A Feast of Wolves

The Handmaid's Tale and 1984 set the table for A Feast of Wolves

There is a guillotine on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building.

Three hundred members of Congress and the Supreme Court are locked in the basement.

It's a city divided.

It's a new American Civil War.

The first Civil War was just practice. A Feast of Wolves is a page-turning thriller built around a terrifying idea: What if there were a French Revolution in today's America? Imagine an 18-foot-high guillotine on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, a sea of Americans camped out across the Washington Mall reveling in the carnage, and CNN broadcasting the nightmare 24-7.

We enter this new Civil War through the eyes of young historian Chase Selby. Chase and eleven others have been appointed "Reasoners" - basically, the last reasonable people left in America. Their task is to broker peace between what's left of the U.S. government and well-armed citizen revolutionaries called the Changers. As the story starts, the Changers have already created havoc across the country, burning down banks, health insurance companies, and government offices, eventually splitting the U.S. capital in two. They've killed hundreds of Congress members by guillotine and locked up the rest in the Capitol basement.

Right away, Chase has doubts about the Reasoners' ability to solve the crisis, particularly since the Changers may have their hands on something far worse than a guillotine: nuclear weapons. This pits Chase against one of the Changers' leaders, the charismatic and spellbinding young Sister Sheena, who preaches a gospel of perpetual violence in the name of liberty. Chase soon begins to suspect there's another force at work. But can he defeat that force before the country is utterly destroyed?

In the spirit of The Handmaid's Tale and 1984, A Feast of Wolves is both a great read and a cautionary tale taking readers from one surprise to another and exploring the most explosive issues facing our world today.