The Passage by Justin Cronin June 8

Four years ago, Justin Cronin's 9-year-old daughter told him his books were "probably boring," and dared him to write a story about a girl who saves the world. Mr. Cronin, a literary novelist, took her up on it. The result: a postapocalyptic vampire trilogy, which Stephen King has hailed as a captivating epic.

An English professor at Rice University and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Mr. Cronin is known...