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Into the Shadows


Karly Kirkpatrick - 2010
    This is the first book in the Into the Shadows Trilogy.Paivi Anderson has it all - friends, a spot on the varsity basketball team, wonderful parents, and quite possibly, her first boyfriend. It was everything a freshman in high school could ask for. Her perfect life begins to crumble when she discovers her name on a list distributed by a power-hungry presidential candidate. How could anyone think of Paivi as an Enemy of the State? Could it be because of her special powers? No one was supposed to know about them, but the mysterious messages in her tater tots say otherwise. In INTO THE SHADOWS, Paivi quickly learns who her friends are and is forced into a reality she didn’t see coming.

Sleep Over: An Oral History of the Apocalypse


H.G. Bells - 2018
    The feeling of your brain on edge. How easily irritated you were. How difficult it was to concentrate, even on seemingly menial tasks. It was just a single restless night, but everything felt just a little bit harder to do, and the only real comfort was knowing your head would finally hit the pillow at the end of the day, and when you awoke the next morning everything would return to normal.But what if sleep didn’t come the next night? Or the night after? What might happen if you, your friends and family, your coworkers, the strangers you pass on the street, all slowly began to realize that rest might not ever come again?How slowly might the world fall apart? How long would it take for a society without sleep to descend into chaos?Sleep Over is collection of waking nightmares, a scrapbook of the haunting and poignant stories from those trapped in a world where the pillars of society are crumbling, and madness is slowly descending on a planet without rest.Online vigilantism turns social media into a deadly gamble.A freelance journalist grapples with the ethics of turning in footage of mass suicide.A kidnapped hypnotist is held hostage by those at wit’s end for a cure.In Sleep Over, these stories are just the beginning. Before the Longest Day, the world record was eleven days without sleep. It turns out most of us can go much longer.

Alone at the End of the World


M.P. McDonald - 2020
     Thirteen-year-old Ethan should be practicing his skateboard moves, not watching his family members die, one by one. He knows he could become a victim of the evil infection at any minute. Scared and alone, he fills his backpack and goes in search of other survivors, hoping he lives long enough to find someone. Anyone. When Cassie sees the bodies of neighbors and strangers littering what had been pristine front lawns, she realizes her intense focus on business and family may have saved their lives. How does a single mom and her two kids survive an apocalypse alone? Noah emerges from his two-week fishing trip in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, shocked to learn that a devastating pandemic has swept the world. Should he venture into the fray to find other survivors or retreat into the woods and isolate himself as long as he can? When their paths converge, they face a new struggle ─ learning to trust total strangers as if their very survival depends on it... because it does. Sympatico Syndrome is intent on sparing no one.

The Rain


Joseph A. Turkot - 2013
    The thing that always comes to mind first isn’t the how though, it’s the how much. Russell still does the math too: 15, 5,400, and 8,550. 15 inches a day, 5,400 a year, and 8,550 feet since the start. We have no idea if it’s accurate. But it’s important to think about it, he says, because it reminds us to keep moving. I’m Tanner. Russell plucked me from the rain when I was two. Fourteen years ago we left Philadelphia. As the water rose, we moved west, hoping the elevation would keep us warm and dry. Pittsburg, Indianapolis, Sioux Falls, Rapid City. Now we’re stranded on the islands in Wyoming. Russell thinks they used to be the Bighorn mountains. But we can’t go back now. There’s no warm and there’s no dry anymore. Just a rumor about a place where it isn't raining. So we’re going to try to make it—520 miles south to Leadville. But we can’t drift east, the Great Plains have become waterspout alley, a raging tomb of moving water. Together we push on, surviving, heading to Leadville. But something is wrong with him now. He says it’s nothing. But his breathing doesn’t sound that way. Exposure, pruned hands, and infection. But since, Rapid City, it’s the face eaters too. And the crack in the canoe that’s growing. And the ice I think I see on the water. Russell thinks it’s my imagination. We cling to the last strips of the veneer. And each other.

