NEW YORK >> Savannah Miller, 26, has been a “Hunger Games” reader for half of her life.

“As a kid you focus so much on the plot and the action,” said Miller, who was among hundreds of fans at the Barnes & Noble in Manhattan’s Union Square at a 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 appreciated her writing more, too.”

“Hunger Games” fans gathered in bookstores around the world for celebrations of Suzanne 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 — 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 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.

“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.

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.