In a land of nothing but sand, sand, sand, four siblings scrabble to survive after the disappearance of their father and oldest sister, both legendary sand divers. Meanwhile, Anya has grown up near the mines and expects to spend her life toiling for the Empire of the East, but the destruction of her entire community sends her to the dunes in search of vengeance. After his 2020 triumph with Wool, Howey has seen the reissue of his self-published backlist; this is his first original work in six years. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Howey's standalone sequel to 2014's Sand delves deeper into a world where the remnants of modern civilization lie buried beneath hundreds of meters of sand. In the mining city of Agyl, resourceful Anya discovers the dark secret behind her father's business trips when an atomic bomb destroys her town. Meanwhile, across No Man's Land, four siblings rebuild their lives in the aftermath of a tragedy: Conner longs to take the family West, away from the depressing routines of survival, while Palmer's desperation to live up to their missing sister Vic's accomplishments as a sand-diver--specially trained people whose suits allow them to travel beneath the sand to salvage buried technology--places the youngest, Violet, in danger. Though the sand-divers face constant pressure to recover ever greater spoils, this is a world where very little is known about the past. The only character who expresses any curiosity is Rob, whose fascination with old-world tech leads him to create an amazing new tool for controlling the sand. Well-paced writing and myriad intertwined narratives build momentum as Anya's and her father's quest for vengeance places them in conflict with the sand-divers. Marrying a propulsive plot with fascinating worldbuilding, this postapocalyptic epic proves well worth the wait. Agent: Kristin Nelson, Nelson Literary. (Oct.)

Howey's long-awaited return to the postapocalyptic, dune-covered Colorado of Sand (2014) reintroduces sand-diver siblings Palmer, Conner, Rob, and Violet, along with Anya, the teenage daughter of Sand's villain, Brock. When Anya's privileged life in sand-free Agyl is destroyed by a nuclear bomb, she follows her father across No Man's Land to the desert, where she learns that not only was her father responsible for unearthing the bomb that wiped out her home, he plans to find and use two more buried bombs. Meanwhile, Palmer, Conner, Rob, and Violet are pulled in different directions by factions vying to gain access to the legendary salvage site of Danvar. Some of the science is questionable, the plot gets confusing (it's never really explained why Brock wants to destroy desert towns using nuclear bombs), and the few female characters are defined by their relationships to the men in their lives and rarely interact with one another. Nonetheless, readers of Sand have been waiting for this and will be pleased to read that a third book is strongly hinted at.