Entanglement


Dan Rix - 2012
    Casler Selavio, on the entanglement of halves.In a world like ours, humans are born in pairs. When a newborn boy takes his first breath in the coastal town of Tularosa, the exact time is noted, recorded in the Registry, and later compared to the birth times of other newborns around the globe. There will be one identical match—his half. They will meet on their eighteenth birthday and they will spend their lives together. Except this time, there is no match.Hotheaded heartthrob Aaron Harper is scheduled to meet his half in twenty-nine days, and he doesn’t buy a word of that entanglement crap. So what if he and his half were born the same day and share a spooky psychic connection? Big deal. After breaking one too many teenage girls’ hearts, he’ll stick to brawling with the douchebag rugby players any day.Until the day a new girl arrives at school and threatens everything he takes for granted.Cold and unapproachable, Amber Lilian hates the growing list of similarities between her and the one boy she can’t read, Aaron: born the same day, both stubborn, both terrified of meeting their halves. . . . All the more reason not to trust him. That she would rather die than surrender herself as her half’s property is none of his damn business. But once lost in Aaron’s dangerous, jet black eyes, she’s already surrendered more than she cares to admit.Tangled in each other’s self-destructive lives, Aaron and Amber learn the secret behind their linked births and why they feel like halves—but unless they can prove it before they turn eighteen, Aaron faces a lifetime alone in a world where everyone else has a soul mate . . . and he’ll have to watch Amber give herself to a boy who intends to possess not only her body but also a chunk of her soul.ENTANGLEMENT, a 75,000 word YA thriller, will appeal to readers of Michael Grant's GONE and Ally Condie’s MATCHED.

The New World


Patrick Ness - 2010
    - Patrick Ness

Emerge


Heather Sunseri - 2015
    The only person to contract the virus and survive, Cricket fled her identity and the safety of New Caelum, an airtight city. Now eighteen, she watches the city where the wealthy cocooned from the devastating outbreak. When the city's rumbling incinerator wakes her one night while she and her friends are camping just beyond the city walls, she alone knows what the fiery machine means: the lethal virus is back. Only eighteen, Westlin Layne is already being groomed to succeed his mother as New Caelum's next president. Suddenly West's sister develops symptoms of the deadly virus thought to be eradicated years ago. Placed under quarantine, the president confesses to West a long-held secret: Christina Black, West's childhood friend and first love, survived the virus, and her body alone holds the precious antibodies to save his sister. Now West must leave the city to find Christina. But Cricket has no intention of being found.

Forged


Jennifer Rush - 2013
    When Dani O'Brien entered the Branch, she planned to trade her freedom so that her family could have a better life. But joining up with the mysterious organization is more than she bargained for. Branch head Connor watches over her closely--too closely. The training is brutal, the experiments are secret, and the missions promise to be anything but ordinary. The only thing getting Dani through each day is the hope that she'll run into Sam--a young man, about her age, who wears the world on his shoulders.Find out how it all began in this short-story prequel to Jennifer Rush's thrilling and suspenseful Altered series.

The Coldness of Objects


Panayotis Cacoyannis - 2021
    When a postman knocks on his door, the news he delivers will cause 70-year-old Anthony Pablo Rubens to reflect on all the sadnesses and joys of the past, while he begins to prepare for the surprises of the future.The past still revolves around the moment in the summer of 1984 when young Anthony first realized he had fallen in love.The present is a Kafkaesque nightmare worse than Orwell's 1984, "a hideous world where people don't need to be watched by Big Brother." It's a world that Anthony has mostly shut his eyes to, but which suddenly he is forced to confront.And the future now encompasses the mystery, and excitement, and dread of a day as an exhibit at the National People's Museum.A dystopian political satire, The Coldness of Objects is also a story of loss, and of different kinds of love.

Times What They Are


D.L. Barnhart - 2015
    Panicked millions gridlock roads as Ray Bramlett escapes New York, barely ahead of a radioactive cloud. A thousand miles west, Karla Becker stares in horror at the televised images—sure the aftermath will bring worse. While Karla hunkers down at home, trusting her preparations, Ray seeks safety among his Tennessee friends. Each of their strategies buys time, but as social order collapses around them, both plans go awry. Now, survival means confronting a world teeming with sudden death and learning that no sanctuary remains safe forever.

Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson | Summary & Analysis


Book*Sense - 2015
    Neal Stephenson’s science fiction thriller, depicts the end of the Earth through the destruction of the Moon by an unknown Agent and the attempts to preserve humanity through a multi-millennial gap between times when the surface of the planet will be inhabitable. The preservation efforts soon bog down in political entanglements, both from the doomed world and from within the populations who are meant to carry humanity through thousands of years in space to a planned return to Earth. When, at last, humanity makes to return to the surface of Earth, they find that other populations, not entirely friendly, await them, having endured their own privations across the millennia. Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson, is a substantial piece of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic science fiction. Well-written and compelling, it offers a convincing account of one of the many scenarios in which Earth might end – only to be reborn millennia later from seeds sown by the seven Eves of the novel’s title and others uncontrolled by them. It is an excellent piece of science fiction. This companion also includes the following: • Book Review • Story Setting Analysis • Story elements you may have missed as we decipher the novel • Details of Characters & Key Character Analysis • Summary of the text, with some analytical comments interspersed • Thought Provoking /or Discussion Questions for both Readers & Book Clubs • Discussion & Analysis of Themes, Symbols… • And Much More! This Analysis of Seveneves fills the gap, making you understand more while enhancing your reading experience.

