Book picks similar to
It Began by Max Lockwood
science-fiction
audiobooks
apocalyptic
apocolyptic-dystopia-zombie
The End of the World Running Club
Adrian J. Walker - 2014
When the sky begins to fall and he finds himself alone, his best hope is to run – or risk losing what he loves forever.When the world ends and you find yourself forsaken, every second counts. No one knows this more than Edgar Hill. Stranded on the other side of the country from his wife and children, Ed must push himself across a devastated wasteland to get back to them. With the clock ticking and hundreds of miles between them, his best hope is to run -- or risk losing what he loves forever.
The Road
Cormac McCarthy - 2006
Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
The Silence
Tim Lebbon - 2015
Then there is light, there are voices, and they feed... Swarming from their prison, they multiply and thrive. To scream, even to whisper, is to summon death.Deaf for many years, Ally knows how to live in silence. Now, it is her family's only chance of survival. To leave their home, to shun others, to find a remote haven where they can sit out the plague. But will it ever end? And what kind of world will be left?
The Bombs Fall
Michelle Muckley - 2014
He has been stuck inside his tower since the bombs destroyed the world he knew. The reason for the war is still a mystery, but ever since that day the world stands still, trapped by the nuclear winter and the Guardians who patrol the exits. Zachary should feel lucky to be alive, but he is haunted by past mistakes which he never got a chance to put right. The only way out is the New Omega Lottery. The prize is a place in Omega, a giant glass tower in the centre of their barren world where the new government, The Conservators, rule. Nobody from Delta has ever won. But when Zachary meets Emily he knows she is not from Delta. Convinced there must be another way out, he vows that he will find it. But he doesn't realise that The Conservators have already found him.
Ebb Tide: A Post-Zombie Apocalypse Thriller (The Southwind Saga Book 1)
Jase Kovacs - 2016
A two week blue water passage becomes a journey into an unknown future when a virulent plague wipes out humanity. Where would you go? How would you survive? And what would happen to your children? It's thirteen years after the Great Dying, a vicious plague that wiped out 99% of humanity - and turned many of the survivors into twisted monsters. Matai is the last surviving member of a famous sailing family. Alone, she sails her yacht Voodoo through a shattered world. Battling the elements and vicious survivors, she struggles to keep the failing systems of her boat – her home – going. She uses every ounce of ingenuity and knowledge gleaned from her passed parents to perform the day to day maintenance necessary to stay afloat. She has become a scavenger by necessity; searching deadly shipwrecks for anything that can keep her alive – or that she can trade with other survivors. But all this changes when, while exploring a derelict cargo ship, she discovers an evil greater than any she's ever faced. For the isolated islands of the Pacific are now the last scattered bastions of humanity. And it is on these islands that Matai will face her greatest challenge yet – one that may spell the final end for the human race. What is the Southwind Saga? The Southwind Saga is a series of books with a nautical focus set in a post-apocalyptic world. Think Walking Dead with boats or (as one reviewer put it) The Young Woman and the Zombie instead of The Old Man and the Sea. In the world of the Southwind Saga, no one really knows what caused the end of the world. No one really understands how the disease, that kills most and turns others into mindless monsters, came to be. The plague that wiped out humanity struck so suddenly that the only survivors were those too isolated to be infected - and too isolated to have a proper idea of what is going on. It's a Saga as it's an open ended series, where we follow the lives of the main characters - Matty, a nineteen year old female sailor and Zac, a young introverted translator - as they struggle to rebuild society on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean, thirteen years after a zombie apocalypse. Read it if you enjoyed The Passage by Justin Cronin or Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - or if you want a fresh take on the post-apocalyptic scenario. Fans of kickass - yet realistic - heroines will also love this book. The first two books of the series - EBB TIDE and SLACK WATER - are out now.
Dies the Fire
S.M. Stirling - 2004
What follows is the most terrible global catastrophe in the history of the human race-and a Dark Age more universal and complete than could possibly be imagined.
The Girl in Red
Christina Henry - 2019
There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn't look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intents. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there's something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined. Red doesn't like to think of herself as a killer, but she isn't about to let herself get eaten up just because she is a woman alone in the woods....
