Book picks similar to
Take The Long Way Home by Brian Keene
horror
brian-keene
novella
fiction
Day by Day Armageddon
J.L. Bourne - 2004
An unknown plague sweeps the planet. The dead rise to claim the Earth as the new dominant species. Trapped in the midst of a global tragedy, he must make decisions...choices that that ultimately mean life, or the eternal curse to walk as one of them.
Nightflyers
George R.R. Martin - 1985
Nine misfit academics on an expedition to find the volcryn, a mythic race of intersteller nomads, and the only ship available for this strange quest is the Nightflyer, a cybernetic wonder with a never-seen captain...Nine innocents are about to find themselves in deep space, trapped with an insane murderer who can go anywhere, do anything, and intends to kill them all.
Brayan's Gold
Peter V. Brett - 2011
Instead Arlen finds himself alone on a frozen mountainside, carrying a dangerous cargo to Count Brayan’s gold mine, one of the furthest points in the duchy. And One Arm, giant rock demon, hunts him still. Novella.
Devoured
Jason Brant - 2013
Day Two: Higher brain function erodes in those exposed to the gas. Their bodies begin to distort, faces distending, skin sallowing, teeth elongating. Day Three: The infected disappear into the shadows, fleeing the harsh daylight which has begun to sear their flesh. Day Four: The world is DEVOURED. Life isn’t kind to Lance York. A full-time job has eluded him for years, his wife loathes the sight of him, his bank accounts are empty, and his wealthy father-in-law revels in his failures. After he lunges in front of a car to save a sick and disoriented woman, Lance awakens in a quarantined hospital. A devastating plague is spreading worldwide, driving those infected with it insane. Their bodies begin to mutate into horrors that have haunted mankind’s nightmares for centuries. The world descends into chaos as the infected flee to the shadows, emerging at night to devour the remnants of civilization. With the help of an unlikely ally, Lance must navigate through the collapsing city of Pittsburgh, striving to escape the madness of the apocalypse that unfolds around them.
Hare Moon
Carrie Ryan - 2011
And when she sneaks out, past the gates and down the path into the Forest of Hands and Teeth, she meets a boy who teaches her heart things she never knew. But love in a world surrounded by so much death doesn’t come without its sacrifices, and Tabitha gradually realizes just how much she’ll have to give up to live among the Unconsecrated. From New York Times bestselling author Carrie Ryan comes an original story of love after the Return.
Ashes
Ilsa J. Bick - 2011
. .An electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, destroying every electronic device, wiping out every computerized system, and killing billions.Alex hiked into the woods to say good-bye to her dead parents and her personal demons. Now desperate to find out what happened after the pulse crushes her to the ground, Alex meets up with Tom—a young soldier—and Ellie, a girl whose grandfather was killed by the EMP.For this improvised family and the others who are spared, it’s now a question of who can be trusted and who is no longer human.Author Ilsa J. Bick crafts a terrifying and thrilling post-apocalyptic novel about a world that could become ours at any moment, where those left standing must learn what it means not just to survive, but to live amidst the devastation.
Thorn in My Side
Karin Slaughter - 2011
The scene is an Atlanta bar. The music is loud and the dance floor is packed. The good-looking brother picks up a girl. But when dark deeds ensue out in the parking lot, what happens next can only be described in two words: vintage Slaughter.
The White Plague
Frank Herbert - 1982
The White Plague, a marvelous and terrifyingly plausible blend of fiction and visionary theme, tells of one man who is pushed over the edge of sanity by the senseless murder of his family and who, reappearing several months later as the so-called Madman, unleashes a terrible plague upon the human race—one that zeros in, unerringly and fatally, on women.
Escaping the Dead
W.J. Lundy - 2013
With his unit and his home base destroyed, Staff Sergeant Brad Thompson suddenly finds himself isolated and in command of a small group of men trying to survive in the Afghan wasteland. The local population has been afflicted with an illness that turns them into rabid animals. They pursue him and his men at every corner and stop. Struggling to hold his team together and unite survivors, he must fight and evade his way to safety.
Infected
Scott Sigler - 2008
Working under the government’s shroud of secrecy, CIA operative Dew Phillips crisscrosses the country trying in vain to capture a live victim. With only decomposing corpses for clues, CDC epidemiologist Margaret Montoya races to analyze the science behind this deadly contagion. She discovers that these killers all have one thing in common – they’ve been contaminated by a bioengineered parasite, shaped by a complexity far beyond the limits of known science.Meanwhile Perry Dawsey – a hulking former football star now resigned to life as a cubicle-bound desk jockey – awakens one morning to find several mysterious welts growing on his body. Soon Perry finds himself acting and thinking strangely, hearing voices . . . he is infected. The fate of the human race may well depend on the bloody war Perry must wage with his own body, because the parasites want something from him, something that goes beyond mere murder.
Lucifer's Hammer
Larry Niven - 1977
Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilizationBut for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival—a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known….
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.
Three
Jay Posey - 2013
The world has collapsed, and there are no heroes any more.But when a lone gunman reluctantly accepts the mantel of protector to a young boy and his dying mother against the forces that pursue them, a hero may yet arise.
Flight or Fright: 17 Turbulent Tales
Stephen KingDan Simmons - 2018
This exciting new anthology, perfect for airport or airplane reading, includes an original introduction and story notes for each story by Stephen King, along with brand new stories from Stephen King and Joe Hill.Stephen King hates to fly. Now he and co-editor Bev Vincent would like to share this fear of flying with you.Welcome to Flight or Fright, an anthology about all the things that can go horribly wrong when you're suspended six miles in the air, hurtling through space at more than 500 mph and sealed up in a metal tube (like—gulp!—a coffin) with hundreds of strangers. All the ways your trip into the friendly skies can turn into a nightmare, including some we'll bet you've never thought of before... but now you will the next time you walk down the jetway and place your fate in the hands of a total stranger.Featuring brand new stories by Joe Hill and Stephen King, as well as fourteen classic tales and one poem from the likes of Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Dan Simmons, and many others, Flight or Fright is, as King says, "ideal airplane reading, especially on stormy descents... Even if you are safe on the ground, you might want to buckle up nice and tight."
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Harlan Ellison - 1967
It was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction.It won a Hugo Award in 1968. The name was also used for a short story collection of Ellison's work, featuring this story. It was recently reprinted by the Library of America, collected in volume two (Terror and the Uncanny, from the 1940s to Now) of American Fantastic Tales (2009).