Gary Burns just wanted to create the greatest RPG campaign of his gaming career. But a freak magical accident sucks him into the very world he created—as himself. Surrounded by heroes who look and sound like his friends, Gary is forced to play out the story he wrote. Worthless in a fight, Gary must prove himself valuable even if it means feeding the team insider knowledge. Because he needs keep his friends close—and himself alive—until he can solve the puzzle he never designed: how to get everyone back home.

    It will offend most anyone, so proceed with caution or not at all.And be forewarned: This is not a zombie book. This is a different sort of tale. It is a story about the unfortunate, about those who did not get away. It is a human story at its rotten heart. It is the reason we can't stop obsessing about these creatures, in whom we see all too much of ourselves.

    But all drugs have unforeseen side-effects. Before he could be buried, the killer wakes up. Hungry. Infected. Contagious. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang…but a bite.

    When a message appears in his line of sight, blocking out absolutely everything else, he nearly freaks out. The message warns that the world has been in a variant Natural Laws beta test for millennia and that it's about to revert to the norms.Deciding that even if he is insane, it's not going to hurt anything to try to prepare, he settles in to do so. Despite the atrocious lack of skill the System has with the English language, he manages to work his way through enough help files to get a clue of what's coming. After sharing his discovery with a few friends, they all start to prepare together.Once the change begins, the small group races to create a Safe Zone, an area where monsters will not spawn and where they can gather other survivors in an attempt to rescue as much of the town as possible. Along the way they discover that the new System can award classes that resemble those of the games the group has played, as well as magic for those capable of grasping it.With monsters spawning throughout the town, everyday animals being mutated into dangerous creatures, and a System that desperately needs English language lessons, they'll do their best to save as many of the local residents as they can.This story is approximately 155,000 words long and DRM free.

    Level zero. Empty of mind and memory. Even your past has been stripped from your brain by the inscrutable System. A long, difficult road lies between you and remembering any part of who you are. A road punctuated with one death after another. You are too puny to survive by might alone. Information is the single resource that might keep you alive, but the brainless “digis” have none of it. Only those with experience can give you what you need, but most care nothing about you or your plight. In fact, some make it their mission to kill you. So die you will, again and again, your life counter clicking lower and lower. Even the creators do not know what happens when your counter reaches zero, but many are sure that your last life here is just that. No more respawns. You are not the first player in the world of S.T.Y.X., and you will not be the last. You can only hope luck will be on your side. The luckiest players are those who find a vulnerability in the System. Those they call cheaters. Perhaps cheating is the only way to win. Enjoy your game

    August Morrison faces it after rising from the depths of a dark matter research facility in Arizona. His co-workers. His daughter. All of them: dust. Friends and colleagues around the world don't answer their phones. The city of Phoenix burns. He is alone. As a world without mankind starts to crumble, August fights not just for survival, but for his very sanity.On the other side of the country, Poe McDowell watches her parents crumble into dust just moments after being shoved inside a coffin-like device that spares her from the same fate. She emerges to find not just her mother and father, but also her neighbors--her entire town's human population--reduced to grit. Unlike August, she's not entirely alone, but the life growing in her belly isn't much company.Then, hope. A drunken and desperate August broadcasts over the ham radio network and connects with his fellow survivor, Poe, alone and pregnant in a snow blanketed New Hampshire. Determined to reach her, August sets out on a cross country trek. But the world is not as empty as it seems. Lights in the sky reveal that they are not alone. The human race's demise was not natural--and the architects are searching for survivors....AT THE END.Jeremy Robinson, whose stories have been compared to Michael Crichton, James Rollins and Stephen King, is the international bestselling master of stories featuring mind-bending imagination, terrifying monsters and high-octane action. With The Distance, he is joined by his wife, Hilaree Robinson, whose passionate writing and characters make this novel a truly unique and exciting experience that will leave readers both enthralled and moved.

    Unfortunately, that "normal" includes collapsing skyscrapers, bands of bloodthirsty maniacs, and a dwindling cache of survival supplies. After watching his family, friends, and most of the non-sadistic elements of society crumble around him, Patrick decides it's time to cross one last item off his bucket list. He’s going to Disney World. This hilarious, heartfelt, gut-wrenching odyssey through post-apocalyptic America is a pilgrimage peppered with peril, as fellow survivors Patrick and Ben encounter a slew of odd characters, from zombie politicians and deranged survivalists to a milky-eyed oracle who doesn't have a lot of good news. Plus, it looks like Patrick may be hiding the real reason for their mission to the Magic Kingdom...

