Excerpt from Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Good night." She pressed her forehead to her window, her swaddled feet against the brake. How much longer could she do this? Max was sweet, he was gorgeous, but he was not the hero they had both pretended ...

The world outside was muffled. The chirps from the forest were quiet, then quieter, then gone.

She woke to a screech.

Shadow at her window. There was a man. A huge man, a killer—whoever'd taken those girls—Katya had slipped her bare arms out of her sleeping bag overnight, and she froze that way, half-unwrapped, terrified. A pane of glass away from danger. Her shirt was twisted. Her chest was pounding. It was almost light out. Not a man—a bear.

A brown bear on its hind legs. Scraping noises came from the roof over her head. The bear fell heavy on all fours beside her door, and dust puffed from its fur. It stepped forward, reached the front of the car, and stood again, its paws pushed to the navy metal of Katya's Suzuki.

From the other side of the windshield, pressed back hard on her seat, she could see its claws, each one huge and yellow and savage, resting on the hood.

"Max," she said through stiff lips.

He was breathing heavily beside her. The bear lowered its enormous head and extended a white-flecked tongue. It gave a long lick to the car's hood, where she'd laid out the salmon the night before. Her fault.

Max was shifting. His sleeping bag rustled but she could not turn to see. The bear kept dragging its face across the car. Max took her hand, and her breath caught. She felt his heartbeat in his fingers, and her own pulse, in her throat, in her mouth.

Their fire was long out. The trees around them were black brushstrokes against a powder sky. In this grainy dawn, the bear was hyper-real, saturated with color, its face dirty and snout bleached and eyes shining through the dimness.

One massive paw drew back across the hood. From under its claws, the terrible screeching came again.

Max released his grip on her. Shifted his hand up. Touched the center of the steering wheel. They sat.

"Yes?" he whispered.

The bear hadn't yet looked up at them. She couldn't swallow. Max waited, his hand hovering over her lap, until she was able to speak again.

"Yes," she said.

He pressed, and the horn exploded in noise. The bear flew back from the car. It hurried away awkwardly on two legs—a giant baby—then twisted onto all fours and ran faster than she could've imagined into the trees. Before the horn had finished blaring, the animal was gone in the darkness. And Max was laughing.

He opened his door and fell out, dragging himself free from the bag. "Holy shit," he said from the ground, which was streaked white with frost. Katya was trapped in her seat. In his thin T-shirt, Max came around the front of her car to peer at the silver scratches in the paint. "Holy shit!" He looked through the windshield at her. His face was bright and brilliant. "Katyush, it took your antenna!"

She leaned forward, but the horn beeped again and she jerked back. "It—" She opened her door and reached up, feeling the snapped-off place where her car's antenna had been. If they had slept in the tent? "Oh my God," she said. She was trembling.

He couldn't stop laughing. He was moving so quickly. She, meanwhile, was stuck, she didn't trust her legs, she couldn't stand, but only Katya or Max needed to be competent at a time, and for now he was the one. He looked wonderful doing it. He pulled her fingers off the antenna socket. Her body was cold with late-arriving fear; his mouth was hot. With both arms around his neck, she clutched him. She touched without stopping. She lifted her hips off the seat and he pushed her sleeping bag down. Against his cheek, she said the word love, she said love, but he covered her lips with his. She let the rest go.

Excerpted from Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips. Copyright © 2019 by Julia Phillips. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.