my zombie novel

A cover reveal & a movie premiere . . .

Sep 10, 2025

This Is Not a Test’s imminent return to bookshelves has been such a gratifying plot twist in my career. It owes everything to its forthcoming adaptation and to my agent, Faye Bender, Bindery Books, and Kathryn Budig, for their willingness to seize such an extraordinary opportunity—and then ask how much farther we could take it. I explored our answer to that question in this letter, but tl;dr, we wanted to give more at every level to make it truly special for new and returning readers. It was never just about slapping a new cover on Sloane’s story with a different imprint logo on the spine . . .

Though I’ve been pretty excited for this part too.

I hope you love what we’ve arrived at as much as I do.

Thank you to Charlotte Strick, who has made the book’s intimate and brutal vision of the end of the world real through the lens of her incredible talents as a designer, and to Kathryn, Meghan Harvey, and Abi Pollokoff whose enthusiasm and input helped guide the process and shape its electric new aesthetic, and to Stephen Johnston, who is responsible for the clever and fun visual teasers you might have seen across social in the lead up.

I love how decisively the cover has married the narrative’s horror and contemporary elements. I love its grit and its energy. I love that the hands appear to be at both sides of the windows and I love the text play of the title and movie burst and I especially love that I could hand this book to you and whether or not I said, “This is my zombie novel,” you’d know.

This is my zombie novel. :’)

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY ADAM MACDONALD AND STARRING OLIVIA HOLT

The Breakfast Club meets 28 Days Later in this revised and expanded edition of Courtney Summers’s cult classic about a traumatized young woman forced to survive the zombie apocalypse.
Sloane Price knows there are worse things than the end of the world, so when the zombie apocalypse happens, the opportunity to escape her violent home life offers no relief. She’s already lost the one thing that matters most—her sister—and now seems like the perfect time to give up.
But when she inadvertently ends up barricaded in her high school with five other teens, their desperate and volatile bids for survival force a series of impossible decisions. As the days creep by and the dead close in, Sloane must confront everything she thought she knew about life, death, survival, and sacrifice and, once and for all, make a choice.
Joined together for the first time in this special “director’s cut” edition, This Is Not a Test and its novella sequel Please Remain Calm explore the forces that tether us to life—and to each other—in our darkest times.

It releases March 31st, 2026. Preorders are incredibly important in defining a book’s future success and opportunities, so I can’t thank you enough if you do. (And hold on to your proof of purchase because Bindery has a tendency to host very cool campaigns!) However you choose to show up for and support my books, thank you for choosing them. I’m happy you’re here.

And if you want to show up for the movie too . . .

First look at Olivia Holt’s incredible portrayal of Sloane.

This is Not a Test will be making its world premiere at the Brooklyn Horror Film Fest on October 17th, and features a post-screening Q&A with its brilliant director and screenwriter, Adam MacDonald. Individual tickets go on sale this Friday, September 12th, at 12 PM EST—link!—and if you’re in the area, I definitely recommend making a night of it. Adam’s adaptation is such a scarily incisive, darkly emotional experience that captured the heart of the book. It's beautifully claustrophobic, and the performances from the cast are as charged as they are devastating. What I loved most about it was how real and how true it felt. I cannot wait for you to experience that.

It still amazes me that a story about the dead should get to enjoy as many new lives as this one has. I’ll be sharing everything here as it happens and this is the one platform I can guarantee you won’t miss anything, so subscribe if you haven’t and stay tuned for early opportunities to read, movie updates, and all other developments as we lock in this new edition ahead of the movie’s release because we’re only just getting started.