Sunny at the End of the World

In 2018, seventeen-year-old Sunny and Toby are on the run after zombies have destroyed most of the adults in their world. Cut to 2034 when Sunny is being held in an underground facility. What happened? Was it aliens, a conspiracy, a simulation, biological terrorism, a totalitarian takeover? And who can infiltrate the facility and release the surviving prisoners? The tables will be turned more than once in this thrilling and thought-provoking novel.


With Steph Bowe’s sad passing at the age of twenty-five, in 2020, we lost a truly wonderful author of three smart, funny YA novels. Her mother and sister discovered a manuscript on her the book you have in your hands. Steph was always wise beyond her years, with the power to access other worlds. Somehow, in Sunny at the End of the World, she predicted an ‘outbreak’ much like the one that changed our world, after she was gone...With her trademark humour, endearing characters and brilliant storytelling, Steph Bowe has left us a novel that helps to make sense of the rapidly changing world we live in.


Steph Bowe was born in Melbourne in 1994. Her first YA novel, Girl Saves Boy, published in 2010, was aptly described by Rebecca Stead as ‘full of the absolute truth-life is complicated’. Steph went on to publish two further YA novels, All This Could End, which was longlisted for the 2014 Gold Inky Award, and Night Swimming, a Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Notable Book in 2018, when it was also longlisted for a Sisters in Crime Davitt Award.


Sadly, Steph passed away on 20 January 2020, after a courageous battle with a rare form of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. She was twenty-five. The manuscript of her posthumous novel, Sunny at the End of the World, was discovered on her computer by Steph’s mother and sister.