Author Amy Brashear (No Saints in Kansas) has penned a hilarious, cinematic and off-the-wall story of a small town’s (fake) nuclear demise with her latest YA historical novel, The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction. There isn’t much to do in Griffin Flats, Arkansas in 1984, and misfit teen Laura is painfully aware of that fact. The only thing that cuts through the boredom is the omnipresent threat of a Soviet bombing of the town's nuclear missile silos and the Mutually Assured Destruction that would follow. But when a Hollywood big shot chooses Griffin Flats as the shooting location for his upcoming nuclear holocaust movie, The Eve of Destruction, the whole town is turned upside down. When Laura calls into the local radio station and wins a walk-on role, she drags her stepbrother, Terrence, along to the set with her. 

With steadily rising tension, plenty of high jinks and a steady stream of fun ’80s pop-culture and music references—many of which are lovingly and hilariously explained in footnotes for today’s Gen Z teen readers—Brashear’s story is a surefire winner. In fact, music plays such a big role in The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction that Brashear has crafted the pitch-perfect playlist to listen to as you read, and it includes “songs that were referenced in Incredible True Story’s text, songs that Amy had in rotation while she was writing the book, and songs that she associates with the story (re: themes, time frame, mindset, etc.).” Check out her lovingly compiled playlist below, or click here.