Ayla and Jondalar meet the Mamutoi-the Mammoth Hunters--people like Ayla. Ayla finds herself torn between the wildly jealous Jondalar and the master carver Ranec.

"In The Passage and The Twelve, Justin Cronin brilliantly imagined the fall of civilization and humanity's desperate fight to survive. Now all is quiet on the horizon--but does silence promise the nightmare's end or the second coming of unspeakable darkness? At last, this bestselling epic races to its breathtaking finale. The world we knew is gone. What world will rise in its place? The Twelve have been destroyed and the hundred-year reign of darkness...

A tale of court intrigues in the land of Seven Kingdoms, a country "blessed by golden summers that go on for years, and cursed by cruel winters that can last a generation." Treachery, murder, incest. "Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister...