Having paddled Tibet鈥檚 (in Hell or High Water) and sailed with eco-activists (in The Whale Warriors), 国产吃瓜黑料 contributing editor Peter Heller decided to take on a new challenge: fiction. That ain鈥檛 easy鈥攎any journalists try, and few succeed. Count Heller among the few. His terrific debut novel, (Knopf, $25), imagines a postapocalyptic America slate-wiped by a megaflu. Among the few survivors are Hig, a fly-fishing pilot, and Bangley, an ornery gun nut. The two bachelors eke out an existence at an old airfield in Erie, Colorado, occasionally killing stragglers who come within range of Bangley鈥檚 rifle. It鈥檚 not much of a life. Bangley trusts no one, not even our narrator, Hig. 鈥淭here is much about the man that creeps me out,鈥 says Hig, 鈥渂ut this is the worst, the unrelenting sense of being surveilled.鈥 Eventually, Hig seeks out other humans, flying west and befriending an old farmer and his daughter, avoiding roaming gangs of Mad Max鈥like survivors and wondering what a life worth living would look like. Recalling the bleakness of Cormac McCarthy and the trout-praising beauty of David James Duncan, The Dog Stars makes a compelling case that the wild world will survive the apocalypse just fine; it鈥檚 the humans who will have the heavy lifting.