Never

A woman President of the United States, determined to keep her cool. A brilliant, principled Chinese official trapped inside a hardening regime. A CIA agent working undercover across the Sahara. In Never, Ken Follett steps out of historical fiction to imagine something terrifyingly plausible: how the world could stumble, step by rational step, into a third world war.

It begins with small things — a broken-down car in the desert, a group of terrorists, a smuggling route, a border incident. But in a tightly connected world of alliances, nuclear arsenals, and leaders hemmed in by politics and pride, each careful, defensible decision narrows the options for the next, until a catastrophe no one wanted becomes a catastrophe no one can stop.

Meticulously researched and relentlessly paced, Follett's standalone thriller is a chilling geopolitical drama about good people making reasonable choices — and the machinery of escalation that can turn them into the architects of the unthinkable.