NEW YORK (AP) — Savannah Miller, 26 years old and a “Hunger Games” reader for half of her life, has only grown in admiration for Suzanne Collins’ dystopian novels.
“As a kid you focus so much on the plot and the action,” says Miller, a researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and among hundreds of fans at the Barnes & Noble in Manhattan's Union Square who attended the midnight launch party for “Sunrise on the Reaping,” published Tuesday. “As an adult I connected to the characters a lot more and had more of an emotional response. I also appreciated the writing a lot.”
“Hunger Games” fans gathered in bookstores around the world for celebrations of Collins fifth novel in her blockbuster series about a post-apocalyptic society in which combatants are forced to fight on camera for their survival. Attendees in New York — some dressed as Haymitch Abernathy, Effie Trinket and other characters — went on scavenger hunts, attempted to solve “Hunger Games”-themed puzzles and tried out a “Hunger Games” trivia game so challenging that even Collins' editor, David Levithan, said he couldn't answer them all.
Many arrivals Monday night were women in their 20s and 30s who had loved the books in middle school and renewed their attachment when Collins unexpectedly resumed the novels five years ago.
“I've been reading the books since I was 12," says 23-year-old actor Ella Dolynchuk. “It's a big part of my life, my childhood, and I love reading them as an adult when I can really understand them."
“Sunrise on the Reaping” had already reached No. 1 on Amazon before its publication and is widely expected to be one of the year's biggest fiction sellers. Although the book was embargoed before its official sales date, gleeful fans were posting videos on social media in recent days that showed off advanced copies apparently shipped too early or prematurely placed on shelves, including at Los Angeles Airport, a Sam's Club in California and an Indigo bookstore in Canada.
According to Scholastic Inc., the four previous books have sold tens of millions of copies and have been published in 55 languages. Film adaptations helped launch the career of Jennifer Lawrence, who starred as the heroine Katniss Everdeen in the movies based on the first three books, and have grossed more than $3 billion worldwide. A screen version of “Sunrise on the Reaping” is scheduled for November 2026, with Francis Lawrence returning as director.
Collins had planned to end the series after the third book, “Mockingjay,” which came out in 2010. But she startled readers and the publishing world by announcing a decade later that she was working on a fourth volume, the prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes." Levithan was among those who had not suspected that Collins was returning to the ravaged land of Panem.
“She decides and then she springs it on me,” Levithan said Monday night at the Barnes & Noble launch. “We had never talked about prequels. The trilogy was the trilogy, and then she realized she had more to say.”
The new book begins at sunrise, with the reaping of the Fiftieth Hunger Games. It's set 24 years before the original “Hunger Games” novel, which came out in 2008, and 40 years after “Songbirds and Snakes.” Collins has drawn upon Greek mythology and the Roman gladiator games for her earlier books. For “Sunrise on the Reaping,” her muses included the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume.
“With ‘Sunrise on the Reaping,’ I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few,‘” Collins, who did not attend the Barnes & Noble event and rarely gives interviews, said in a statement released when the new book was announced. “The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative. The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”
“Sunrise” centers on a teenage Haymitch, who will age into Katniss' sardonic, alcoholic mentor, and includes references to various other characters and subplots in previous books. New York Times reviewer Jennifer Harlan on Tuesday called the novel a “propulsive, heart-wrenching addition” to the series that adds ”welcome texture to the cruel world of Panem." People magazine's Lizz Schumer noted some passages could be seen as references to current events, including “If you can get people to laugh at someone, it makes them look weak.”
On Monday, lines began to form four hours before the store's doors opened: 34-year-old Elizabeth Kelly was among the first to arrive. She thinks of the series as her “comfort books,” while also calling them “survival stories that feel more and more relevant."
“It takes a lot of imagination to expand a world and say something new every time,” she said. “I feel like she's writing the books to tell us something and not just writing books to make money.”
This version of the story restores dropped letter in “Mockingjay.”
Fans appear at a midnight launch party for "Sunrise on the Reaping" by Suzanne Collins at Barnes & Noble bookstore in New York on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hillel Italie)
Savannah Miller holds her copy of "Sunrise on the Reaping" by Suzanne Collins at a midnight launch party at Barnes & Noble bookstore in New York on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hillel Italie)
Ella Dolynchuk holds her copy of "Sunrise on the Reaping" by Suzanne Collins at a midnight launch party at Barnes & Noble bookstore in New York on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hillel Italie)
The National Transportation Safety Board on Sunday said it is gathering information about the evacuation of a Frontier Airlines plane after it hit and killed a person on the runway at Denver International Airport during takeoff.
