Book picks similar to
The Release by Shelbi Wescott


young-adult
dystopian
post-apocalyptic
ya

Taking on the Dead


Annie Walls - 2012
    It's the only way to survive. The only way not to draw the living dead. Helping a small group of people, she learns the new world might not be what she assumes. Venturing out of her refuge and comfort zone, she meets Rudy, who helps her find a greater purpose. She realizes that the world has moved on without her. Only it's not what she expects. Her knowledge of the living dead grows and only makes her more curious as humanity continues to hang on by a thread. While on her search for answers she finds comfort in new friendships and love, but her past seems as if it will haunt her forever. Kansas takes it upon herself to help other survivors, which would be easy if the famished were the only obstacles.

Juniper Unraveling


Keri Lake - 2017
     Papa says everyone has a story that deserves to be told. Most begin years ago, after the second bomb hit, unearthing a deadly contagion that divided the population into the pure, the infected, and the Ragers. Many recount the moment we rose up from the ashes and started anew. Others tell of the day we built a wall to keep them out. For some, they’re nothing more than the vestiges left behind—a simple name carved into the knotty bark of a Juniper tree. My story begins with a boy. A mute, from the other side of the wall, known only as Six, who touched my heart in ways that words never could, and gave me the courage to face my darkest truth. Juniper Unraveling is a full-length standalone romance set in a post-apocalyptic world.

The Rain


Virginia Bergin - 2014
    Crowded in Zach's kitchen, Ruby and the rest of the partygoers laugh at Zach's parents' frenzied push to get them all inside as it starts to drizzle. But then the radio comes on with the warning, "It's in the rain! It's fatal, it's contagious, and there's no cure."Two weeks later, Ruby is alone. Anyone who's been touched by rain or washed their hands with tap water is dead. The only drinkable water is quickly running out. Ruby's only chance for survival is a treacherous hike across the country to find her father-if he's even still alive.

Zero Day


Bobby Adair - 2013
    Disturbing news footage is flooding the cable news channels. People are worried. People are frightened. But Zed Zane is oblivious. Zed needs to borrow rent money from his parents. He gets up Sunday morning, drinks enough tequila to stifle his pride and heads to his mom’s house for a lunch of begging, again.But something is wrong. There's blood in the foyer. His mother's corpse is on the living room floor. Zed's stepdad, Dan is wild with crazy-eyed violence and attacks Zed when he comes into the house. They struggle into the kitchen. Dan's yellow teeth tear at Zed's arm but Zed grabs a knife and stabs Dan, thirty-seven times, or so the police later say.With infection burning in his blood, Zed is arrested for murder but the world is falling apart and he soon finds himself back on the street, fighting for his life among the infected who would kill him and the normal people, who fear him.

Patient Zero


L.T. Ryan - 2013
    An experiment has gone horribly wrong and threatens to wipe all traces of humanity from Earth. 3rd Ranger Battalion, Bravo Company is sent in to assist, clean up the mess before it gets out of control.They've vanished.Sean Ryder is an Air Force Pararescueman. Attached to SEAL Team 8, he believes he is on a routine rescue and recovery mission. Less than half an hour after landing in Nigeria, he knows that is not the case. And the further his mission leads him, the harder it becomes to get out alive.Patient Zero is the first book in the zombie apocalypse / post-apocalyptic series Affliction Z.

Blackout


Boyd Craven - 2018
    He’s a poacher, a moonshiner and a prepper, out of necessity. Despite trying to live on the straight and narrow, he knows the law can turn things on you in a heartbeat. When Wes has to come up with money for his Grandpa’s surgery, he gets involved with an unsavory group. Living deep in poverty for most of his life, he’s become resilient and flexible, but college education can only take him so far. A solar storm sends the northern lights as far south as Texas, and cascading failures in the grid cripple the nation. Now, without communications, Flagg has to prove he has what it takes to still survive.

Survival Colony Nine


Joshua David Bellin - 2014
    Querry is a member of Survival Colony Nine, one of the small, roving groups of people who outlived the wars and environmental catastrophes that destroyed the old world. The commander of Survival Colony Nine is his father, Laman Genn, who runs the camp with an iron will. He has to--because heat, dust, and starvation aren't the only threats in this ruined world. There are also the Skaldi. Monsters with the ability to infect and mimic human hosts, the Skaldi appeared on the planet shortly after the wars of destruction. No one knows where they came from or what they are. But if they're not stopped, it might mean the end of humanity. Six months ago, Querry had an encounter with the Skaldi--and now he can't remember anything that happened before then. If he can recall his past, he might be able to find the key to defeat the Skaldi. If he can't, he's their next victim.

