Book picks similar to
The Last City of America by Matthew Tysz
sci-fi
post-apocalyptic
science-fiction
scifi
Oddjobs
Heide Goody - 2016
Incomprehensible horrors from beyond are going to devour our world but that’s no excuse to get all emotional about it. Morag Murray works for the secret government organisation responsible for making sure the apocalypse goes as smoothly and as quietly as possible. In her first week on the job, Morag has to hunt down a man-eating starfish, solve a supernatural murder and, if she’s got time, prevent her own inevitable death. The first book in a new comedy series by the creators of ‘Clovenhoof’, Oddjobs is a sideswipe at the world of work and a fantastical adventure featuring amphibian wannabe gangstas, mad old cat ladies, ancient gods, apocalyptic scrabble, fish porn, telepathic curry and, possibly, the end of the world before the weekend.
Contain
Saul W. Tanpepper - 2015
They were wrong.CONTAIN (BUNKER 12 series pilot)Three years. That's how long Finnian Bolles has been hiding inside the impregnable walls of the hydroelectric complex known as Bunker 8. Three years, with enough resources to last him and the other thirty survivors three more.But then a series of disturbing events culminates in the sudden appearance of a stranger at their door. Before he too falls victim to the mysterious sickness known as the Flense, he warns them of a fate more horrific than the one they've been avoiding. But to prevent it, they must leave and seek a place many insist doesn't exist, a mythical twelfth bunker.BUNKER 12 SERIES DESCRIPTIONRequiring no more than the slightest skin-to-skin contact, the Flense spreads with ruthless speed and stealth, decimating mankind before it's even aware of it. The infected are turned into soulless creatures, Wraiths, which wreak destruction upon anyone and anything in their path.Secure inside ten isolated bunkers are Humanity's tattered remains, each working tirelessly to unravel the mystery of the scourge. But the bunkers were never meant to protect forever. In fact, they were never meant to protect at all.CONTAIN is the first book in the new thriller cyberpunk series BUNKER 12.THE FLENSE SERIES DESCRIPTION(BUNKER 12 companion series)Hundreds die in a fiery train crash in northern China. A cargo ship smuggling refugees is lost to calm seas off Libya. Entire villages in Ghana are abandoned overnight.Contracted by a prepper group to investigate a series of seemingly disconnected global tragedies, a young freelance reporter, Angelique d'Enfantine, uncovers a disturbing pattern: each event is preceded by the sudden spread of a mysterious ailment and is followed by the appearance of a man dressed in black and silver who witnesses claim is the devil himself.Each event is more grisly than the last. As the risk to her life grows, Angel begins to doubt that the tragedies are harbingers of an impending biblical catastrophe, but rather practice runs conducted by a fanatical organization bent on global annihilation. Could her sponsors be using her to advance their own paranoid agenda?
Survival Aptitude Test: Sound
Mike Sheriff - 2016
. .
For the denizens of Daqin Guojin, this horrific thought is a harsh reality. The Cycle of Extinctions has erased Earth’s food sources, and life 700 years later harbors little sympathy for the planet’s last species. But a doomed boy and girl offer humanity a seed of hope.Daoren and Heqet stand an even chance of celebrating their 20th birthdays. Like every 19-year-old prospect for denizenship, they must soon sit the Survival Aptitude Test. Only the smartest pass. The rest are harvested for grooll, the city-state’s sole food source and barter currency.If Daoren’s intellect can outpace his anxiety, he might earn the first perfect score in history and be named ruler. Heqet knows Daoren can’t do it without her—even if he’d be the last person to ask for help. But when tragedy strikes all-too-close to home, the pair make a shocking discovery that binds their fate and crushes all hope.A murky cabal has been manipulating S.A.T. scores for the dull-witted children of the ruling caste, amassing a fortune in grooll and triggering a severe food shortage. Worse, they plan to protect their wealth by ensuring Daoren’s test ends with his culling, not his coronation.Survival Aptitude Test: Sound is the first book in Mike Sheriff’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi series, The Extinction Odyssey. Fans of classic dystopian tales like Soylent Green and Logan’s Run should enjoy this modern twist on humanity’s last gasp.
Grab Survival Aptitude Test: Sound and test your nerves today!
