Before George A. Romero, the zombie genre was completely different from what horror fans today recognize it to be. It was Romero who took the classic Caribbean concept of a zombie and morphed it into the walking dead.Two years after Romero passed away, his novel The Living Dead will be posthumously released. The Living Dead is a previously unfinished work that Romero was writing to bring his massively popular movie franchise to the printed page. Tor will publish the novel, which was completed by author Daniel Kraus.RELATED: Creepshow TV Series Unveils The New Creep In First Look ImageIt was Kraus who revealed on Twitter that the novel would finally see the light of day. He did so with a photo of him wearing a scarf that was a gift from Romero's wife.

Kraus is the author who penned the novelization for Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water. Here is a look at the official synopsis.

“On October 24th, John Doe rises from the dead. Assistant Medical Examiner Luis Acocella and his assistant Charlene Rutkowksi are vivisecting him when it happens, and so begins a global nightmare beyond comprehension.

“Greer Morgan is a teenager living in a trailer park, and when the dead begin their assault, the true natures of her neighbors are revealed. Chuck Chaplin is a pretty-boy cable-news anchor, and the plague brings sudden purpose to his empty life.

“Karl Nishimura is the helmsman of the U.S.S. Vindicator, a nuclear submarine, and he battles against a complete zombie takeover of his city upon the sea. And meanwhile, a mysterious woman named Etta Hoffmann records the progress of the epidemic from a bunker in D.C., as well as the broken dreams and stubborn hopes of a nation not ready to give up.

“Spread across three separate time periods and combining Romero’s biting social commentary with Kraus’s gift for the beautiful and grotesque, the book rockets forward as the zombie plague explodes, endures and finally, in a shocking final act, begins to radically change.”

Over his career as a filmmaker, Romero directed six movies in his zombie franchise. It all started with Night of the Living Dead in 1968, one of the most successful independent movies of all time. He followed it up with Dawn of the Dead in 1978 and Day of the Dead in 1985.

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Twenty years later, Romero returned with Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007) and George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead (2009). That latter film was the final movie of the horror filmmaker's career.

The Living Dead by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus will hit shelves in June 2020 from Tor Books.

(via Bloody Disgusting)