Book picks similar to
The Awakened by Sara Elizabeth Santana
zombies
young-adult
dystopian
dystopia
Born
Tara Brown - 2012
There are no regular people anymore."Ten years ago when the world ended she ran for her life.Five weeks ago the world she'd hidden from came knocking on the door of her secluded cabin.Ten days ago she found salvation hiding amongst the dead.Yesterday she went back for the living.Today she wonders if she will live to see tomorrow.What do you do when the world you were born to is gone?Where do you hide when even your own body isn't safe?Emma ran when her daddy told her to. She hid like he said she should. He was the first person she turned her back on. The first one she let die.Ten years has gone by and she still lives by the simple rules he taught her when she was nine years old."Don't help anyone. Don't go where other people are unless you have to. Trust no one. Always pull the trigger."Until one night she hears the worst sound in the world, a knock. A simple, timid knock, on the door to her cabin.Only the voice of the brave little girl, ready to die for her brother, persuades Emma to open the door.As her fingers turn the lock, she has a terrible feeling she will regret her decision.But even as regret fills her world, so do love and companionship. Things she never imagined she would ever have again.Everything comes at a cost; you decide what you'll pay.
This is Not a Test
Courtney Summers - 2012
Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won't stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn't sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she's failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she's forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live. But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group's fate is determined less and less by what's happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside. When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?
The Murder Complex
Lindsay Cummings - 2014
For fans of Moira Young’s Dust Lands series, La Femme Nikita, and the movie Hanna.Meadow Woodson, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been trained by her father to fight, to kill, and to survive in any situation, lives with her family on a houseboat in Florida. The state is controlled by The Murder Complex, an organization that tracks the population with precision.The plot starts to thicken when Meadow meets Zephyr James, who is—although he doesn’t know it—one of the MC’s programmed assassins. Is their meeting a coincidence? Destiny? Or part of a terrifying strategy? And will Zephyr keep Meadow from discovering the haunting truth about her family?Action-packed, blood-soaked, and chilling, this is a dark and compelling debut novel by Lindsay Cummings.
The End Games
T. Michael Martin - 2013
They spend their days searching for survivors, their nights fighting endless hordes of “Bellows”—creatures that roam the dark, roaring for flesh. And at this Game, Michael and Patrick are very good.But The Game is changing.The Bellows are evolving.The Game Master is leading Michael and Patrick to other survivors—survivors who don’t play by the rules.And the brothers will never be the same.T. Michael Martin’s debut novel is a transcendent thriller filled with electrifying action, searing emotional insight, and unexpected romance.
The Girl with All the Gifts
M.R. Carey - 2014
Dr. Caldwell calls her "our little genius."Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.The Girl with All the Gifts is a sensational thriller, perfect for fans of Stephen King, Justin Cronin, and Neil Gaiman.
Origins
Kristen Middleton - 2012
Seventeen year old Cassandra Wild thought living in the chaos of her mother’s home daycare and dealing with her developing feelings for Bryce, her new Martial Arts’ instructor, was a struggle, until the night her world turned upside down.When an untested vaccine kills more than just a rampant flu virus, Cassie learns how to survive in a world where the dead walk, and the living…run!
The Immortal Rules
Julie Kagawa - 2012
By day, she and her crew scavenge for food. By night, any one of them could be eaten. Some days, all that drives Allie is her hatred of them—the vampires who keep humans as blood cattle. Until the night Allie herself dies and becomes one of the monsters.Forced to flee her city, Allie must pass for human as she joins a ragged group of pilgrims seeking a legend—a place that might have a cure for the disease that killed off most of civilization and created the rabids, the bloodthirsty creatures who threaten human and vampire alike. And soon Allie will have to decide what and who is worth dying for
again.Enter Julie Kagawa's dark and twisted world as an unforgettable journey begins.
Until the End of the World
Sarah Lyons Fleming - 2013
After all, she’s been on a self-imposed losing streak since her survivalist parents died: she’s stopped painting, broken off her engagement to Adrian and dated a real jerk. Rectifying her mistakes has to wait, however, because Cassie and her friends have just enough time to escape Brooklyn for her parents’ cabin before Bornavirus LX turns them into zombies, too. This is difficult enough, but Cassie’s tag along ex-boyfriend and her friend’s bratty sister have a knack for making everything, even the apocalypse, more unpleasant. When the two attract a threat as deadly as the undead to their safe haven, Cassie’s forced to see how far she’ll go to protect those she loves. And it’s a lot farther than she’d anticipated. This, coupled with Adrian’s distant voice on Safe Zone Radio and, of course, the living dead, threaten to put Cassie right back into the funk she just dragged herself out of. Survival’s great and all, especially when you have leather armor, good friends and home-brewed beer, but there’s something Cassie must do besides survive: tell Adrian she still loves him. And to do that, Cassie has to find faith that she’s stronger than she thinks, she’s still a crack shot and true love never dies.
