Before he passed away back in 2017, the late horror legend George A. Romero had been working on a brand new zombie novel titled The Living Dead, which was set to bring his long-running zombie saga off the screen and into the world of print. Sadly, Romero never got the chance to complete the novel, but it’s now been finished by author Daniel Kraus.

Tor Books will be publishing the 656-page zombie epic on June 9, 2020. You can check out the book’s cover art below, and be sure to head over to EW to read an excerpt today.

In The Living Dead…

“On October 24th, John Doe rises from the dead. Assistant Medical Examiner Luis Acocella and his assistant Charlene Rutkowksi are vivisecting him when it happens, and so begins a global nightmare beyond comprehension.

“Greer Morgan is a teenager living in a trailer park, and when the dead begin their assault, the true natures of her neighbors are revealed. Chuck Chaplin is a pretty-boy cable-news anchor, and the plague brings sudden purpose to his empty life.

“Karl Nishimura is the helmsman of the U.S.S. Vindicator, a nuclear submarine, and he battles against a complete zombie takeover of his city upon the sea. And meanwhile, a mysterious woman named Etta Hoffmann records the progress of the epidemic from a bunker in D.C., as well as the broken dreams and stubborn hopes of a nation not ready to give up.

“Spread across three separate time periods and combining Romero’s biting social commentary with Kraus’s gift for the beautiful and grotesque, the book rockets forward as the zombie plague explodes, endures, and finally, in a shocking final act, begins to radically change.”