Book picks similar to
Keepers of Men by Eric Martindale


post-apocalyptic
thriller
dystopian
christian

Scion of Conquered Earth


Michael J. Allen - 2016
    Fighters bombard the ruins. Monsters hunt the wastes – some humans serving the Welorin in order to indulge their petty cruelties. The last free survivors struggle against starvation and capture. It’s a world where friendship costs too dearly and heroics verge on suicide.One young man simply can’t resist either. Welorin torture machines ravage his world, filling it with literal nightmares. Cannibalistic aerobics instructors hunt him and snatcher teams dog his every step. Alaric attempts one rescue after another, hoping someone might possess keys to unlock memories stolen by the initial assault.An aborted rescue lands him in a three way fight between Welorin forces and interstellar raiders. He takes cover in the pirates’ ship, coercing its AI, Cassii, into helping him. Success comes with unexpected consequence as Cassii abandons her crew, his friends and Earth’s solar system.Cassii refuses to return to Earth, decrying her former captain’s despoiling of the ship’s weapons and armor. Alaric leverages goods stolen from Earth by Cassii’s former crew into a bid at privateering. Surrounded by tech he barely understands and exotic life forms, he’s easy prey for the Protectorate’s mercenary population.Escort Captain Manc Shepherd and the sultry pirate Tyne Ren – Manc’s onetime partner – manipulate, exploit and seduce him across the stars. Alaric’s perilous heroics complicate their tug-of-war, endangering both and Alaric’s ship – their intended prize.Alaric must decide who he is, what he holds dear and how far he’ll go to protect both. He must choose who to trust: his mentor, his temptress or his smitten ship’s AI. The right choice could save worlds. The wrong one could throw him into a desperate battle to save thousands from his betrayer at the cost of his truest friend.

The Line Between


Tosca Lee - 2019
    For recent apocalyptic cult escapee Wynter Roth, it’s the end she’d always been told was coming.When Wynter Roth is turned out of New Earth, a self-contained doomsday cult on the American prairie, she emerges into a world poised on the brink of madness as a mysterious outbreak of rapid early onset dementia spreads across the nation.As Wynter struggles to start over in a world she’s been taught to regard as evil, she finds herself face-to-face with the apocalypse she’s feared all her life—until the night her sister shows up at her doorstep with a set of medical samples. That night, Wynter learns there’s something far more sinister at play and that these samples are key to understanding the disease.Now, as the power grid fails and the nation descends into chaos, Wynter must find a way to get the samples to a lab in Colorado. Uncertain who to trust, she takes up with former military man Chase Miller, who has his own reasons for wanting to get close to the samples in her possession, and to Wynter herself.

Apocalypse Cow


Michael Logan - 2012
    During her bumbling quest to unveil the truth, she crosses paths with Terry and Geldof, and together they set out to escape a quarantined Britain with the evidence and vital data that could unlock a cure for the virus.Standing in the way are rampaging hordes of animals, a ruthless security agent and an army ready to shoot anybody with a case of the sniffles on the off-chance the virus has mutated.Three losers. Overwhelming odds. A single outcome: the world is screwed.

The Fire Sermon


Francesca Haig - 2014
    Four hundred years in the future, the Earth has turned primitive following a nuclear fire that laid waste to civilization and nature. Though the radiation fallout has ended, for some unknowable reason every person is born with a twin. Of each pair one is an Alpha - physically perfect in every way - and the other an Omega burdened with deformity, small or large. With the Council ruling an apartheid-like society, Omegas are branded and ostracized while the Alphas have gathered the world's sparse resources for themselves. Though proclaiming their superiority, for all their effort Alphas cannot escape one harsh fact: Whenever one twin dies, so does the other. Cass is a rare Omega, one burdened with psychic foresight. While her twin, Zach, gains power on the Alpha Council, she dares to dream the most dangerous dream of all: equality. For daring to envision a world in which Alphas and Omegas live side by side as equals, both the Council and the Resistance have her in their sights. ©2015 De Tores Ltd (P)2015 Audible Inc.

