consume all of humanity.

Lettered: 26 signed leatherbound copies, housed in a custom traycase

Limited: 300 signed numbered hardcover copies

From Publishers Weekly (Starred Review):

“In this tour de force from Tudor (The Burning Girls), a postapocalyptic thriller, a haven called the Retreat, which has been constructed for a select few in the wake of a devastating new plague, proves to be not much of a haven… Tudor shifts among the three situations, teasing a common link, and gradually ratchets up the pressure on her characters as they try to preserve their humanity while surviving. This is a masterpiece of its kind.”

From Booklist (Starred Review):

“Tudor started with a bang with The Chalk Man and has gone on to become one of the strongest voices in genre blending, adroitly combining elements of horror, sf, and thriller. The Drift has already been optioned for television, but don’t wait for the TV series—this is a book that demands to be read now.” 

From Library Journal (Starred Review of the Audio):

“Tudor’s (The Burning Girls) latest features three interconnected narratives that collide in a frozen landscape just as humanity is clawing its way back from a devastating pandemic…  Like all great apocalypse stories, Tudor’s novel is a blizzard of brutality and despair with just the tiniest flickers of hope.”

From Criminal Element:

“C.J. Tudor has continued to impress with her imaginative abilities, and The Drift stands as her most ambitious book yet. While a departure from her earlier novels—and a fitting follow-up to A Sliver of Darkness’s eclectic offerings—it maintains the heart, horror, and humanity that have always formed their core. Once again, she has captured ‘the same but different’ to masterful, and masterfully manipulated, effect. If her collective works can be called ‘The House of Tudor,’ then The Drift is the piece de resistance—though her byline is selling point enough.”