Extinction Horizon


Nicholas Sansbury Smith - 2014
    When a top secret Medical Corps research facility goes dark, Team Ghost is called in to face their deadliest enemy yet--a variant strain of Ebola that turns men into monsters.After barely escaping with his life, Beckham returns to Fort Bragg in the midst of a new type of war. The virus is already spreading... As cities fall, Team Ghost is ordered to keep CDC virologist Dr. Kate Lovato alive long enough to find a cure. What she uncovers will change everything.Total extinction is just on the horizon, but will the cure be worse than the virus?

After the Fear


Rosanne Rivers - 2013
    Stay away from the trigger cameras and regularly update your Debtbook, and you just might survive. But having to watch the way criminals are dealt with—murdered by Demonstrators in the Stadium—is a law Sola tries to avoid. When a charming Demonstrator kisses her at a party, however, she’s thrust into the Stadium and forced into the very role she despises.Armed with only natural resourcefulness and a caring nature, Sola narrowly survives her first bout. Her small success means she’s whisked off to a training camp, where she discovers a world beyond the trigger cameras and monitoring—a world where falling in love with a killer doesn’t seem so terrible.Yet life as a Demonstrator has no peace. Sola must train her way through twenty-five more Demonstrations before she can return home to her father. At the end of each battle, only one survivor remains.Sola could face anyone in the Stadium . . . even a loved one.

Flu


Wayne Simmons - 2010
    An epidemic, they call it. The posters say to cover your mouth when you sneeze, and throw away the tissue. But such simple measures won't help. Because when you catch this flu, armed police come and lock you in your house to die alone. When you catch this flu, it kills you in days. And two hours after it's killed you, your eyelids snap open again... FLU is a pacey, terrifying, frighteningly real zombie horror story.

After the End


Bonnie Dee - 2010
    Zombies are on the loose and the world is falling apart. In the tradition of apocalyptic novels such as Stephen King’s THE STAND, a group of strangers on a Manhattan subway are brought together in the name of survival. The group follows the lead of Ari Brenner, a young man who doesn’t recognize his own leadership qualities and believes they follow him simply because he wears an army uniform. Lila Teske, a college student studying philosophy, finds her non-violent beliefs tested in the crucible of a zombie attack. There are other members of the diverse group, but the focus of the story is on Ari and Lila, two young people who learn about sacrifice and inner strength through the ordeal. With the city’s infrastructure down and communication with the outside world curtailed the survivors head toward the nearest marina. When they meet a lab tech who may have a solution to the virus, they know his safety is paramount and it’s more important than ever that they get off the island. But zombies aren’t the only danger that impedes them on their perilous journey.Be sure to check out the exciting sequel, Dead Country, about a new set of characters surviving zombies in the Midwest plains.

Grace Lost


M. Lauryl Lewis - 2012
    They are joined by two other survivors, Gus and Emilie. Infected, Zoe must also face the realization that she has developed a telepathic link to the living dead that fills her mind with darkness and evil. Facing unimaginable horrors and unthinkable tragedies, the group must fight both the living and the dead. Zoe and Boggs manage to fall in love while surrounded by death and despair. Before long, it becomes clear that the living dead do not play by usual zombie rules.

Icons


Margaret Stohl - 2013
    The day the windows shattered. The day the power stopped. The day Dol's family dropped dead. The day Earth lost a war it didn't know it was fighting.Since then, Dol has lived a simple life in the countryside—safe from the shadow of the Icon and its terrifying power. Hiding from the one truth she can't avoid.She's different. She survived. Why?When Dol and her best friend, Ro, are captured and taken to the Embassy, off the coast of the sprawling metropolis once known as the City of Angels, they find only more questions. While Ro and fellow hostage Tima rage against their captors, Dol finds herself drawn to Lucas, the Ambassador's privileged son. But the four teens are more alike than they might think, and the timing of their meeting isn't a coincidence. It's a conspiracy.Within the Icon's reach, Dol, Ro, Tima, and Lucas discover that their uncontrollable emotions—which they've always thought to be their greatest weaknesses—may actually be their greatest strengths.Bestselling author Margaret Stohl delivers the first book in a heart-pounding series set in a haunting new world where four teens must piece together the mysteries of their pasts—in order to save the future.

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.

Fortress Britain


Glynn James - 2012
    Now Fortress Britain is the last bastion of the living - with 50 million beleaguered survivors facing down a world of 7 billion animated corpses.And when civilization fell, one international team of supremely elite special operators was being assembled for a nearly impossible mission, deployed out of the SAS barracks at Hereford. Supremely trained and armed, always the most skilled, resolved, and unstoppable amongst us, now the commandos of Alpha team are humanity's last best hope for survival. Searching through the detritus of fallen Europe, scavenging pharmaceutical labs for clues to a vaccine that might bring humanity back from the brink, now they are tasked with one last desperate operation.They must cross the Atlantic aboard the world's only remaining supercarrier, insert by air into the very middle of a dead continent, and then fight their way on foot through a city of 3 million ravening dead guys. But these Zulus will not be like any zombies they have ever fought before...