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.

Beyond the Night


Joss Ware - 2000
    . .When Dr. Elliott Drake wakes from a mysterious fifty-year sleep, the world as he knew it is gone. Cities are now desolate, and civilization is controlled by deadly immortals. Stranger still is Elliott's extraordinary new "gift"--he has the power to heal, but it comes with fatal consequences.A woman with a past . . .Jade barely escaped the immortals and is now hell-bent on revenge. She trusts no one . . . until Elliott. His piercing gaze and tempting touch shatter her defenses, but the handsome doctor seems to have dangerous secrets of his own. Is it safe to trust him with her heart?If they are to survive in this dark new world, Jade and Elliott must work together to fight the forces that take them beyond danger.Beyond desire.

Wake of Vultures


Lila Bowen - 2015
    She's a half-breed who dresses like a boy, raised by folks who don't call her a slave but use her like one. She knows of nothing else. That is, until the day a stranger attacks her. When nothing, not even a sickle to the eye can stop him, Nettie stabs him through the heart with a chunk of wood and he turns to black sand.And just like that, Nettie can see.But her newfound sight is a blessing and a curse. Even if she doesn't understand what's under her own skin, she can sense what everyone else is hiding—at least physically. The world is full of evil, and now she knows the source of all the sand in the desert. Haunted by the spirits, Nettie has no choice but to set out on a quest that might lead her to find her true kin . . . if the monsters along the way don't kill her first.

Senlin Ascends


Josiah Bancroft - 2013
    Immense as a mountain, the ancient Tower holds unnumbered ringdoms, warring and peaceful, stacked one on the other like the layers of a cake. It is a world of geniuses and tyrants, of airships and steam engines, of unusual animals and mysterious machines.Soon after arriving for his honeymoon at the Tower, the mild-mannered headmaster of a small village school, Thomas Senlin, gets separated from his wife, Marya, in the overwhelming swarm of tourists, residents, and miscreants.Senlin is determined to find Marya, but to do so he'll have to navigate madhouses, ballrooms, and burlesque theaters. He must survive betrayal, assassins, and the long guns of a flying fortress. But if he hopes to find his wife, he will have to do more than just endure.This quiet man of letters must become a man of action.The first book in the stunning and strange debut fantasy series that's receiving major praise from some of fantasy's biggest authors such as Mark Lawrence and Django Wexler.

Doubt


Anne-Rae Vasquez - 2013
    Labeled all their lives as being ‘weird’ and ‘geeky’, they find true friendships with other outcasts by playing online virtual reality games. Now they face the challenges of trying to get used to their ‘adult’ identities. Harry Doubt, a genius programmer and creator of the popular online game ‘Truth Seekers’, has a personal mission of his own; to find his mother who went mysteriously missing while volunteering on a peacekeeping mission in Palestine. His gaming friends and followers inadvertently join in helping him find her; believing that they are on missions to find out what has happened to their own missing loved ones. During Harry’s missions, Cristal and the team of ‘Truth Seekers’ stumble upon things that make them doubt the reality of their own lives. As they get closer to the truth, they realize that there are spiritual forces among them both good and evil, but in learning this, they activate a chain of events that start the beginning of the ‘end of the world’ as they know it.Gold Award Winner Readers Favorite Book Award 2014

The Dragon's Egg


David A. Wells - 2015
    We thought they were just meteorites—six terrifying explosions rang the world like a bell. When the dust settled, we went on with our lives as though nothing had happened.More than a decade later, five of the eggs hatched. The dragons that emerged were small and weak. They kept to the shadows, working in secret to persuade people to do their bidding, offering magic as payment and reward. Years passed … and still we didn’t notice the evil growing in our midst.The war began suddenly. Survivors called it the ‘apocalypse’—nine billion people killed in an afternoon.Then the dragons revealed themselves, burning huge swaths of what remained, taunting and mocking and murdering the survivors.Four leaders arose: The Wizard, the Dragon Rider, the Monk, and the Dragon Slayer. Allied with the rebel dragon, they waged war for years until they too were defeated, scattered, or killed.When the war ended, only one dragon remained … but that single dragon was enough to plunge the world into tyranny.The Dragon's Egg is the first book in the post-apocalyptic, epic fantasy series--The Dragonfall Trilogy.

