Book picks similar to
Desolate by Robert Brumm


horror
fiction
short-stories
sci-fi

A Distant Eden


Lloyd Tackitt - 2012
    Three hundred million Americans are suddenly faced with a survival situation. They have no water, electricity or fuel. Food rapidly disappears from the store shelves, not to be replaced. Only three percent will survive. Those three percent will have much in common. What does it take to be one of them?

The Rift


Walter Jon Williams - 1999
    They won't stop barking. . . . And then the earth shrugs—8.9 on the Richter scale in the world's biggest earthquake since 1755. It hits New Madrid, Missouri, a sleepy town on the Mississippi. Seismologists had predicted the disaster . . . but no one listened. Within minutes, there is nothing but chaos and ruin as America's heartland falls into the nightmare known as the Rift—a fault line in the earth that wrenchingly exposes the fractures in American society itself. As a strange white mist smelling of sulfur rises from the crevassed ground, the real terror begins for the survivors, including a teenager separated from his mother, an African-American engineer searching for his daughter, a TV preacher whose visions of hell have become all too real, and a sheriff cum Ku Klux Klansman who seeks racial vengeance in the midst of disaster.It can happen. And sooner or later, it will.

Chasing Vegas


Tad Vezner - 2012
    Hours later police spot Vegas entering Horizon Station: a tower of interstellar transit stretching from the desert to the stratosphere. He could only be going one direction: away.When the search for Vegas turns into a manhunt of epic proportions, his parole officer, Geoffrey Sink, wonders why all the fuss for a simple fugitive. He stops wondering after a series of violent, bloody incidents lock the station down - and starts worrying when he realizes Vegas's flight up Horizon coincides with a rare appearance by the most recognizable people on Earth. The Originals - the first astronauts to return from deep space; the faces everyone thinks of when they stare up at the stars - arrive on Horizon to deliver their first speech since touching down in the desert five years ago.And when Vegas tries to kill them, Sink realizes there's more to chasing this ex-con than he ever wanted to know.

The Last Survivors


T.W. Piperbrook - 2014
    Technology has been reduced to legend, monsters roam the forests, and fear reigns supreme. But that is just the beginning... The wind-borne spores are spreading, disfiguring men and twisting their minds, turning them into creatures that threaten to destroy the townships. Among the townsfolk, political and the religious, dissension is spreading. Through it all, a mother must protect her son...

Memoria


Alex Bobl - 2012
    What else would you need in the world finally free from wars and crime? But the bubble bursts when a humble lawyer Frank Shelby becomes a murder suspect on the run. Betrayed by his friends and hunted down by mysterious killers, Frank has to penetrate Memoria and find evidence of their real plans before it's too late for all of us.

Into the Shadows


Karly Kirkpatrick - 2010
    This is the first book in the Into the Shadows Trilogy.Paivi Anderson has it all - friends, a spot on the varsity basketball team, wonderful parents, and quite possibly, her first boyfriend. It was everything a freshman in high school could ask for. Her perfect life begins to crumble when she discovers her name on a list distributed by a power-hungry presidential candidate. How could anyone think of Paivi as an Enemy of the State? Could it be because of her special powers? No one was supposed to know about them, but the mysterious messages in her tater tots say otherwise. In INTO THE SHADOWS, Paivi quickly learns who her friends are and is forced into a reality she didn’t see coming.

Hollowland


Amanda Hocking - 2010
    This is the way the world ends - not with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies breaking down the back door.Nineteen-year-old Remy King is on a mission to get across the wasteland left of America, and nothing will stand in her way - not violent marauders, a spoiled rock star, or an army of flesh-eating zombies.

Empty Bodies


Zach Bohannon - 2015
     Moments later, the fallen rise, and the survivors become the hunted.***WARNING*** Empty Bodies is meant for mature audiences only. It features foul language and graphic descriptions of violence and death. Please purchase at your own discretion.

Second Variety


Philip K. Dick - 1953
    Left to their own devices, however, the claws develop robots of their own. II-V, the second variety, remains unknown to the few humans left on Earth. Or does it?Second Variety was adapted into the film Screamers.

