Book picks similar to
Wye by Jack Croxall


zombies
dystopian
young-adult
horror

The Last City of America


Matthew Tysz - 2013
    The United States became the Seven Cities of America.Chicago, cut off from the other cities, ruled in darkness, is home to the scientist who created the virus. Hateful of humanity, hateful of himself, the dying scientist passes his knowledge on to his apprentice, who he believes will use it to damn all life to everlasting misery.The apprentice, Harold, his own past stained with unforgivable acts, does not share his master's hatred. But he wants this knowledge, and would shamelessly kill innocents to get it. But to what end, he struggles to realize--- all the while wondering if humanity, worthless as it seems, deserves compassion more than he deserves omniscience.As Harold struggles with his future and his identity, Chicago's ruler, the host, learns of the knowledge he has. Harold is has to flee his home.The host, Grakus, is on a journey of his own--- to prove that humanity should never have existed, to guide it to its destiny of self-destruction. He will not allow the apprentice to thwart his delicate plan to do so.But the apprentice will not allow the host to steal his decision before he's had the chance to make it.The Last City of America is a character-driven epic touching every corner of America, exposing every level of its beauty. The individual emulates humanity, and humanity's faults are written in the individual. The two walk with one another into the final decision. Cities fall one-by-one to man's ignorance. The world is ending. This time forever. Two hands reach out to save it: good and evil.This is the story of how we will be remembered.

The First Days


Rhiannon Frater - 2008
    Before the sun has set, they have become more than just friends and allies—they are bonded as tightly as any two people who have been to war together. During their cross-Texas odyssey to find and rescue Jenni’s oldest son, Jenni discovers the joy of watching a zombie’s head explode when she shoots its brains out. Katie learns that she’s a terrific tactician—and a pretty good shot. A chance encounter puts them on the road to an isolated, fortified town, besieged by zombies, where fewer than one hundred people cling to the shreds of civilization. It looks like the end of the world. But Katie and Jenni and many others will do whatever they have to to stay alive. Run, fight, pick each other up when they stumble, fall in love…anything is possible at the end of the world.

Mountain Man


Keith C. Blackmore - 2011
    Living on the outskirts of a city and scavenging for whatever supplies remain after civilization died two years ago, Gus knows that every time he goes down into undead suburbia could be his last.A novel of the zombie apocalypse. *First book of a completed 4-book series.* Contains graphic language and scenes of violence. Complete series order:Book 1: Mountain ManBook 2: SafariBook 3: HellifaxBook 4: Well FedAlso :The Hospital (a single short story, also part of the collection "CauldronGristle." This story happens six months before the events of "MountainMan." )

The Darkest Winter


Lindsey Pogue - 2019
    Billions died. The Ending began.A group of orphaned misfits.The wild lands of the last frontier. Superhuman abilities, harrowing adventures, and heartbreaking secrets.Elle - Haunting shadows are nothing new to Elle St. James, she’s been running from them all her life. But since the outbreak spread from the lower forty-eight, new monsters lurk in the darkness. After Elle wakes from The Fever, capable of horrific deeds, she fears she’s one of them. When she stumbles upon four orphans, Elle’s forced to discover what happens when her greatest fear becomes her darkest secret and her only hope of surviving.Jackson - After the world goes mad and takes his family with it, Jackson decides a bottle of bourbon and the depths of despair are preferable to any semblance of living. But when Jackson wakes from the black hole of oblivion with a gun in his face, he must choose whether he wants to die or fight to find something worth living for. Brought together under the worst possible circumstances, Elle and Jackson must face the inexplicable realities of the new world. Their past lives are over, and the arctic isn’t all that’s savage anymore.

Robinson Crusoe 2244


E.J. Robinson - 2014
    But when deadly strife breaks out among their ranks, the teenage son of one prominent family finds himself fleeing in the dead of night only to wind up shipwrecked on the forbidden continent of America. Armed with only his wit and the most unexpected of allies, the teenager struggles to survive in a wasteland filled with unspeakable horrors and in the end must uncover the one secret that can save his own people or spell doom for mankind forever.

