Book picks similar to
Bishop's Honor by A.R. Shaw
post-apocalyptic
dystopian
fiction
science-fiction
The Deep
Nick Cutter - 2015
It causes people to forget—small things at first, like where they left their keys…then the not-so-small things like how to drive, or the letters of the alphabet. Then their bodies forget how to function involuntarily…and there is no cure. But now, far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, deep in the Marianas Trench, an heretofore unknown substance hailed as “ambrosia” has been discovered—a universal healer, from initial reports. It may just be the key to a universal cure. In order to study this phenomenon, a special research lab, the Trieste, has been built eight miles under the sea’s surface. But now the station is incommunicado, and it’s up to a brave few to descend through the lightless fathoms in hopes of unraveling the mysteries lurking at those crushing depths…and perhaps to encounter an evil blacker than anything one could possibly imagine.
Plague of the Dead
Z.A. Recht - 2006
The infected are subject to delirium, fever, a dramatic increase in violent behavior, and a one-hundred percent mortality rate. Death. But it doesn't end there. The victims return from death to walk the earth. When a massive military operation fails to contain the plague of the living dead it escalates into a global pandemic. In one fell swoop, the necessities of life become much more basic. Gone are petty everyday concerns. Gone are the amenities of civilized life. Yet a single law of nature remains: Live, or die. Kill, or be killed. On one side of the world, a battle-hardened General surveys the remnants of his command: a young medic, a veteran photographer, a brash Private, and dozens of refugees, all are his responsibility-all thousands of miles from home. Back in the United States, an Army Colonel discovers the darker side of Morningstar virus and begins to collaborate with a well-known journalist to leak the information to the public... The Morningstar Saga has begun.
Under a Graveyard Sky
John Ringo - 2013
Zombies are real. And we made them. Are you prepared for the zombie apocalypse? The Smith family is, with the help of a few Marines.When an airborne “zombie” plague is released, bringing civilization to a grinding halt, the Smith family, Steven, Stacey, Sophia and Faith, take to the Atlantic to avoid the chaos. The plan is to find a safe haven from the anarchy of infected humanity. What they discover, instead, is a sea composed of the tears of survivors and a passion for bringing hope.For it is up to the Smiths and a small band of Marines to somehow create the refuge that survivors seek in a world of darkness and terror. Now with every continent a holocaust and every ship an abattoir, life is lived beneath a graveyard sky.
Deal with the Devil
Kit Rocha - 2020
His squad of supersoldiers went AWOL to avoid slaughtering innocents, and now he's fighting to survive.They're on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. They could burn down the world, destroying each other in the process...Or they could do the impossible: team up.This is the first book in a near-future science fiction series with elements of romance.
The Inner Circle
Kevin George - 2011
Siberia... A tiny comet rips through Earth's atmosphere and explodes above the Tunguska region of Siberia, instantly engulfing thousands of square acres of the mostly desolate region. The explosion is heard for hundreds of miles, the light of the comet seen halfway across the globe. Had the comet hit a few hours earlier in a more populated area, millions would have been killed...A century later, another comet - this one hundreds of times bigger and more powerful - encounters a black hole in deep space and is pushed onto a new, deadly course leading straight to Earth...A small group of humans - including the President of the United States, a former astronaut and a middle school science teacher - discovers the existence of this potentially deadly comet and keep its existence hidden from the rest of the world. Although the group - which calls itself the Inner Circle - has twelve years to deal with the problem, they will need every second of that time. Not only must they figure out a way to avert this crisis, they must also start to make plans in case they can't avoid a catastrophe that could annihilate humankind...The Inner Circle is the first book of the 12-part Comet Clement series. Please enjoy and if you like it, keep an eye out for books 2 and 3, which will be available in one download...
Bitterwood
James Maxey - 2007
But he is getting old and the hate that he has carried in his heart since a group of dragon-soldiers killed his family is beginning to fade. When he kills the royal prince dragon, the king decides the only retribution is genocide of the human race. Bitterwood is forced to enter the Free City, the grand trap designed to eradicate mankind, with thousands of others. Can he lead from within, or can a select few dragons unite to stop the king's madness from becoming reality. Full of rich characters and drama, this is an amazingly astute vision of our own culture by way of a feudal kingdom where dragons rule, and humans are used as workers or pets.
