Sunrise on the Reaping

On the morning of the reaping for the 50th Hunger Games — the Second Quarter Quell — District 12 is told that twice the usual number of tributes will be sent in. For sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy, that means a morning that ends with him standing on a stage with his name just called.

Sunrise on the Reaping is set twenty-four years before the events of The Hunger Games, and it is the chronologically first book in the series as it stands today.