Rift


Andreas Christensen - 2014
    The RIFT Saga begins here.In the ruins of what was once North America lays the Covenant, a nation forged by the iron will of the Moon people, who descended from their dusty refuge on the Moon after the Fall. The Moon people are wealthy, ruled by a strong government who protects its citizens from the dangers from outside their borders. Their greatest achievement is having learned the secret of immortality, and every citizen has the opportunity to live nearly forever if they choose to, a life of riches and abundance.The English are the descendants of the original inhabitants of this place, and they live very different lives from that of the Moon people. They only live to serve the greater good, and citizenship is something few have the opportunity to earn. At the age of fifty all non-citizens are subjected to mandatory euthanasia. In order to maintain a sustainable society, they are told.Every year a number of girls and boys at the age of eighteen are selected for Service to the State. The brightest and most talented are sent to become Students. The strong, the fighters and the athletes become Janissaries, a band of soldiers protecting the northern border from the enemies of the Covenant. The Wardens, a secretive organization known to operate far to the west, near the Rift, which makes up the border to the wastelands, sometimes choses one or two initiates, but nobody knows what becomes of them. And then there is the Corpus, where the whip rules and backs are bent.Those who complete their Service, may become citizens. And although they will never be equal to the Moon people, they will have access to all the riches and opportunities granted by the Covenant leadership to its citizens.As Sue is nearing Selection Day, she secretly hopes to be chosen, despite having to leave her mother and brother behind. She doesn't crave glory or wealth though. A man or woman with citizen status can do a lot of good, and although few return to their home towns, Sue hopes to return to give her family a better life on the other side of Service.But the Covenant is rotten to the core, and as she begins to learn its secrets, Sue must question everything she has always taken for granted. Soon she will find herself in dire peril, for she has seen the truth and there will be no turning back after that...This science fiction dystopian trilogy is set more than two centuries after the events of Exodus, in a future dystopian society forged from the ashes of global disaster."Mr. Christensen has absolutely found his genre, and I hope he keeps the stories coming!"

Planet Urth


Jennifer Martucci - 2013
    The planet has been battered by war, its inhabitants plagued by disease and death. Few humans survived and remained unaffected. Most changed dramatically and evolved into something else entirely. Irrevocable alterations caused by chemical warfare have created a new species. North America is in ruins and has been overtaken. Humanity has fallen at the hands of mutants known as Urthmen. Seventeen year-old Avery is alive and unchanged. But she has not been immune to the harshness of the new world. She has lived on the run for much of her life, in terror. After losing her father, Avery is the sole guardian of her eight-year-old sister, June. Avery is now charged with June’s safety as well as her own, a nearly impossible task.Forced to hide deep in the forest and away from the cities overrun by Urthmen, Avery and her sister are constantly hunted. Danger awaits them at every turn. They fear they are the only human beings left, that they are the last of their kind. But are they truly alone?Find out in this raw and rousing first installment of the Planet Urth series.

Contamination


Jamie Thornton - 2015
    Sometimes the blood fills you with rage, but sometimes it does...something else.When a new virus unleashes violence that devastates eighteen-year-old Corrina's neighborhood, all Corrina can think about is surviving. But when the boy she loves is kidnapped by a group of government soldiers, she must team up with a strange group of street kids to save him. Interview with the Author Q - What makes the Zombies are Human series special?

Torch Song


Shelley Singer - 2014
     It’s a strange world that’s left—composed of tiny city-states, like Redwood, Sierra, and Rocky—run with a variety of futuristic machines and broken down ones. Fancy new cars float as well as roll, but the Internet’s now so glitchy you can't even blog properly—newspapers have come back! So many machines are so broken-down that a fixer in this world isn't someone who rigs elections or cleans up after murders—it’s a person who can repair both an elevator and an ancient toilet. But roving bands of bandits, godders, causies, breeders, khakis, and toxies threaten to destroy what’s just been fixed. A POST-APOCALYPTIC GUNSLINGER KICKS ASS Anywhere there are people—however few—there’ll be power plays, and Rica’s current job at the Blackjack Casino is to run interference between the warring clans of Tahoe, in tiny Sierra. But then Rocky gets ambitious. And that means war. On the one hand, Sierra’s ready; everybody’s got plenty of fancy laser weapons. On the other, the term “everybody” in this world, applies more to the kinds of numbers usually found in neighborhood gangs than opposing armies. Singer’s built an intriguing half-world resembling a medieval society equipped—and sometimes ill-equipped—with technology. In Rica she’s created a fascinating, complex character, who meets more like her in Sierra (all with the fashionable striped hair of the day). WHO WILL LIKE IT: Fans of post-apocalyptic thrillers and dystopian fiction. Think LEGEND for adults.