The Bane
Keary Taylor - 2011
It had the ability to grow new organs and limbs, to heal the world. Until it evolved out of control and spread like the common cold. The machine took over, the soul vanished, and the Bane were born. The Bane won't stop until every last person has been infected. With less than two percent of the human population left, mankind is on the brink of extinction.Eve knows the stories of the Evolution, the time before she wandered into the colony of Eden, unable to recall anything but her name. But she doesn't need memories to know this world is her reality. This is a world that is quickly losing its humanity, one Bane at a time.Fighting to keep one of the last remaining human colonies alive, Eve finds herself torn between her dedication to the colony, and the discovery of love. There is Avian and West – one a soldier, one a keeper of secrets. And in the end, Eve will make a choice that will change the future of mankind.The Bane is The Terminator meets The Walking Dead with a heart-twisting romance.Previously published as Eden, due to reader demand it has been revamped and rereleased as The Bane: book one in The Eden Trilogy.
The Book of Koli
M.R. Carey - 2020
A world where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly vines and seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don't get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will.Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He knows the first rule of survival is that you don't venture beyond the walls.What he doesn't know is - what happens when you aren't given a choice?The first in a gripping new trilogy, The Book of Koli charts the journey of one unforgettable young boy struggling to find his place in a chilling post-apocalyptic world.
Dark Matters
Michael Dow - 2016
They search for a stable end game that balances the after-effects of climate change and dwindling natural resources against the needs of a ten-billion-plus population. Rudolph “Rudy” Dersch is the newly minted CEO of the world’s largest, multi-trillion-dollar corporate conglomerate. But the job comes with an unexpected twist - an invitation to join the Consortium, a small, secretive group of global select who effectively decide what’s best for the rest of humanity. How does Rudy’s struggle to reconcile business and family impact the world’s future? And who, if anyone, can break the Consortium’s iron grip on the status quo? ˃˃˃ Dark Matter, Asteroids and Mysterious Visions The answer may lie with Dr. Jonas Hanssen, a renegade physicist, who is close to unraveling one of the universe’s greatest mysteries and with a headstrong art curator, Monique, driven to find the meaning behind her increasingly compelling visions. From a life-changing moment in a crowded Singapore marketplace to the business end of an assassin’s gun, they face a power beyond any the world has ever seen. To survive, they’ll have to decipher the truth about dark matter - before the Consortium can achieve its ruinous end game.
Among the Dead and Dying
A.R. Wise - 2014
Thousands of years after a zombie apocalypse wiped out the majority of humans, the world is a very different and harsh place. It's safest to live behind the fortified walls of the Kingdom of Golden Rock, or it least it had been. Rumors of an army of dead led by a man calling himself The Scholar have proven true, and even the most secure cities are no match for his undead soldiers. The Scholar's goal is to crush the world of the living, but he also wants to capture a simple baker named Saffi, though no one seems to know why. Saffi's father vows to protect his daughter, and flees The Scholar's path, only to fall prey to other evils of the world outside the walls. In just one day's time, Ward and Saffi's lives will be forever altered, and the secret about why The Scholar wants her will be revealed.
Platoon F: Pentalogy
John P. Logsdon - 2014
His only out is to undergo a complete physical makeover, get a rank and name change, and agree to take over a new platoon in the Segnal Space Marine Corps (SSMC). Mission 2: Angry Robots A group of antiquated robots have decided that they've had enough of being treated like second-class citizens. Working together, they take over the sewage plant on Segnal Prime and start pumping the sludge back up into the buildings. Mission 3: The SSMC Voyeur A space probe that was sent out 500 years ago has returned...sort of. It's actually a copy of the original model of The SSMC Voyeur, which begs the question: What happened to the original craft? The crew of The SSMC Reluctant is dispatched to learn about the originating planet that sent this cloned vehicle. And, if Rear Admiral Conster gets his way, they're also to blow the entire planet that it came from to smithereens. Mission 4: Earthlings After their last mission, the Segnal Space Marine Corps (SSMC) saw the value of the GONE Drive. The ability to move through space in a blink of an eye would be highly appealing to any military body, but specifically to Rear Admiral Parfait who has a bit of a thing for military bodies. Parfait sets a mission in place where The SSMC Reluctant must go to one of the planets that they briefly landed on during their last mission: Earth. Parfait sees the opportunity to...probe another society of human-like creatures and possibly build relations with them. Furthermore, and much to Captain Don Harr's chagrin, Parfait has put in for a title change to Senior Diplomat so that he can join the crew! Mission 5: Synthetic DNA After a close call in the year 2440 at the planet called "Earth," the crew of The SSMC Reluctant makes a quick escape back to their home of Segnal. However, Geezer didn't have time to set the clock on the GONE Drive to return them back to their own era, and things have changed greatly in the Segnal System over the past 500 years. The system is ruled by Synthetic Lifeforms now, and they find humans and standard robots an affront to their intellectual capacity. From their perspective, only Synthetic Lifeforms should be allowed to live.