Zero Repeat Forever
Gabrielle S. Prendergast - 2017
He doesn’t know the details of the mission, only the directives that hum in his mind. Dart the humans. Leave them where they fall. His job is to protect his Offside. Let her do the shooting. Until a human kills her… Sixteen year-old Raven is at summer camp when the terrifying armored Nahx invade, annihilating entire cities, taking control of the Earth. Isolated in the wilderness, Raven and her friends have only a fragment of instruction from the human resistance. Shelter in place. Which seems like good advice at first. Stay put. Await rescue. Raven doesn’t like feeling helpless but what choice does she have? Then a Nahx kills her boyfriend. Thrown together in a violent, unfamiliar world, Eighth and Raven should feel only hate and fear. But when Raven is injured, and Eighth deserts his unit, their survival depends on trusting each other…
The Space Between the Stars
Anne Corlett - 2017
Even though she wasn’t forced to emigrate from Earth, she willingly left the overpopulated, claustrophobic planet. And when a long relationship devolved into silence and suffocating sadness, she found work on a frontier world on the edges of civilization. Then the virus hit... Now Jamie finds herself dreadfully alone, with all that’s left of the dead. Until a garbled message from Earth gives her hope that someone from her past might still be alive. Soon Jamie finds other survivors, and their ragtag group will travel through the vast reaches of space, drawn to the promise of a new beginning on Earth. But their dream will pit them against those desperately clinging to the old ways. And Jamie’s own journey home will help her close the distance between who she has become and who she is meant to be...
Ark
Veronica Roth - 2019
Though most of Earth has already been evacuated, it’s Samantha’s job to catalog plant samples for the survivors’ unknowable journey beyond.Preparing to stay behind and watch the world end, she makes a final human connection.As certain doom hurtles nearer, the unexpected and beautiful potential for the future begins to flower.Veronica Roth’s Ark is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.
Red Rising
Pierce Brown - 2014
"That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.""I live for you," I say sadly.Eo kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more."Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies... even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.
The Purge of Babylon
Sam Sisavath - 2013
That was all it took. Creatures that once lived in the shadows, hidden from humankind, have risen, spreading like a plague across the globe over the course of a single night. Their numbers growing exponentially through infection, these seemingly unkillable creatures have swallowed up whole cities and collapsed unprepared governments. Survivors call it The Purge. Against all odds, a disparate group of survivors has emerged from that blood-soaked night that devastated the planet and reduced humanity to an endangered species. Among the survivors are two ex-Army Rangers, a businesswoman, and a third-year medical student. But surviving The Purge was one thing – staying alive is another matter entirely. Hope exists in the countryside, in the form of a self-sustaining underground facility designed to withstand any calamity. But in order to reach its safety, the survivors must travel hundreds of treacherous miles, with the night – and the creatures that dwell within it – always at their backs. The rules are simple: stay out of the dark, load up on silver bullets, and whatever you do, stay alive. The road to salvation has begun …
Scorpius Rising
Rebecca Zanetti - 2016
Playing with dynamite—in the form of her way-too-hot ex—is the last thing she should be doing. But forced to work with Deacan McDougall against unexpected enemies with the seconds ticking by, she knows the explosion is coming...
The Runner
W.J. Davies - 2013
As the Great Flood threatens to consume the silo, Ace and a team of divers are in a desperate battle to avert disaster. When a terrible accident destroys the person he cares about most, Ace has little left to live for. After nearly succumbing to the silo's flooded depths, he realizes that drastic measures must be taken in order to save their underground home. But those in charge deem his ideas too dangerous, his methods too forbidden, and he is shunned for his sin of toxic words. When an opportunity for redemption presents itself, Ace has only one question: Why should he fight to save these people, if they aren't willing to help themselves?
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Max Brooks - 2006
Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, "By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as 'the living dead'?"Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.
Fight Like a Man
L.L. Akers - 2017
They had everything they needed at their homestead. What he wasn't prepared for, was his family not being home if it ever happened.Olivia Rowan is with her sisters, Gabby and Emma, on a girls-only trip to Myrtle Beach. When chaos erupts and there's no gas, their journey home is a nightmare, filled with predators and danger--and apparently, Olivia hadn't learned a thing her husband tried to teach her. When your neighbors run out of food and water, and turn on each other, what will you do?Jake, a country boy mechanic, never believed in TEOTWAWKI, but he'd heard his brother-in-law preach about it many times. He knew what to do; but he didn't prepare. He lazily left it all up to Grayson--he was the prepper after all. When catastrophe strikes, will he continue to keep his head stuck in the sand while his clueless neighbors destroy each other, and his wife is stuck out on the road; or will he stand up and fight like a man? And if you're alone? Bug in or Bug out?Graysie Rowan, a freshman at University, just wants to go home. When no word comes from the government, and the state capital is overrun with looters, chaos and mayhem, the college administration puts the students on lock-down. But her dad, Grayson, had prepared her for this. Now, if she can only remember what it was he said to do...If they want to survive this post-apocalyptic event, they'll all have to learn to fight like a man.The end came not with boots on the ground, nuclear weapons or an EMP. It snuck in with a quiet clatter at the back door and flipped the switch, covering the states in darkness and sending this family on three divergent paths that ultimately lead home. When they collide in this surreal and gripping family drama, it won't be without bullets and bloodshed.