EON


Earl E. Hardman - 2016
    The Ring keeps out all of humanity’s enemies – in particular, a vicious race of reptilians known as the Parsnaak. On the outer fringe of human-occupied space is the planet Muse, an entire world dedicated and established as a colossal museum – a storehouse of antiquities and relics from the ancient histories of both men and aliens. There, Ian Lotus, a man with his own mysterious past, has chosen to live in deliberate obscurity, harboring secrets that could reshape mankind’s destiny. Now, the impossible has happened: the Chronos Ring has been breached – rendered inert – and Lotus finds himself no longer able to hide in the shadows as he becomes the object of a massive interplanetary manhunt. However, his problems go well beyond simply being the most wanted man in the galaxy. There’s also the approaching Parsnaak invasion fleet to deal with, as well as an enigmatic, extra-dimensional being of immense power who, for reasons unknown, wants Lotus dead.

Robinson Crusoe 2244


E.J. Robinson - 2014
    But when deadly strife breaks out among their ranks, the teenage son of one prominent family finds himself fleeing in the dead of night only to wind up shipwrecked on the forbidden continent of America. Armed with only his wit and the most unexpected of allies, the teenager struggles to survive in a wasteland filled with unspeakable horrors and in the end must uncover the one secret that can save his own people or spell doom for mankind forever.

Sleeping Giants


Sylvain Neuvel - 2016
    She wakes up at the bottom of a square-shaped hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved - the object's origins, architects, and purpose unknown.But some can never stop searching for answers.Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top-secret team to crack the hand's code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the relic they seek. What's clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unravelling history's most perplexing discovery-and finally figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?

Mogworld


Yahtzee Croshaw - 2010
    His fireballs fizzle. He's awfully grumpy. Plus, he's been dead for about sixty years. When a renegade necromancer wrenches him from eternal slumber and into a world gone terribly, bizarrely wrong, all Jim wants is to find a way to die properly, once and for all.On his side, he's got a few shambling corpses, an inept thief, and a powerful death wish. But he's up against tough odds: angry mobs of adventurers, a body falling apart at the seams - and a team of programmers racing a deadline to hammer out the last few bugs in their AI.

Oath of Swords


David Weber - 1995
    He's no knight in shining armor. He's a hradani, a race known for their uncontrollable rages, bloodthirsty tendencies, and inability to maintain civilized conduct. None of the other Five Races of man like the hradani. Besides his ethnic burden, Bahzell has problems of his own to deal with: a violated hostage bond, a vengeful prince, a price on his head. He doesn't want to mess with anybody else's problems, let alone a god's. Let alone the War God's! So how does he end up a thousand leagues from home, neck-deep in political intrigue, assassins, demons, psionicists, evil sorcery, white sorcery, dark gods, good gods, bad poets, greedy landlords, and most of Bortalik Bay? Well, it's all the War God's fault.

The Cowboys of Cthulhu


David Bain - 2011
    Darius Darke and other "legends" of the Old West are called upon to fight a band of brain-eating bandits in a three-dimensionally-challenged box canyon. This story is a prequel to David Bain's forthcoming weird Western novel RIDERS WHERE THERE ARE NO ROADS. David Bain is the author of DEATH SIGHT, the first novel in the Will Castleton psychic detective series, GRAY LAKE: A NOVEL OF CRIME AND SUPERNATURAL HORROR and several short story collections. He teaches writing at a community college in Indiana.

The Defender of Rebel Falls


Erik Christensen - 2017
    As a librarian—a reluctant one—his reports catch the eyes of a powerful nobleman, who selects William for an important mission. As he faces danger after danger, he soon realizes that having the right weapon is one thing, but having the wits to use it is quite another. Because when he faces his ultimate challenge, it's more than just his own life at stake.

The Eden Plague


David VanDyke - 2012
    Who is the man he kills, the woman he shoots, and what is the Eden Plague? Fleeing the shadowy Company, Daniel turns to fellow soldiers. He fights back, seeks the woman, and wants answers. A secret threatens world stability and a conspiracy could change everything.

The Moon Dwellers


David Estes - 2012
    After her parents and sister are abducted by the Enforcers, seventeen-year-old Adele, a member of the middle-class moon dwellers, is unjustly sentenced to life in prison for her parents' crimes of treason.Against all odds, Adele must escape from the Pen and find her family, while being hunted by a deranged, killing machine named Rivet, who works for the President. She is helped by two other inmates, Tawni and Cole, each of whom have dark secrets that are better left undiscovered. Other than her friends, the only thing she has going for her is a wicked roundhouse kick and two fists that have been well-trained for combat by her father.At the other end of the social spectrum is Tristan, the son of the President and a sun dweller. His mother is gone. He hates his father. Backed by only his servant and best friend, Roc, he leaves his lavish lifestyle in the Sun Realm, seeking to make something good out of his troubled life.When a war breaks out within the Tri-Realms, Tristan is thrust into the middle of a conflict that seems to mysteriously follow Adele as she seeks to find her family and uncover her parents true past.In their world, someone must die.