Most people look forward to the harvest, but some just want to watch it burn.
Avaialble in ebook and paperback from:
Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0H69GZ9VJ
Amazon. Com https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H69GZ9VJ
Amazon Australia https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0H69GZ9VJ
Amazon Canada https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0H69GZ9VJ
Kobo - https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/surviving-the-evacuation-book-25-the-best-revenge?uir=true
iTunes: https://books.apple.com/us/book/surviving-the-evacuation-book-25-the-best-revenge/id6782818376
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=_kHtEQAAQBAJ
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/surviving-the-evacuation-book-25-frank-tayell/1150453640?ean=2940185342008
Audiobooks for this, and Book 24, will be available soon. (the narrator has retired, so I’m looking for another, and that’ll be the priority now the book is out)
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With the final evacuation over, the Atlantic survivors hoped they’d found peace, but the war has followed them west. While searching for his lost vault, General Denning has laid waste to Washington State. Farms have been burned, bridges mined, and cities filled with the undead, all in pursuit of a forgotten weapons vault everyone else thinks is a myth. Everyone except Maggs who found proof of it shortly after she arrived in the west. She and her army of Oregonian farmers have been fighting a guerrilla war against the general since March. One by one, her friends were murdered. Now, she wants revenge.
As Fatima and Siobhan hunt for spies in the north, and Bran raises a militia from the farmers on Vancouver Island, Kim and Sholto search for the general and his army. Though he is operating at the end of a very long supply chain, their resources are no more plentiful. They can afford one battle, one push, one last sacrifice in their bid to create a world safe for their family.
But even if they defeat Denning, the war won’t be over. The real threat is, and has always been, Dr Tippichandra and her piratical followers in Louisiana. Stopping her won’t be enough, not for Detective Tom Wilgus. Nor will revenge. He needs justice.
A story of love and war, revenge and acceptance, set in a new nation being built among the ashes of the old world.
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I won’t say that this is the last ever book featuring these characters, or the last set in this fictional universe, but in case it is, I hope it provides a satisfying conclusion. Without giving away the plot and twists, I will say that the major events all occurred as I originally planned. What might have been, and where the characters might have gone, are all hinted at within the story.
A few months ago, as the editing began, I had drawn up a list of potential spin-offs and one-shots, some set during the outbreak, and some immediately after this book. There was one in particular that I absolutely loved, but as I was writing the key scenes, I realised it worked way better as a Strike a Match story.
The very first drafts of Surviving the Evacuation (oh so long ago) were set twenty years after the apocalypse, with Bill’s journals being a discovered record of events at that time (being used in a war crimes trial for either Bill or Jen, depending on the draft. Sholto worked in a pub opposite the Isle of Wight courtroom, and was plotting their rescue). Obviously, things turned out rather differently. and when it became clear that the series wasn’t going to get twenty years hence, I wrote Strike a Match. Now, 200,000 words into a draft of what was supposed to be a quick standalone detective novel (It began with the theft of a cart of potatoes) it’s obvious that the story of Henry and Isaac’s survival is also the story of what would have happened in a universe where there’d been no Quigley (or zombies). What if the evacuation to the coast had worked? And because I’m now using some of the ideas for Surviving the Evacuation in a Strike a Match story, I imagine that, in a few hundred thousand words time, I’ll have some ideas that won’t fit Henry, Anna, or Ruth, and would work better as a case for Fatima or Siobhan.
Either way, there’ll be more stories about the apocalypse coming soon. :)
Thank you for coming along on the journey with me over all these books, and I hope you enjoy this one. With the temperature records set to be broken, I’m off for an early morning walk, and then I’ll be eating a pomello (I’ve never had one before) while watching a documentary about Antarctica and thinking how lucky those penguins are with all their ice and snow. Happy reading, Frank :)