The Seeker
Sandy James - 2015
Upon discovering that he is also an alien, she fears that his race will pose an additional threat to Earth’s freedom.Aiodan’s mission doesn’t include falling in love with a human female or liberating her father from an internment camp. He must find a way to keep his vows and still protect Kara, just as she must put aside her hatred of aliens to allow Aiodhan into her heart. Only then can they work together to rescue humankind from cruel enslavement.
Gone to Ground
Cheryl Taylor - 2013
Journalist Maggie Langton, determined not to let her son, Mark, grow up in the dangerous environment of the APZ, decides to run for the empty ranch land of northwestern Arizona. When she runs into O’Reilly, a fugitive ex-Enforcer, she grudgingly admits she needs help developing those skills needed to live on a small ranch camp. What she doesn’t expect, however, is that with knowledge of how to live rough, O’Reilly also possesses a darker knowledge: knowledge much more dangerous, and knowledge which the government will do anything to suppress. Maggie and O’Reilly find themselves in a fight to keep their newly formed family safe and secure, and out from under the rule of the controlling new government. At the same time they discover a conspiracy much deeper than anyone had believed possible.
Dead City
Joe McKinney - 2006
Within hours, the plague has spread throughout most of Texas and shows no signs of slowing down.San Antonio police officer Eddie Hudson finds himself in the middle of the outbreak, along with a few other survivors. Eddie does his best to fight off the zombie horde and locate his wife and son, who he believes still are safe and haven’t been infected by the virus.
The Stand
Stephen King - 1978
The survivors who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge–Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious “Dark Man,” who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them–and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.
Prepared
Courtney Konstantin - 2017
She always thought her father was insane, raving about an apocalypse she never believed in, but when a plague hits the United States and the dead no longer stay dead, Alex discovers heeding her deceased father’s advice is what will keep her family alive. Before he died, Alex’s father created a compound in Montana just in case situations like this arose.Hell has arrived on earth.The dead walk, hungry for human flesh. Living in a highly populated city like Las Vegas makes the reality of the plague imminent to Alex. With little time to spare, Alex must make split-second decisions to prevent her family from being devoured. Facing the end, Alex has three goals.Escape Las Vegas. Get to the compound. Survive.As the outside world crumbles and grows darker, Alex faces adversity from not just the infected, but the uninfected as well. Government assistance is nowhere in sight, and rumors fly that the nation’s only solution to the growing plague is execution.Not everyone will outlast the plague. Doomsday is here. Will Alex be up to the challenge, or fall, and rise again as one of the undead?
Ashwin
Kit Rocha - 2017
Unfeeling. His commanding officers consider him the perfect operative, and they're right. Now, he has a simple mission: to infiltrate Gideon's Riders, the infamous sect of holy warriors that protects the people of Sector One.He's never failed to execute an objective, but there's one thing he didn't anticipate--running into Dr. Kora Bellamy, the only woman to ever break through his icy exterior.When Kora fled her life as a military doctor for the Makhai Project, all she wanted was peace--a quiet life where she could heal the sick and injured. The royal Rios family welcomed her like a sister, but she could never forget Ashwin. His sudden reappearance is a second chance--if she can manage to touch his heart.When the simmering tension between them finally ignites, Kora doesn't realize she's playing with fire. Because she's not just falling in love with a man who may not be able to love her back. Ashwin has too many secrets--and one of them could destroy her.
Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse
Victor Gischler - 2008
Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse begins nine years later, when he emerges into a bizarre landscape filled with hollow reminders of an America that no longer exists. The highways are lined with abandoned automobiles; electricity is generated by indentured servants pedaling stationary bicycles. What little civilization remains revolves around Joey Armageddon's Sassy A-Go-Go strip clubs, where the beer is cold, the lap dancers are hot, and the bouncers are armed with M16s. Accompanied by his cowboy sidekick Buffalo Bill, the gorgeous stripper Sheila, and the mountain man Ted, Mortimer journeys to the lost city of Atlanta -- and a showdown that might determine the fate of humanity.
The Fireman
Joe Hill - 2016
Stay cool.No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.