Book picks similar to
The Last War by Ryan Schow


post-apocalyptic
apocalypse
sci-fi
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E


Kate Wrath - 2014
    It makes no exceptions. Not even for the innocent.Outpost Three: a huddle of crumbling buildings choked by a concrete wall. Cracked pavement, rusted metal, splintering boards. Huge robotic Sentries police the streets, but the Ten Laws are broken every time one turns its back.Eden is determined, smart, and a born survivor. Stripped of her memories and dumped on the streets of the Outpost, slavers and starvation are only the beginning of her problems. A devastating conflict is coming that threatens to consume her world and tear her newfound family apart.*This is an alternate cover edition of ASIN B00K4EOTT0.

Reign of Blood


Alexia Purdy - 2012
    Vampires and hybrids have overrun my world, once vibrant with life, but now a graveyard of death shrouded in shadows. I fight to survive; I fight for my mother and brother. The journey is full of turns that I am quite unprepared for. And I'm just hoping to make it to the next Vegas sunrise..."In a post-apocalyptic world, a viral epidemic has wiped out most of the earth’s population, leaving behind few humans but untold numbers of mutated vampires. April is a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in the remains of Las Vegas one year after the outbreak. She has become a ferocious vampire killer and after her family is abducted, she goes searching for them. What she finds is a new breed of vampire, unlike any she has seen before. Unsure of whom she can trust, she discovers that her view of the world is not as black and white as she once thought, and she's willing to bend the rules to rescue her family. But in trying to save them, she may only succeed in bringing her fragile world crashing down around her.

Swan Song


Robert R. McCammon - 1987
    He is the Man with the Scarlet Eye, a malevolent force that feeds on the dark desires of the countless followers he has gathered into his service. His only desire is to find a special child named Swan—and destroy her. But those who would protect the girl are determined to fight for what is left of the world, and their souls. In a wasteland born of rage, populated by monstrous creatures and marauding armies, the last survivors on earth have been drawn into the final battle between good and evil that will decide the fate of humanity....

Trackers


Nicholas Sansbury Smith - 2017
    Estes Park police chief Marcus Colton and tracker Sam "Raven" Spears have never liked one another, but when a young girl goes missing in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colton hires Spears to help find her. Their search ends after a night of devastating horror. When word reaches Estes that the nation has been hit by a coordinated electromagnetic pulse attack, Colton and Spears are forced to work together again. But they quickly realize they aren't just tracking a killer - they are tracking a madman. As the United States descends into chaos, the hunters become the hunted. Halfway across the country, Senator Charlize Montgomery awakes to find the nation's capital has gone dark. Forced to set off on foot, she treks across a city that has woken to a new world, and as the night progresses she learns the EMP attack was just the beginning.

Dustborn


Erin Bowman - 2021
    Delta of Dead River has always been told to hide her back, where a map is branded on her skin to a rumored paradise called the Verdant. In a wasteland plagued by dust squalls, geomagnetic storms, and solar flares, many would kill for it—even if no one can read it. So when raiders sent by a man known as the General attack her village, Delta suspects he is searching for her.  Delta sets out to rescue her family but quickly learns that in the Wastes no one can be trusted—perhaps not even her childhood friend, Asher, who has been missing for nearly a decade. If Delta can trust Asher, she just might decode the map and trade evidence of the Verdant to the General for her family. What Delta doesn’t count on is what waits at the Verdant: a long-forgotten secret that will shake the foundation of her entire world.

Madness


M.L. Banner - 2018
    Like a ticking bomb, this puppet master is patiently waiting for the right time to set off its hosts against the world. That time is now! A canceled flight due to a volcanic eruption and a violent animal attack at their port, almost cause Ted and TJ to miss their transatlantic cruise and a needed escape from their busy lives in the US. But there will be no peace or tranquility on this cruise as something is very wrong: animals have started to attack for no apparent reason. It will take Ted and TJ’s unique skills to not only survive their cruise, but to understand an apocalypse of madness which appears to have struck the whole world. With mammals outnumbering humans 10,000 to 1, is this the end? - - - - Early Reviews - - - “A fresh, unique, and exhilarating twist to the horror genre, but must warn readers that once they've picked the book up, they'll be hard pressed to set it back down. I loved it. Really, really well done!" ~ Readers Favorite “Shades of Zoo but scarier” “Put Patterson, King & Koontz together and then HIDE” “ML Banner is now in the ballpark with Michael Creighton” “One of the very best books I’ve read in this genre” - - - - The MADNESS Chronicles Trilogy - - - MADNESS: MADNESS Chronicles I (June 1st) PARASITIC: MADNESS Chronicles II (June 30th) SYMPTOMATIC: MADNESS Chronicles III (August 30th) Free content at MadnessWorld.Info

Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End


Manel Loureiro - 2007
    But he never expected that his anonymous blog would ultimately record humanity’s last days.The end of the world has begun…Governments scramble to stop the zombie virus, people panic, so-called “Safe Havens” are established, the world erupts into chaos; soon it’s every man, woman, and child for themselves. Armed only with makeshift weapons and the will to live, a lone survivor will give mankind one last chance against…Apocalypse Z

The Fireman


Joe Hill - 2016
    Stay cool.No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.

