At once provocative, terrifying, and darkly subversive, DREAD NATION is Justina Ireland’s stunning vision of an America both foreign and familiar—a country on the brink, at the explosive crossroads where race, humanity, and survival meet.
DREAD NATION SERIES
by Justina Ireland
Balzer + Bray, 2018 – 2020
(via JABberwocky Literary Agency)
Book 1: DREAD NATION (April 2018)
Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever.
In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.
But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.
But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose.
But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies.
And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.
Book 2: DEATHLESS DIVIDE (February 2020)
After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother.
But nothing is easy when you’re a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodemus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880s America.
What’s more, this safe haven is not what it appears—as Jane discovers when she sees familiar faces from Summerland amid this new society. Caught between mysteries and lies, the undead, and her own inner demons, Jane soon finds herself on a dark path of blood and violence that threatens to consume her.
But she won’t be in it alone.
Katherine Deveraux never expected to be allied with Jane McKeene. But after the hell she has endured, she knows friends are hard to come by—and that Jane needs her too, whether Jane wants to admit it or not.
Watching Jane’s back, however, is more than she bargained for, and when they both reach a breaking point, it’s up to Katherine to keep hope alive—even as she begins to fear that there is no happily-ever-after for girls like her.
Justina Ireland is the New York Times bestselling author of DREAD NATION and its sequel, DEATHLESS DIVIDE, as well as Vengeance Bound and Promise of Shadows. She is also one of the creators of the Star Wars High Republic series and is the author of the Star Wars adventures A Test of Courage, Out of the Shadows, and Mission to Disaster. She lives with her family in Maryland, where she enjoys dark chocolate and dark humor and is not too proud to admit that she’s still afraid of the dark.
Alice Kahn is a young Jewish physicist, one of the only female doctoral students in her class, studying with the famed Dr. Oppenheimer. An heiress, her family wants her to marry a man of her class and settle down; instead, Alice answers her country’s call to come to an unnamed city in the desert to work on a government project shrouded in secrecy.
It’s 1968, and the Watry-Ridder family is feared and respected in equal measure. The local farmers seek out their water charms and the teenagers their love spells. The family’s charms and spells have long served the town, passed down through generations of witches descending from the Black Forest.
Yun is a ninety-year-old woman recounting her time growing up in the Phoenix Pencil Company in 1940s Shanghai. While Japan invades China, Yun’s cousin moves in with them, and the two develop a competitive yet loving relationship. When the government discovers their family can magically Reforge a pencil’s words, bringing its words back to life, the cousins are separated and forced into a life of betraying stories in order to survive.
In a sleepy German village, Allina Gottlieb’s life is idyllic: she works at the bookshop with her uncle, makes strudel with her aunt, and spends the weekends with her friends and fiancé. But it’s 1939, and on one fateful night, her life changes forever.