At least, that's what Reverend Bilson has told his congregation.

Marina's morn believes him. So does Jed's dad. That's why Marina and Jed join one-hundred and forty-two of the reverend's congregation at a mountain retreat. From the mountaintop they will watch the Righteous Conflagration that will end this world, and then they will descend and begin the world anew.

But this world has only just begun for Jed and Marina, two teenagers who are uneasy about about the End of the World -- as well as about faith and their parents. It's not fair: Why should the world end now, when their lives are just starting -- when they've just discovered love for the first time in their life?

Told in alternating chapters from both Jed's and Marina's points of view, this first-ever collaboration between two masters of children's literature is an event not just because it is their first coauthored book, and not just because of the timeliness of the subject, but because of the timelessness of the story. In Armageddon Summer Jane Yolen and Bruce Coville have written a funny, harrowing, moving story about faith and friendship, love and loss, and the things that matter most at the end of world.