The Calm Act Books 1-3


Ginger Booth - 2016
    But climate change accelerates out of control. As her old world disintegrates, Dee teams up to help build a new one."Climate change. Government surveillance. Societal breakdown. Sounds like a real downer, right? It's not, thanks to its determined, witty narrator. She's instantly relatable." - Amazon reviewBook 1: End GameAs the U.S. unravels, media and corporation offer a shining grail of salvation: to be one of the select few to secure safety in an ark. Dee Baker's Fortune 100 media job promises her an ark berth, and for backup she's dating fun and wealthy ark-itect Adam. But fellow gardener and neighbor Zack plans to make his stand outside the arks. Dee needs to choose whether to protect herself, or risk it all to help others. Trying to have it both ways could be the riskiest gambit of all.Book 2: Project ReunionWhen Ebola strikes, the Calm Act surrounds New York City with armed borders. That assumes the rest of the Northeast is OK with letting millions die, in order to save themselves. Dee Baker and partner set out to prove otherwise and mobilize the Northeast to save New York, though the doing may tear them apart.Book 3: Martial LawlessWhen a martial law leader is murdered in Pittsburgh, Dee Baker and partner are dispatched to investigate. Plagued by tornados, and isolated under the Calm Act, Pittsburgh has gone rogue, its religious factions out of control, and it's up to Dee and crew what to do about it. But the forces afoot are darker than they imagined. And Dee's about to fall into their trap.If you enjoy vivid characters, compelling world-building, and page-turning action, you'll love Ginger Booth's day-after-tomorrow Calm Act series.

Deep (Seeder Saga,#1)


Adam Moon - 2013
    But a new world has been discovered that has all the right ingredients to sustain human life. The vessel Seeder will travel four thousand years with its crew members and colonists to this new seed planet to ensure humanity lives on.But the stasis pods malfunction. When the crew is revived they discover they've been traveling for the past eighteen million years, and the colonists are all gone.And it only gets stranger. Book #1 of the best selling Seeder Saga (34 pages)

X


Jack Croxall - 2013
    Seems like the perfect time to start a diary.Shacked up in a farmhouse cellar, a doomed survivor calling herself 'X' starts a diary to document her final few days. Much less than a few days if the uglies manage to get in.

The Mortality Doctrine Series: The Complete Trilogy: The Eye of Minds; The Rule of Thoughts; The Game of Lives


James Dashner - 2017
    This edge-of-your-seat cyber-adventure trilogy is the perfect gift for fans of Marie Lu and Brandon Sanderson. The VirtNet offers total mind and body immersion, and the more hacking skills you have, the more fun it is. Why bother following the rules when it’s so easy to break them? But some rules were made for a reason. Some technology is too dangerous to fool with. And one gamer has been doing exactly that, with murderous results.      The government knows that to catch a hacker, you need a hacker. And they’ve been watching Michael. If he accepts their challenge, Michael will need to go off the VirtNet grid, to the back alleys and corners of the system human eyes have never seen—and it’s possible that the line between game and reality will be blurred forever. Also look for James Dashner's Maze Runner series— The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, The Death Cure, The Kill Order, and The Fever Code. The first and second books, The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials, are now major motion pictures featuring the star of MTV's Teen Wolf, Dylan O'Brien; Kaya Scodelario; Aml Ameen; Will Poulter; and Thomas Brodie-Sangster! Praise for the Mortality Doctrine Series:   “Dashner takes full advantage of the Matrix-esque potential for asking ‘what is real.’” —io9.com   “Set in a world taken over by virtual reality gaming, the series perfectly capture[s] Dashner’s hallmarks for inventiveness, teen dialogue and an ability to add twists and turns like no other author.” —MTV.com   “A brilliant, visceral, gamified mash-up of The Matrix and Inception, guaranteed to thrill even the non-gaming crowd.” —Christian Science Monitor