Deadly Intruder


Anne Kelsey - 2013
    He just won the Rookie of the Year award at the advertising company he works for in Boston, and he is married to beautiful Amanda, the love of his life. After his recent purchases of a new home and a sports car, his life is just about perfect. Then he makes one seemingly innocent decision to play an Internet game. The website www.DieorDieTrying.com offers a big payoff to the winner of the deadpool game they host, and Brent thinks he has just as good a chance to win as anyone else. After all, the game is all luck. Or is it? When a fellow player, known only as Intruder, gains access to Brent’s personal information, Brent’s life is thrown into chaos. A gruesome discovery makes Intruder’s goal all too clear. Soon Brent is careening through the shadowy world of cybercrime, identity theft, and murder on a non-stop thrill ride he wants no part of. Will Brent or Intruder make the final move of the game? Praise for Deadly Intruder: "This novel moves like a hurricane revealing the dangers of what starts as an innocent little bet. A good read." —Dennis Foley, author of A Requiem for Crows "Anne Kelsey's Deadly Intruder is compulsively readable, with characters that will intrude into your psyche and not let you go until you finish the last page. Taut writing, superb pace, and characters you'll root for. Highly recommended." —Mary Johnson, author of An Unquenchable Thirst“In Deadly Intruder, Anne Kelsey has given us a delicious serving of intrigue, mystery, romance, and edge-of-your seat excitement. This book sent chills up my spine as I began to see how easily lives can be destroyed or turned upside down by Internet stalking. Deadly Intruder was a book I simply didn’t want to put down. Kudos to Anne Kelsey. I will be looking out for more from her.”—Maureen McMahon, author of Shadows in the Mist

Shudderville


Mia Zabriskie - 2011
    After losing her husband and child in a traffic accident, she spends her evenings alone with a bottle of Stoli, eavesdropping on her feuding neighbors.Then one day, the strange man next door makes a startling offer - he will bring her daughter back from the dead. All she has to do is make a wish.

Emerge


Heather Sunseri - 2015
    The only person to contract the virus and survive, Cricket fled her identity and the safety of New Caelum, an airtight city. Now eighteen, she watches the city where the wealthy cocooned from the devastating outbreak. When the city's rumbling incinerator wakes her one night while she and her friends are camping just beyond the city walls, she alone knows what the fiery machine means: the lethal virus is back. Only eighteen, Westlin Layne is already being groomed to succeed his mother as New Caelum's next president. Suddenly West's sister develops symptoms of the deadly virus thought to be eradicated years ago. Placed under quarantine, the president confesses to West a long-held secret: Christina Black, West's childhood friend and first love, survived the virus, and her body alone holds the precious antibodies to save his sister. Now West must leave the city to find Christina. But Cricket has no intention of being found.

The Runner


W.J. Davies - 2013
    As the Great Flood threatens to consume the silo, Ace and a team of divers are in a desperate battle to avert disaster. When a terrible accident destroys the person he cares about most, Ace has little left to live for. After nearly succumbing to the silo's flooded depths, he realizes that drastic measures must be taken in order to save their underground home. But those in charge deem his ideas too dangerous, his methods too forbidden, and he is shunned for his sin of toxic words. When an opportunity for redemption presents itself, Ace has only one question: Why should he fight to save these people, if they aren't willing to help themselves?

The Tide


Anthony J. Melchiorri - 2015
    He’s taken them to all corners of the earth to protect the United States from biological and chemical warfare. When his CIA handler, Meredith Webb, gives him a mission to investigate a disturbing lead on a laboratory based out of an abandoned oil rig, they discover the most terrifying threat to mankind they’ve ever faced—a genetically engineered biological weapon called the Oni Agent. Back in the United States, Meredith discovers a frightening connection between the CIA and the Oni Agent. But her investigations are short-lived when the Agent spreads and brings mankind to its knees. Cities burn as it turns humans into warped creatures hell-bent on destruction. Dominic and Meredith vow to do everything they can to combat the Agent and find a cure. But will their efforts be enough to turn the tide—or is humanity’s fate already sealed?

The Safe Man: A Ghost Story


Michael Connelly - 2012
    That is, his specialty is opening safes. Every job is a little mystery, and he has yet to encounter a lock he can't break or a box he can't crack. But the day Holloway gets called in to open a rare, antique safe in a famous author's library, his skills open a door that should have remained closed.In this haunting and singular story, previously published anonymously, Michael Connelly proves once again that he is "superb at building suspense.... the reader can never be sure what sudden turns the plot may take" (Wall Street Journal).