Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Award-winning author Connie Willis takes us from a near-future Oxford to the time of the Black Death in this masterful, heartwrenching novel—now back in trade paperback for the first time in over thirty years, with a glorious new cover.

Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit.

For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity’s history—the time of the Black Death—was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.

But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history’s darkest hours.

Story Locale: Oxford, England

Connie Willis is a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She has received seven Nebula awards and eleven Hugo awards for her fiction; Blackout and All Clear—a novel in two parts—and Doomsday Book won both. Her other works include The Road to Roswell, Crosstalk, Passage, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Lincoln’s Dreams, Bellwether, Impossible Things, Terra Incognita, The Best of Connie Willis, and A Lot Like Christmas. Connie Willis lives with her family, a bulldog, and a cat in Colorado. Connie is currently working on a new Oxford historians time travel novel set at Tintern Abbey, Westminster Bridge, and Oxford.

Author Residence: Greeley, CO

Author Hometown: Englewood, CO