The plane, on route from Denver to Los Angeles International Airport, “reported striking a pedestrian during takeoff at DEN at approximately 11:19 p.m. on Friday,” according to a post on the airport’s official X account.
Passengers were evacuated via slides, and the emergency crew bused them to the terminal. An airport spokesperson said 12 passengers suffered minor injuries and five were taken to hospitals.
Some people on board expressed concern about the evacuation, including being stuck in the plane for several minutes as smoke filled the cabin and left on the tarmac in the cold once they were out. Video also showed some passengers coming down the slide with what looked to be their carry-on bags.
“We are gathering information about the emergency evacuation to determine if it meets criteria for a safety investigation,” NTSB spokesperson Sarah Taylor Sulick said early Sunday, adding that the agency might have more details in a few hours.
Frontier Airlines didn’t respond early Sunday to a request for information about the evacuation.
A spokesman for the Denver Police Departmet said Sunday the investigation into the incident was ongoing and that the identification of the person on the runway will be confirmed and released by the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner.
The person was hit two minutes after jumping the fence and crossing the runway. The person is not believed to be an airport employee.
“We’re stopping on the runway,” the pilot tells the control tower according to the site ATC.com. “We just hit somebody. We have an engine fire.”
The pilot tells the air traffic controller they have “231 souls” on board and that an “individual was walking across the runway.”
The air traffic controller responds that they are “rolling the trucks now” before the pilot tells the tower they “have smoke in the aircraft. We are going to evacuate on the runway.”
Frontier Airlines said in a statement that flight 4345 was the one involved in the collision and that “smoke was reported in the cabin and the pilots aborted takeoff.” It was not clear whether the smoke was linked to the collision.
The airline said the plane was carrying 224 passengers and seven crew members.
“We are investigating this incident and gathering more information in coordination with the airport and other safety authorities,” the airline said.
Passengers said panic took hold on the flight after an engine caught fire and the cabin began filling with smoke.
“Honestly, I thought I was going to die,” passenger Mohamed Hassan told Colorado’s 9NEWS.
“A lot of people next to me were screaming and crying. I just closed my eyes,” he said. "At that time, you’re not really thinking of anything, you know? Because we were just about to take off and I heard that boom, so I wasn’t sure what happened. I just thought something really, really bad happened.”
Passenger Nikil Thalanki told local media outlets that he felt “this jerk” as the plane was about to take off, adding that it felt like the wheels had left the ground but then came back down.
“There was fire on the engine. There was lots of sparks that are happening. Immediately came to a stop,” Thalanki said. "As soon as we saw the sparks on the flight, smoke filled the cabin completely. It was super hard to breathe.”
Kimberly Randle said passengers were panicking and desperate to get off the aircraft.
“In a few minutes, they finally opened the door. People were running to get out of the plane," he said. "It was chaos everywhere.”
The NTSB has for years expressed concerned about evacuations, especially passengers leaving with their carry-ons. In an April report on the evacuation aboard a United Airlines flight at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, the NTSB described a troubling scene.
Passengers were evacuated via slides and stairs last year from the jetliner after an engine problem during takeoff caused smoke and fire on the right wing.
Despite the flight attendant telling passengers to remain seated, several began shouting, “fire on the engine, let me get out!” That trigged “widespread panic" and prompted many passengers to get up and start retrieving their belongings. Some climbed over seats and began obstructing the aisle.
Three large men insisted the evacuation occur, pushing past a flight attendant and going down a slide before it had fully deployed – causing it to deflate and become unusable.
“Cabin crew training emphasizes assertive command presence and passenger control during evacuations; however, this event demonstrates how rapidly escalating passenger behavior can affect evacuation dynamics even in the absence of confirmed fire or smoke conditions,” according to the report.
The incident in Denver came a day after a Delta Air Lines employee was killed while on the job at the Orlando International Airport. In a statement, the airline said the employee was killed Thursday night without providing details of the incident or the name of the employee.
“We are focused on extending our full support to family and taking care of our Orlando team during this difficult time,” the airline said. “We are working with local authorities as a full investigation gets underway to determine what occurred.”
AP reporter John Raby contributed from Charleston, West Virginia.
Frontier Airlines jetliner number n646fr sits outside the airlines technical operations center with other jetliners in for service north of Denver International Airport Saturday, May 9, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Frontier Airlines jetliner number n646fr sits outside the airlines technical operations center with other jetliners in for service north of Denver International Airport Saturday, May 9, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Frontier Airlines jetliner number n646fr sits outside the airlines technical operations center with other jetliners in for service north of Denver International Airport Saturday, May 9, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