Rot & Ruin
Jonathan Maberry - 2010
Benny doesn't want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash, but what he gets is a vocation that will teach him what it means to be human.
Aftertime
Sophie Littlefield - 2011
Having no idea how many weeks have passed, she slowly realizes the horrifying truth: Ruthie has vanished.And with her, nearly all of civilization.Where once-lush hills carried cars and commerce, the roads today see only cannibalistic Beaters -- people turned hungry for human flesh by a government experiment gone wrong.In a broken, barren California, Cass will undergo a harrowing quest to get Ruthie back. Few people trust an outsider, let alone a woman who became a zombie and somehow turned back, but she finds help from an enigmatic outlaw, Smoke. Smoke is her savior, and her safety.For the Beaters are out there.And the humans grip at survival with their trigger fingers. Especially when they learn that she and Ruthie have become the most feared, and desired, of weapons in a brave new world….
Sundered
Shannon Mayer - 2011
The side effects were anything but hopeful. Mara and Sebastian are young, in love and newlyweds. Far too soon, they will face tests to their love that most others won’t survive. Their bond strengthens with each loss, destruction and unbearable race against time. In each other, they find the will and hope to endure. Hand in hand, they will face the darkening of humanity with strength and integrity and an undeniable spirit to survive; together.
Writing on the Wall
Tracey Ward - 2013
Since Joss watched her parents die at the hands of a nightmare, a nightmare that stalks her even now, all these years later. That's the problem with the Risen - they refuse to die.But Joss is a survivor. A loner living in the post-apocalyptic streets of Seattle. It's a world dictated by Risen and the looming threat of the Colonists, a group of fellow survivors living comfortably in their compounds and patrolling the wild, looking to "save" the orphans of the end.Orphans like Joss.Like Ryan.As a member of an all male gang, Ryan is a threat as real as the Risen, a threat Joss avoids at all costs. Then one night their paths cross and Joss makes a choice that goes against all of her instincts. A choice that will threaten everything she has.Now a new outbreak is imminent and the Colonists are closing in. Joss' solitary, secret world will be blown wide open and the comfortable numbness she's lived in for the last six years will burn away leaving her aching and afraid.And awake.
ARV-3
Cameo Renae - 2013
THE APOCALYPSE. A nuclear fallout wiped out every living thing on the planet, except for a few thousand of us who took shelter in underground bunkers across the globe. Now, after thirteen long years, we were finally able to return to the topside to begin to rebuild. We thought we were alone. We were never more wrong. Before the fallout, scientists had worked on creating an anti-radiation vaccine (ARV). The first two attempts failed, but despite the incomplete tests and results, the government approved and distributed the third serum to the masses in an effort to aid those who had no shelter. It worked. Keeping those who remained on the topside alive, but it also altered and mutated them. This new and infectious threat had completely outnumbered us. Now, we not only had to rebuild our planet. We would have to fight for it. My name is Abigail Park. I’m seventeen, and this is my story.
Alive
Megan D. Martin - 2013
On the hunt for her sister, she runs into Gage—the first and only boy to have her heart and break it. It’s been four years and he isn’t a boy anymore, nor is he the same person he used to be. Against her better judgment, Eve agrees to stay with him when he divulges information on a safe haven near the small town they grew up in—but that doesn’t mean she has to like it…Returning home elicits a myriad of emotions that both Eve and Gage thought they had buried. The past and present collide and they are forced to the face bitter deceits that ruined them in the before and threaten to destroy them now…
This Mortal Coil
Emily Suvada - 2017
Her father was the world's leading geneticist, and humanity's best hope of beating a devastating virus. Then, hidden beneath Cole's genehacked enhancements she finds a message of hope: Lachlan created a vaccine.Only she can find and decrypt it, if she can unravel the clues he left for her. The closer she gets, the more she finds herself at risk from Cartaxus, a shadowy organization with a stranglehold on the world's genetic tech. But it's too late to turn back.There are three billion lives at stake, two people who can save them, and one final secret that Cat must unlock. A secret that will change everything.