Book picks similar to
Waking Up Dead by Emma Shortt


zombies
zombie
post-apocalyptic
romance

Frost


M.P. Kozlowsky - 2016
    The ruined streets below are hunting grounds for rogue robots and Eaters.She understands why she’s never met a human besides her father. She even understands why he forbids her to look for medicine for her dying pet. But the thing is, it’s not her real father giving the orders…It’s his memories.Before he died, Frost’s father uploaded his consciousness into their robot servant. But the technology malfunctioned, and now her father fades in and out. So when Frost learns that there might be medicine on the other side of the ravaged city, she embarks on a dangerous journey to save the one living creature she loves.With only a robot as a companion, Frost must face terrors of all sorts, from outrunning the vicious Eaters…to talking to the first boy she’s ever set eyes on. But can a girl who’s only seen the world through books and dusty windows survive on her own? Or will her first journey from home be her last?

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.

Withered + Sere


T.J. Klune - 2016
    Purposefully cutting himself off from what remains of civilization, Cavalo resides in the crumbling ruins of the Northern Idaho Correctional Institution. A mutt called Bad Dog and a robot on the verge of insanity comprise his only companions. Cavalo himself is deteriorating, his memories rising like ghosts and haunting the prison cells.It’s not until he makes the dangerous choice of crossing into the irradiated Deadlands that Cavalo comes into contact with a mute psychopath, one who belongs to the murderous group of people known as the Dead Rabbits. Taking the man prisoner, Cavalo is forced not only to face the horrors of his past, but the ramifications of the choices made for his stark present. And it is in the prisoner that he will find a possible future where redemption is but a glimmer that darkly shines.The world has died.This is the story of its remains.Illustrated by Blake Dorner.

Last Another Day


Baileigh Higgins - 2016
    She escapes, only to find that the horror has spread and now threatens everything she holds dear. With each passing moment, death becomes more certain.Logan returns to his childhood home and teams up with Max, an army deserter racing against the clock to save his family. When the infection outruns them, they face the real possibility that everyone they know is already dead. Or worse, undead.All it takes is one mistake...As the sun sets against the backdrop of the African veldt and living nightmares walk the streets in the shape of their loved one's bodies, humanity's last hope rests in the hands of ordinary men and women called to do extraordinary things.

The Enemy


Charlie Higson - 2009
    Everyone over the age of fourteen has succumbed to a deadly zombie virus and now the kids must keep themselves alive.When the sickness came, every parent, police officer, politician - every adult fell ill. The lucky ones died. The others are crazed, confused and hungry. Only children under fourteen remain, and they're fighting to survive.Now there are rumours of a safe place to hide. And so a gang of children begin their quest across London, where all through the city - down alleyways, in deserted houses, underground - the grown-ups lie in wait.But can they make it there - alive?This edition contains the first chapter of the second book The Dead.

The Almost Girl


Amalie Howard - 2013
    As a Legion General, she is the right hand of Prince Cale, the young Prince of Neospes. In her world, she's had everything: rank, responsibility, and respect. But when Prince Cale sends her away to rescue his long-lost brother, Caden, who has been spirited to modern day Earth, Riven finds herself in uncharted territory.Armed with the mindset of a soldier and racing against time to bring Caden home, Riven must learn how to blend in as a girl in a realm that is the opposite of all she's ever known. Will she be able to find the strength to defy her very nature? Or will she become the monstrous soldier she was designed to be?

Sunset Rising


S.M. McEachern - 2013
    Welcome to the Biodome, where steel, rock and armed guards separate the privileged from the slaves ...Born and raised as a slave in the Pit, Sunny O’Donnell has always accepted that she'll spend her life working to keep the Dome running and, if she lives long enough, willingly meet her end in the annual Cull when she reaches the age of thirty-five. This was the price her ancestors paid for their place inside the Biodome, the only haven from the global nuclear war of 2024. But when Sunny’s mother is killed in the Cull, the hopeless reality of her existence becomes painfully clear. Bereft and disillusioned, she heads down a reckless path that sets off a riot in the Pit and leaves her accused of treason. Her only way of escaping public execution is to make a truce with her prison mate, who happens to be the heir to the dictatorship and hated enemy of the Pit. Now caught between two worlds on the brink of war, Sunny must weigh her own survival against risking everything to save the Pit. S.M. McEachern delivers the action and adventure of The Hunger Games, the intrigue of The City of Ember", and the romantic philosophical notes of Les Misérables in her debut novel set in a future that is disturbingly plausible.

Ground Zero


Nicholas Ryan - 2013
    The ‘Wrath’ is an undead plague – an infection that consumes its victims with a maddening rage and turns them into mindless blood-thirsty killers.Jack Cutter is just an ordinary guy dealing with a dreadful guilt when the virus tears through his home town. Before it’s too late, Cutter will have to find a way to survive, and find a reason fight: HIS REDEMPTION.

