Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Wolves of Winter | 2018 | Tyrell Johnson | Buy |
| 2 | The Lost Kings | 2022 | Tyrell Johnson | Buy |
The Wolves of Winter (2018) is set in the Canadian Yukon following a pandemic and nuclear exchange that has destroyed most of civilisation. Survival fiction in a Canadian wilderness setting gives the book a distinct texture — the cold, the isolation, and the specific landscape are not generic post-apocalyptic backdrops but the story’s real environment.
The Lost Kings (2022) takes the form of a dual-timeline crime thriller. Jeanie King sees her father come home covered in blood the night before he vanishes, and the novel moves between her 12-year-old self processing that night and her adult self finally confronting what she has spent decades not looking at directly. The New York Times named it one of the year’s best crime novels.
Johnson writes in a lean, economical style that suits both books. Neither overstays its welcome, and both leave their protagonist’s interiority fully rendered without being explicit about it.