Sand
No romance or no physical intimacy at all.
Closed door. No anatomical or crude language.
Estimated from the blurb · 0 reader votes
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Blurb
“Hugh’s imaginative worlds and tales within them never fail to entertain!” —Andy Weir, New York Times bestselling author of Project Hail Mary The first original novel from author Hugh Howey in six years, Across the Sand takes us back to the world of Sand, to a far future many generations after a disaster has destroyed civilization as we know it, where four siblings struggle to build their futures amid the harsh wastes of endless desert The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes, a land of howling wind and infernal sand. In this barren home, siblings Conner, Rob, Palmer and Violet daily carve out a future. They live in the shadow of their father and oldest sister, Vic, two of the greatest sand divers ever to comb the desert’s depths. But these branches of their family tree are long gone, disappeared into the wastes beyond, leaving the younger siblings scratching in the dust, hopeful for a better life. On the other side of No Man’s Land, Anya was born beside the abundant mines knowing her prospects would be to marry, have a family, and work in ore, in service to the Empire of the East. But when an atomic bomb delivered by a stranger destroys most of her town—murdering all her friends and community—she follows her father to a strange land of dunes to bring vengeance to their enemies. Two families collide across the sand, and nothing for a thousand dunes will ever be the same.
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Landline
Like the seed, it's about family bonds strained by loss, but swaps desert survival for a warm, low-stakes domestic romance with time-travel whimsy.
Night Music
Shares grief and a family rebuilding after losing a parent-figure, though the peril is financial and small-town rather than lethal wasteland; gentler, with romance.
Secrets, Schemes and Sewing Machines
Also about siblings stitching a fractured family back together after a secret upends everything, but gentle contemporary YA instead of brutal desert survival.
Harvest Season
Keeps the murder, gore and morally grey survivors, but trades sand-choked wasteland for a small coastal town and adds very explicit romance.
Tourist Season
Same appetite for graphic violence, grief and ruthless characters, though it's a darkly comic small-town revenge romance rather than bleak post-collapse adventure.
Slow Dance
Family wounds and long absences drive it too, but it's a quiet, hopeful second-chance love story with no apocalypse or bloodshed.