Book picks similar to
Judgment Day by James F. David


science-fiction
sci-fi
fiction
science

The City, Not Long After


Pat Murphy - 1989
    In San Francisco, the survivors are heir to a city transformed. It is a haunted, dreaming place peopled with memories, and in a strange way nearly alive itself. And although it is only beginning to recover from near-ultimate disaster, the city is at risk again. An army of power-hungry men are descending on San Francisco. Teenagers Jax and Danny-boy must lead the fight for freedom using the only weapons they have art, magic, and the soul of the city itself.

DMQZ


Quinn Fleming - 2013
    The shores and waters of the East River are the "DMQZ," the uninhabited area that separates uninfected Manhattan from the slowly dying borough of Brooklyn.Jacob Hale is a Manhattan police officer rising in the ranks of the Safe Zone military government until a bank heist gone wrong lands him on suspension and under suspicion. On a quest to clear his good name, Hale finds himself drawn into a web of conspiracy, terrorism, and revolt - and into the orbit of a mysterious woman who may be the key to it all.

Rockfall (Tertiary Effects Book 1)


William Allen - 2019
    Millions die in an instant, and millions more await the end as the looming catastrophe unfolds… Thousands of miles away from the disaster, a call comes in the middle of the night. Families act, and react, and while panic spreads, the world keeps on spinning. Maybe a little slower, and perhaps with a teeny bit more of a tilt, but such things are a mere trifle to the existence of a planet. For the human inhabitants of this planet, though, the meteor’s collision will have far-reaching effects as the impact creates ripples throughout their fragile existence. Bryan Hardin just wanted to create a sanctuary in the country for his remaining family, a place to heal his wounded spirit as he struggles with survivor’s guilt and approaching middle age. He’s hardly the heroic type, but his family is going to need all of them to act like heroes if they are going to survive the spreading effects of the Rockfall. The Earthquakes are Primary Effects. The Tsunami are Secondary Effects. Will Anybody Survive the Tertiary Effects?

Tentacles and Teeth


Ariele Sieling - 2019
    Instead, monsters. Their sudden invasion left the world in shatters, and now, decades later, all that's left of human civilization are a few nomadic bands struggling to survive off the land. Askari was born to this world, and lives, fights, and survives alongside the community that raised her. But when she breaks one too many of the community's rules, her punishment is severe: leave. Armed with her bow and blade, Askari sets off alone, guided only by a map and the promise that if she can find a book hidden in a nearby town, then she can return. But what can one person do alone in such a harsh, violent landscape? How will she survive? Askari faces a challenge that will force her to learn not only about the world she lives in, but question what she believes about herself.

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.

The Beachhead


Christopher Mari - 2017
    The enigmatic winged Orangemen leave the survivors with instructions to remake their society, basic tools and weapons, and a few thousand books, including Bibles in many languages. As two generations are born and raised, conflicting theories as to the nature of the apocalypse continue to simmer.Fifty years later, the arrival of a new family that shouldn’t exist threatens the delicate peace holding humanity together. Two young soldiers, John Giordano and Kendra McQueen, venture into the unexplored wilderness beyond the city walls in search of answers. But their disquieting discoveries only raise more questions, forcing mankind to reconsider what it means to be human.In this reflective, provocative postapocalyptic novel, John, Kendra, and the remnants of humanity must find the strength to love and the will to forgive—or they will all perish.

Wolf and Iron


Gordon R. Dickson - 1990
    Now he must make his way across a violent and lawless America, in search of a refuge where he can keep the spark of knowledge alive in the coming Dark Age. He could never make it on his own, but he has found a companion who can teach him how to survive on instinct and will. Jeebee has been adopted by a great Gray Wolf.

The Water Knife


Paolo Bacigalupi - 2015
    In a fragmenting United States, the cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas skirmish for a dwindling share of the Colorado River. But it is the Las Vegas water knives - assassins, terrorists and spies - who are legendary for protecting Las Vegas' water supplies, and for ensuring Phoenix's ruin.When rumours of a game-changing water source surface, Las Vegas dispatches elite water knife Angel Velasquez to Phoenix to investigate. There, he discovers hardened journalist Lucy Monroe, who holds the secret to the water source Angel seeks. But Angel isn't the only one hunting for water, Lucy is no pushover, and the death of a despised water knife is a small price to pay in return for the life-giving flow of a river.

World Made by Hand


James Howard Kunstler - 2007
     Transportation is slow and dangerous, so food is grown locally at great expense of time and energy. And the outside world is largely unknown. There may be a president and he may be in Minneapolis now, but people aren’t sure. As the heat of summer intensifies, the residents struggle with the new way of life in a world of abandoned highways and empty houses, horses working the fields and rivers replenished with fish. A captivating, utterly realistic novel, World Made by Hand takes speculative fiction beyond the apocalypse and shows what happens when life gets extremely local.

The Road


Cormac McCarthy - 2006
    Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

Breakdown


Katherine Amt Hanna - 2011
    But unresolved grief over his dead wife and baby and the horrors he witnessed as he traveled through a changed world have damaged him. He struggles to let go of his past, accept the healing kindness of those around him, and let love back into his life.Approximately 103,000 words, or 425 printed pages.

Hellstrom's Hive


Frank Herbert - 1973
    Hellstrom's Project 40 was a cover for a secret laboratory, a special team of agents was immediately dispatched to discover its true purpose and its weaknesses—it could not be allowed to continue. What they discovered was a nightmare more horrific and hideous than even their paranoid government minds could devise.First published in Galaxy magazine in 1973 as "Project 40," Frank Herbert's vivid imagination and brilliant view of nature and ecology have never been more evident than in this classic of science fiction.

America Falls: The Complete Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Series


Scott Medbury - 2020
    Invasion. Chaos. A weaponized virus ravages the U.S. and hundreds of millions die. For those left, surviving is only the beginning…Isaac Race thought he'd found a new family and home. A new Life. He had, but it's all about to be snatched away. When an ambitious enemy launches a sneak attack on the USA, his peaceful life is shattered and Isaac, by his very nature a loner, must band together with a ragtag group of survivors to make their way to a sanctuary, three states away in the depths of a vicious east coast winter.It won’t be easy, the invaders aren't the only dangers unleashed in a world suddenly turned upside down, and if they're going to survive, they'll need to be resourceful and ruthless and rely on others in a world where trust has been shattered.This 7 book bundle includes:Hell weekOn the RunCold ComfortRude ShockLuke's TrekCivil WarLone Wolf

The Passage


Justin Cronin - 2010
    government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Wolgast is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors, but for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—toward the time an place where she must finish what should never have begun.With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterly prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream


Harlan Ellison - 1967
    This edition contains the original introduction by Theodore Sturgeon and the original foreword by Harlan Ellison, along with a brief update comment by Ellison that was added in the 1983 edition. Among Ellison's more famous stories, two consistently noted as among his very best ever are the title story and the volume's concluding one, Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.Since Ellison himself strongly resists categorization of his work, we won't call them science fiction, or SF, or speculative fiction or horror or anything else except compelling reading experiences that are sui generis. They could only have been written by Harlan Ellison and they are incomparably original.CONTENTS"I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream""Big Sam Was My Friend""Eyes of Dust""World of the Myth""Lonelyache""Delusion for Dragonslayer""Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes"