THE BEAUTIFUL LAND

An exciting debut novel, in the tradition of The Passage. The Beautiful Land is part science fiction, part horror--and, at its core, a love story, between a brilliant young computer genius and the fragile women he has loved since high school. Now, he must bend time and space to save her life, as the world around them descends into apocalyptic madness.

Tak O'Leary, a Japanese-American reality show host (who happens to be a genius) vanished off the grid after a failed suicide attempt. Samira Moheb is an Iranian-American military translator suffering from PTSD as a result of her time in the Iraq War. They have been in love from the moment they met in high school but because they never told each other, they were destined to be apart forever. But Tak, who, while off the grid, was working for a corporation that has developed technology that allows for travel between parallel worlds, is determined to correct that--particularly since he knows that the company plans to substitute a world more to their liking for ours. He steals a portable version of the device, thinking that all he will have he to do is use it to transport Sam out of harm's way. Except that what neither Tak nor the corporation know is that the inventor of the device-a man who can only be described as bat-shit crazy--has his own plans--to destroy all parallel worlds and replace them with one he likes--The Beautiful Land, a place pretty much empty of humanity. If Tak hopes to restore our world (and Sam), he must somehow use the technology against the man who invented it--but to save everything, he may have to sacrifice everything. Alan Averill started writing at five years old, when he scribbled down a story about Bigfoot killing him with a log. Since that epic tome, he's written one novel, five plays, a large handful of short stories, and numerous video games. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife Sue, his dog Sam Perkins, and a whole lot of rain.