Two macabre new releases filled with memorable characters will be discussed in a double author appearance this week at the Sugar Maple bar in Bay View.

In The Passage, author Justin Cronin imagines a story in which the government’s creation of vampire-like super-soldiers backfires, leading to post-apocalyptic devastation amid the spawning of modern-day Frankenstein’s creatures. As society crumbles, two people flee in search of sanctuary in this tale that chronicles human endurance in the face of catastrophe. A mixture of science fiction, horror and adventure recommended by none other than Stephen King, The Passage is a literary thriller written with imagination and masterful prose.

Cronin is the author of Mary and O’Neil—winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize—and The Summer Guest. Cronin, who earned an MFA from the renowned University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, teaches English at Rice University.

Fellow writer Dan Chaon is the creator of Await Your Reply, a chilling examination of three very different strangers whose lives connect in unexpected ways. Await your Reply is an unforgettable analysis of personal identity that questions our very existence and the elements that make us who we are. This startling and often depressing scrutiny of the American myth of self-reinvention is unveiled through each character’s isolated existence in a layered plotline filled with gripping originality and riveting suspense.

Await Your Reply is Chaon’s second novel and fourth literary manuscript. His short story collection, Among the Missing, was a finalist for a National Book Award and his debut novel, You Remind Me of Me, was named one of the best books of the year in 2005 by The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and a number of other publications. Chaon teaches creative writing at Oberlin College.

Cronin and Chaon will appear at Sugar Maple on June 10 at 7 p.m. in an event sponsored by Boswell Book Co.