    In Los Angeles, Raymond and Mia James are about to lose their house. Within days, none of it will matter.When Vanessa dies of the flu, Walt is devastated. But she isn't the last. The virus quickly kills billions, reducing New York to an open grave and LA to a chaotic wilderness of violence and fires. As Raymond and Mia hole up in an abandoned mansion, where they learn to function without electricity, running water, or neighbors, Walt begins an existential walk to LA, where Vanessa had planned to move when she left him. He expects to die along the way.Months later, a massive vessel appears above Santa Monica Bay. Walt is attacked by a crablike monstrosity in a mountain stream. The virus that ended humanity wasn't created by humans. It was inflicted from outside. The colonists who sent it are ready to finish the job--and Earth's survivors may be too few and too weak to resist.

    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.

    One minute, people are going about their lives, and the next—not. In the wake of the inexplicable purge, only a handful of young misfits remains.When it all went down, “Wizard of Odd” Dev Brinkman was seeking shelter from the taunts of his classmates. Goth girl Lucy Abernathy had lost her best friend and had no clue where to turn. And Twinkie-loving quarterback “Marcus” Haddad was learning why you never discuss politics and religion in polite company—or online.As if life when you’re sixteen isn’t confusing enough, throw in the challenges of postapocalyptic subsistence, a case of survivor’s guilt turned up to seven billion, and the small task of rebuilding humankind…No one said doomsday would be a breeze. But for Dev, Lucy, and Marcus, the greatest hope—and greatest threat—will come when they find each other.

    starts to feel like something isn't quite right. His most tried-and-true remedies--from beak-delivered beer to the slobbering affection of Big Jim's loyal but dim-witted dog, Dennis--fail to cure Big Jim's debilitating malady. S.T. is left with no choice but to abandon his old life and venture out into a wild and frightening new world with his trusty steed Dennis, where he discovers that the neighbors are devouring each other and the local wildlife is abuzz with rumors of dangerous new predators roaming Seattle. Humanity's extinction has seemingly arrived, and the only one determined to save it is a foul-mouthed crow whose knowledge of the world around him comes from his TV-watching education.Hollow Kingdom is a humorous, big-hearted, and boundlessly beautiful romp through the apocalypse and the world that comes after, where even a cowardly crow can become a hero.

    "When an experiment to study quantum uncertainty goes spectacularly wrong, physics student Richard and his friends find that they have accidentally created an inter-dimensional portal. They connect to an alternate Earth with identical geology, but where humans never evolved. They go panning for gold and become millionaires overnight, while fantasizing about Nobel Prizes and patents. Then the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts on Earth in an explosion large enough to destroy civilization and kill half the planet. Richard and his friends have less than an afternoon to get as many people as possible across to Outland before Nebraska is covered in a lethal cloud of ash. Now Richard finds himself in charge of a disorganized and frightened band of reluctant pioneers, on a world with none of the modern infrastructure that people have come to depend on. Richard has been a loner all his life, and has always wanted to be part of something bigger– but this is far more than he bargained for. If he doesn’t get this right, it’s not just the lives of the people in his care that could be lost– it may very well be the end of human civilization.

    Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.

    and a shocking discovery...will change humanity forever.In the near future, a new ice age has begun.Humanity stands on the brink of extinction.Desperate for answers, scientists send probes into the solar system to take readings. Near Mars, a probe spots a mysterious object drifting toward the Sun. Is it the cause of the ice age? Or could it be our only hope of survival?With time running out, NASA launches an international mission to make contact with the object. But it isn’t what anyone thought. In the dark of space, alone, the team makes a shocking discovery that will change the course of human history—and possibly end it.

    When the sky begins to fall and he finds himself alone, his best hope is to run – or risk losing what he loves forever.When the world ends and you find yourself forsaken, every second counts. No one knows this more than Edgar Hill. Stranded on the other side of the country from his wife and children, Ed must push himself across a devastated wasteland to get back to them. With the clock ticking and hundreds of miles between them, his best hope is to run -- or risk losing what he loves forever.