The Days to Come: A Novel

A masterful political thriller from the author of Shining City thrusts veteran Washington fixers Peter Rena and Randi Brooks into a dark world of cyberattacks, a new era of foreign espionage, and a risky, classified plan to save the world from environmental disaster

Billionaire entrepreneur David Traynor has big dreams for fixing a broken government in his first term as president of the United States. In the months before his inauguration, he’s developed daring and, in some cases, secret strategies to solve the climate crisis, force Congress to work again, and rebuild America’s economy—and that’s just the beginning. Everyone in the capital is scrambling to adapt to the new disruptor in chief’s bold agenda, though many, both at home and abroad, also want to see Traynor and his steely vice president, Wendy Upton, fail. Unsure of whom he can trust, Traynor intends to turn to an unusual group of people to advise him, including the savvy and sometimes ruthless DC fixers Peter Rena and Randi Brooks.

Though he is at the height of his career, Rena finds his world in chaos. His personal life is a mess; he wonders if his work—saving powerful people from their mistakes—has become too cynical. When malicious, untraceable cyberattacks related to his past start seeping from the dark corners of the internet, Rena’s doubts overwhelm him. Then an unpredictable tragedy throws the country into crisis, and he must come out of his stupor.

If Rena wants to help the new president salvage American politics, he will first have to reckon with his own demons and come to grips with a world far different from the one he once believed in. With the government and the country polarized and on the cusp of enormous change, Tom Rosenstiel’s The Days to Come is a clever, gripping thriller and a cogent meditation on how to heal a divided country. 

Tom Rosenstiel is the author of eleven books, four of which are novels. His nonfiction is focused on politics and media, and he is recognized as one of the leading thinkers in the country in the future of media. His book The Elements of Journalism, now in its fourth edition, has been translated into more than 25 languages. Tom is the Eleanor Merrill Visiting Professor on the future of Journalism at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He formerly was the executive director of the American Press Institute and the founder and director of the media research unit at Pew Research Center, which he directed for 16 years. He was the press critic of the Los Angeles Times for a decade and is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He lives in Chevy Chase Maryland with his wife, Rima.