Severance
(Book)

Candace Chen is a millennial drone sequestered in a Manhattan office tower. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she's content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies with her boyfriend. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They're traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers? A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire.