When Miranda begins writing in her new diary, there are few surprises. She is an average teenage girl, living in an average Pennsylvania town, prone to adolescent self-absorption. But when an asteroid hits the moon, a nearly apocalyptic weather change occurs and her shift in attention is sudden and palpable. No one can predict the long-term outcome of the catastrophe. Mass hysteria is followed by the slowly dawning realization that things may not get better. Months go by and Miranda’s diary reveals the growing anxiety and fear within her family. There is scarcely power, the water supply is threatened, and meals soon need to be rationed to one or two cans of food a day. Her family survives illnesses and injuries, and the death of close friends, all the while cut off from knowledge of what is happening beyond their town. The sense of doom in this fast-paced, speculative novel is overwhelming, but so, too, is the humanity of its characters and the will to survive. (Age 13 and older)

New York Times bestseller! A heart-stopping post-apocalyptic thriller that's "absorbing from first to last page."*

When a meteor knocks the moon closer to earth, Miranda, a high school sophomore, takes shelter with her family.

Told in a year's worth of journal entries, Life as We Knew It chronicles the human struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.

As August turns dark and wintery in northeastern Pennsylvania, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.

I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald's still would be open. Like one marble hitting another, when the moon slams closer to earth, the result is catastrophic. Worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun.

Life as We Know It is an extraordinary series debut. The companion novels are: The Dead and the Gone, This World We Live In, and The Shade of the Moon.

(*Publishers Weekly, starred review)