Shelter in Place

Multiple award winner Roberts's (Year One; Come Sundown) latest stand-alone novel begins with a literal bang as a typical evening in a Maine mall is shattered by a deadly, well-planned shooting. The body count is high and some of the survivors, including college student Reed Quartermaine and 16-year-old Simone Knox, are lauded as heroes for their actions. The guilt and grief they suffer send Simone and Reed off into unexpected yet ultimately rewarding directions: Simone turns her pain into art, and Reed becomes a police officer. The cinematic, big-screen action of the opening smoothly transitions into the intimacy of the survivors doing the hard work of becoming functioning humans, supported by well-conceived secondary characters. When Simone and Reed meet, their attraction is instant and they begin to forge a new life together. But after survivors of the DownEast Mall massacre start turning up dead, Reed begins to suspect someone with close ties to the killers is behind the murders.