Underground


Chris Ward - 2012
    Now it is their only chance for survival... Britain in 2075 is a dangerous place. A man known only as the Governor rules the country with an iron hand, but within the towering perimeter walls of London Greater Urban Area anarchy spreads unchecked through the streets. In the abandoned London Underground station of St. Cannerwells, a group of misfits calling themselves the Tube Riders seek to forget the chaos by playing a dangerous game with trains. Marta is their leader, a girl haunted by her brother's disappearance. Of the others, Paul lives only to protect his little brother Owen, while Simon is trying to hold on to his relationship with Jess, daughter of a government official. Guarding them all is Switch, a man with a flickering eye and a faster knife, who cares only about preserving the legacy of the Tube Riders. Together, they are family. Everything changes the day they are attacked by a rival gang. While escaping, they witness an event that could bring war down on Mega Britain. Suddenly they are fleeing for their lives, pursued not only by their rivals, but by the brutal Department of Civil Affairs, government killing machines known as Huntsmen, and finally by the inhuman Governor himself.

Apocalypticon


Clayton Smith - 2014
    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...

Free Fall


Peter Cawdron - 2015
    When he returns home, there’s no one to greet him. Earth has fallen silent. Now he must decide—stay in orbit, watching a dead planet roll slowly by beneath his windows, or land on Earth and fight for life?

The Pawn in the Portal


Nick Cole - 2016
    Ward, a tier-one operator turned mercenary, has just flung himself off the cargo deck of a doomed C-130. Now he’s out of the Drop Zone and evading the undead as a terrible new breed of hunter enters the Wyrd. But these new, faster predators might not be the only thing to fear in an apocalypse beset by zombies, nukes and killer A.I.’s. One of the last warriors of a collapsed government is planning on putting up some big numbers in this final, ultimate game of Survivor, until he finds a mysterious new companion... a stranger dressed in black.

Autumn


David Moody - 2001
    After 99% of the population of the planet is killed in less than 24 hours, for the very few who have managed to stay alive, things are about to get much worse. Animated by phase two of some unknown contagion, the dead begin to rise. At first slow, blind, dumb and lumbering, quickly the bodies regain their most basic senses and abilities... sight, hearing, locomotion... As well as the instinct toward aggression and violence. Held back only by the restraints of their rapidly decomposing flesh, the dead seem to have only one single goal - to lumber forth and destroy the sole remaining attraction in the silent, lifeless world: those who have survived the plague, who now find themselves outnumbered 1,000,000 to 1...Without ever using the 'Z' word, Autumn offers a new perspective on the traditional zombie story. There's no flesh eating, no fast-moving corpses, no gore for gore's sake. Combining the atmosphere and tone of George Romero's classic living dead films with the attitude and awareness of 28 Days (and Weeks) later, this horrifying and suspenseful novel is filled with relentless cold, dark fear.

Fire Country


David Estes - 2013
    Due to toxic air, life expectancies are so low the only way the tribe can survive is by forcing women to procreate when they turn sixteen and every three years thereafter. It is their duty as Bearers.Fifteen-year-old Siena is a Youngling, soon to be a Bearer, when she starts hearing rumors of another tribe of all women, called the Wild Ones. They are known to kidnap Youngling girls before the Call, the ceremony in which Bearers are given a husband with whom to bear children with. As the desert sands run out on her life's hourglass, Siena must uncover the truth about the Wild Ones while untangling the web of lies and deceit her father has masterfully spun.