Year One


Nora Roberts - 2017
    The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed--and more than half of the world's population was decimated.Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magic rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river--or in the ones you know and love the most.As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City. At the same time, other travelers are heading west too, into a new frontier. Chuck, a tech genius trying to hack his way through a world gone offline. Arlys, a journalist who has lost her audience but uses pen and paper to record the truth. Fred, her young colleague, possessed of burgeoning abilities and an optimism that seems out of place in this bleak landscape. And Rachel and Jonah, a resourceful doctor and a paramedic who fend off despair with their determination to keep a young mother and three infants in their care alive.In a world of survivors where every stranger encountered could be either a savage or a savior, none of them knows exactly where they are heading, or why. But a purpose awaits them that will shape their lives and the lives of all those who remain.The end has come. The beginning comes next.

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.

The Rule of One


Ashley Saunders - 2018
    Everyone follows the Rule of One. But Ava Goodwin, daughter of the head of the Texas Family Planning Division, has a secret—one her mother died to keep and her father has helped to hide for her entire life.She has an identical twin sister, Mira.For eighteen years Ava and Mira have lived as one, trading places day after day, maintaining an interchangeable existence down to the most telling detail. But when their charade is exposed, their worst nightmare begins. Now they must leave behind the father they love and fight for their lives.Branded as traitors, hunted as fugitives, and pushed to discover just how far they’ll go in order to stay alive, Ava and Mira rush headlong into a terrifying unknown.

After the Lights Go Out


Lili Wilkinson - 2018
    The Palmers are doomsday preppers. They have a bunker filled with non-perishable food and a year's worth of water. Each of the girls has a 'bug out bag', packed with water purification tablets, protein bars, paracord bracelets and epipens for Pru's anaphylaxis.One day while Rick is at the mine, the power goes out. At the Palmers' house, and in the town. No one knows why. All communication is cut. It doesn't take long for everything to unravel. In town, supplies run out and people get desperate. The sisters decide to keep their bunker a secret. The world is different; the rules are different. Survival is everything, and family comes first.

As We Fall


Jack Hunt - 2018
    infrastructure is crippled by an unknown attacker. As the internet, communication networks and the power grid go down, the world is soon thrown into turmoil and danger. Faced with no other choice than to battle their way home through a country on the verge of collapse, Sam and his daughter will have to face more than a troubled past -- the future is deadly.December 2015 -- The Ukraine experiences a devastating cyberattack on its power grid that leads to widespread power outages.July 2016 -- Hackers bombard the aviation sector with over 1,000 attacks per month and remotely control and paralyze a Jeep on the highway.August 2017 -- The Irish power grid, U.S energy companies and a nuclear power plant is digitally assaulted, and the US Government accuses Russia.March, 2018 -- Atlanta is hobbled for five days, a troubling precursor to a larger attack that would tear a hole in the infrastructure and bring the country to its knees.Today  - The internet, communication network, and power grid goes down and silence and darkness dominates the nation.As We Fall: Against All Odds is book 1 of a post-apocalyptic survival thriller series. It's a page turning story about human connection and fighting to survive when the grid goes down.

Revolution 19


Gregg Rosenblum - 2013
    Then they turned their weapons on us.Only a few escaped the robot revolution of 2071. Kevin, Nick, and Cass are lucky —they live with their parents in a secret human community in the woods. Then their village is detected and wiped out. Hopeful that other survivors have been captured by bots, the teens risk everything to save the only people they have left in the world—by infiltrating a city controlled by their greatest enemies.Revolution 19 is a cinematic thriller unlike anything else. With a dynamic cast of characters, this surefire blockbuster has everything teen readers want—action, drama, mystery, and romance. Written by debut novelist Gregg Rosenblum, this gripping story shouldn’t be missed.

Getting Out


Ryan Westfield - 2017
    The lights go out and silence roars. Society is on the brink of violent chaos. The only way to survive is to get out, away from the cities and into the wilderness. Max is an office worker with some gear and a plan. He’s one of the first to realize the unspoken dangers. A few years ago, he inherited an old farmhouse. His plan is to get to it as fast as possible and bunker down. He thinks he’s ready, but he quickly discovers that there’s more to surviving than just having the right gear. Mandy is a waitress with the day off work. What seems like a normal power outage quickly turns terrifying. Her peaceful town is no longer the home she once knew. She’s offered a way out, but can she put her trust in a perfect stranger? Georgia is a single mother who just wants to keep his two teenage kids safe. She drives a pickup and loves hunting. She has skills that could keep her family alive, but is she ready to make life or death decisions in the blink of an eye? Do Max, Mandy, and Georgia have what it takes to overcome the unexpected? After all, even the best-laid plans can come up short. Getting Out is book 1 of The EMP, a post-apocalyptic survival thriller series. It deals with real people fighting for their survival every inch of the way.