Through Glass: The Dark


Rebecca Ethington - 2013
    Fighting monsters to save the world was not part of my five-year plan.I had it all figured out. Graduate high school and head to college. It was just icing that my college of choice also happened to be where my lifelong crush and the gorgeous boy next door, Cohen, was already attending. I had already been accepted. Everything was working out perfectly. The only problem was that ‘perfect’ didn’t involve a freakin’ invasion. So, when everything went dark and monsters, literal monsters, fell from the sky, I had no idea what to do.Hey, I’m not your perfect dystopian heroine. Hell, I’m not even your everyday human. It took some time, and a bit of work, but now instead of graduating and following Cohen to college I am now hunting massive winged demon... things. Worse yet, any chance of a happily-ever-after goes to pot when my demon hunting turns into boyfriend rescuing, and I have to risk it all and go into the Dark. Boys, am I right? One minute everything is on track, and the next… well, it’s the end of the world. My name is Lex, and I guess I hunt monsters now. Perfect.

Kellie's Diary #1


Thomas Jenner - 2013
    When the world crumbles and the dead walk, Kellie struggles to survive and find her way home, all the while sharing her tale with her diary.This is an account of our hypothetical past, present and future.

Cages


Chris Pasley - 2012
    Since the Outbreak ten percent of all teenagers transform spontaneously and without warning into horrible, parasite-spreading Beasts. This monstrous tide threatened to destroy the world, but the survivors persevered and kept the parasite at bay by creating Quarantines, rigid prisons to hold their children through volatile puberty into the safety of adulthood. For Sam, incarceration is freedom. The child of damaged Outbreak survivors, he relishes the day he can unleash the tricks his brother James taught him and make his mark on the world. The tyrannical principal who would happily see him dead? A worthy adversary. His chemically-obsessed roommate who keeps trying to build a dirty bomb? A useful pawn. His own debilitating fear of becoming a monster himself? Well… he’s not really ready for that one. Cages is a deceptively easy to read page-turner concealing a deep coming of age story. How do we develop our own identities among a sea of external influences? Will we take on our parents’ neuroses? Our brothers’ lost dreams? Or… will we go wild?

The Fury


Alexander Gordon Smith - 2012
    Every single person you meet becomes a bloodthirsty, mindless savage, hell-bent on killing you - and only you. Friends, family, even your mum and dad, will turn on you. They will murder you. And when they have, they will go back to their lives as if nothing has happened. The world has the Fury. It will not rest until you are dead. Cal, Brick and Daisy are three ordinary teenagers whose lives suddenly take a terrifying turn for the worst. They begin to trigger a reaction in everybody they meet, that makes friends and strangers alike want to tear them to pieces. These victims of the Fury - the ones that survive - manage to locate each other. But just when they think they have found a place to hide from the world, some of them begin to change ...They must fight to uncover the truth about the Fury before it's too late. But it is a truth that will destroy everything they know about life and death.

Midnight City


J. Barton Mitchell - 2012
    The human adult population is gone, having succumbed to the Tone---a powerful, telepathic super-signal broadcast across the planet that reduces them to a state of complete subservience. But the Tone has one critical flaw. It only affects the population once they reach their early twenties, which means that there is one group left to resist: Children.Holt Hawkins is a bounty hunter, and his current target is Mira Toombs, an infamous treasure seeker with a price on her head. It’s not long before Holt bags his prey, but their instant connection isn’t something he bargained for. Neither is the Assembly ship that crash-lands near them shortly after. Venturing inside, Holt finds a young girl who remembers nothing except her name: Zoey.As the three make their way to the cavernous metropolis of Midnight City, they encounter young freedom fighters, mutants, otherworldly artifacts, pirates, feuding alien armies, and the amazing powers that Zoey is beginning to exhibit. Powers that suggest she, as impossible as it seems, may just be the key to stopping the Assembly once and for all.

The Defectors


Tarah Benner - 2013
    Then came the Collapse. The only way to contain the epidemic is mandatory migration across the northern border of the United States. Each vaccinated citizen is identified by a tiny microchip — the most intelligent piece of technology ever to be implanted in a human being that tracks and analyzes your every move.Twenty-year-old Haven Allis is in the system: her Citizen ID tracks her location, conversations, Internet activity, bank account — everything. Any suspicious activity is warrant for arrest.But for those who are undocumented, life is much worse. Illegals are taken to the prisons in Sector X and made to disappear.When her best friend Greyson is captured and arrested for his undocumented status, Haven must go off the grid to save him. Life outside the city has its own dangers: carriers of the virus lurk everywhere, and the Private Military Company is rounding up illegals. On her mission to rescue Greyson, Haven will discover a revolution in motion and be forced to question everything she believes.

Extinction Point


Paul Antony Jones - 2012
    All that changes the day the red rain falls from a cloudless sky. Just hours after the first reports from Europe, humanity is on the brink of extinction, wiped from the face of the earth in a few bloody moments, leaving Emily alone in an empty city. As she struggles to grasp the magnitude of her situation, Emily becomes the final witness to the end of our world… and the birth of a terrifying new one. The world she knew and loved is dead and gone. Now Emily must try to find a way out of New York as the truth behind the red rain is revealed: the earth no longer belongs to humanity.