The Amber Project
J.N. Chaney - 2015
The surviving humans take refuge in an underground city, determined to return home. But after generations of failures and botched attempts, hope is beginning to dwindle. That is, until a young scientist makes a unique discovery — and everything changes. Suddenly, there’s reason to hope again, and it rests within a group of genetically engineered children that are both human and Variant. Terry is one of these children, modified and trained to endure the harsh conditions of a planet he cannot begin to understand. After years of preparation, Terry thinks he knows what to expect. But the reality is far stranger than anything he can imagine — and what he will become is far more dangerous.
Breakdown
Katherine Amt Hanna - 2011
But unresolved grief over his dead wife and baby and the horrors he witnessed as he traveled through a changed world have damaged him. He struggles to let go of his past, accept the healing kindness of those around him, and let love back into his life.Approximately 103,000 words, or 425 printed pages.
Metro 2033
Dmitry Glukhovsky - 2002
The world has been reduced to rubble. Humanity is nearly extinct. The half-destroyed cities have become uninhabitable through radiation. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. Survivors still remember the past greatness of humankind. But the last remains of civilisation have already become a distant memory, the stuff of myth and legend. More than 20 years have passed since the last plane took off from the earth. Rusted railways lead into emptiness. The ether is void and the airwaves echo to a soulless howling where previously the frequencies were full of news from Tokyo, New York, Buenos Aires. Man has handed over stewardship of the earth to new life-forms. Mutated by radiation, they are better adapted to the new world. Man's time is over. A few score thousand survivors live on, not knowing whether they are the only ones left on earth. They live in the Moscow Metro - the biggest air-raid shelter ever built. It is humanity's last refuge. Stations have become mini-statelets, their people uniting around ideas, religions, water-filters - or the simple need to repulse an enemy incursion. It is a world without a tomorrow, with no room for dreams, plans, hopes. Feelings have given way to instinct - the most important of which is survival. Survival at any price. VDNKh is the northernmost inhabited station on its line. It was one of the Metro's best stations and still remains secure. But now a new and terrible threat has appeared. Artyom, a young man living in VDNKh, is given the task of penetrating to the heart of the Metro, to the legendary Polis, to alert everyone to the awful danger and to get help. He holds the future of his native station in his hands, the whole Metro - and maybe the whole of humanity.
Nod
Adrian Barnes - 2012
Or almost no one. A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand, can still sleep, and they’ve all shared the same mysterious dream. A handful of silent children can still sleep as well, but what they’re dreaming remains a mystery. Global panic ensues. A medical fact: after six days of absolute sleep deprivation, psychosis sets in. After four weeks, the body dies. In the interim, a bizarre new world arises and swallows the old one whole. A world called Nod.
Glimmer of Hope
Ryan King - 2012
Fleeing deadly radiation, plague and desperate men, Nathan, an army officer, leads his wife and their two teenage sons away from chaos and madness toward his ancestral home in Kentucky. Horrors lie in their path. From the prison struggling to maintain control of its inmates, to the desperadoes who enslave anyone who comes their way, even survival may cost Nathan his humanity...or that of his sons, Joshua and David. Nathan struggles to keep his family intact, but it requires making brutal choices. He wants to protect his sons, but knows they now must be deadly and cold at times.Nathan's home has been spared from the worst of the destruction, but a larger conflict over scarce resources erupts. For the survivors to have any chance they will have to fight and the desperate journey has transformed young Joshua and David into men called upon to lead and sacrifice. Torn between harsh realities, and wanting to hold onto fleeting childhoods, they are often conflicted and angry about the roles thrust upon them. Much will depend on how Nathan and his sons respond to a madman and his military regime seeking to conquer the fledgling community they are helping to build.GLIMMER OF HOPE is an epic tale of one family's endurance and triumph after tomorrow's apocalypse.