The Forsaken


Lisa M. Stasse - 2012
    (the super-country that was once Mexico, the U.S., and Canada), Alenna learned at an early age to blend in and be quiet—having your parents taken by the police will do that to a girl. But Alenna can’t help but stand out when she fails a test that all sixteen-year-olds have to take: The test says she has a high capacity for brutal violence, and so she is sent to The Wheel, an island where all would-be criminals end up.The life expectancy of prisoners on The Wheel is just two years, but with dirty, violent, and chaotic conditions, the time seems a lot longer as Alenna is forced to deal with civil wars for land ownership and machines that snatch kids out of their makeshift homes. Desperate, she and the other prisoners concoct a potentially fatal plan to flee the island. Survival may seem impossible, but Alenna is determined to achieve it anyway.

Caligatha


Matt Spire - 2015
    Jericho, a brilliant scientist riddled with guilt, attempts to recreate his deceased wife and child, only to wind up in a drug-fueled haze in Caligatha. When the two meet and form a rocky relationship, they start to suspect something is not quite right about their reality. Meanwhile, in another timeline, survivors of the worldwide plague attempt to understand how it all went wrong, and survive in a near-future wasteland of high technology and chaos. The evidence they find brings them all together in a shocking conclusion. A thrilling exploration of the dark fringes of a derailed-singularity world: nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence alter the rules of human existence. But human drives and motives remain unchanged at their best——and at their most terrifying.

Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits


David Wong - 2015
    A world in which at least one cat smells like a seafood shop's dumpster on a hot summer day.This is the world in which Zoey Ashe finds herself, navigating a futuristic city in which one can find elements of the fantastic, nightmarish and ridiculous on any street corner. Her only trusted advisor is the aforementioned cat, but even in the future, cats cannot give advice. At least not any that you'd want to follow.Will Zoey figure it all out in time? Or maybe the better question is, will you? After all, the future is coming sooner than you think.

Patient Zero


Jonathan Maberry - 2009
    and there's nothing wrong with Joe Ledger's skills. And that's both a good, and a bad thing. It's good because he's a Baltimore detective that has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new taskforce created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can't handle. This rapid response group is called the Department of Military Sciences or the DMS for short. It's bad because his first mission is to help stop a group of terrorists from releasing a dreadful bio-weapon that can turn ordinary people into zombies. The fate of the world hangs in the balance...

Afterlife


Marcus Sakey - 2017
    He wakes without a scratch. The building is in ruins. His team is gone. Outside, Chicago is dark. Cars lie abandoned. No planes cross the sky. He’s relieved to spot other people — until he sees they’re carrying machetes.Welcome to the afterlife.Claire McCoy stands over the body of Will Brody. As head of an FBI task force, she hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. A terrorist has claimed eighteen lives and thrown the nation into panic. Against this horror, something reckless and beautiful happened. She fell in love… with Will Brody. But the line between life and death is narrower than any of us suspect — and all that matters to Will and Claire is getting back to each other.From the author of the million-copy bestselling Brilliance Trilogy comes a mind-bending thriller that explores our most haunting and fundamental question: What if death is just the beginning?

The Road King Chronicles: Blue Ridge Run


Harry Harrigan - 2015
    After twenty-three years and three combat tours with the 75th Ranger Regiment, he’s got a Silver Star, a titanium knee and a plan to see America on his Road King motorcycle. No more patrols, no more firefights. Nothing more dangerous than passing the old work van rumbling along in front of him as he rides toward Hunter-Stewart and the sunset of his career in the Army. But just as he twists the throttle to pass, a woman’s bare foot smears a bloody print on the van’s back window. Roman turns back to help, triggering a chain of events that puts his brother Virgil and two old friends in the crosshairs of a murderer. Saving them sends Roman on a desperate ride from Savannah to DC, where he discovers that the past he has been trying to forget has not forgotten him. It’s been waiting patiently, holding his secret like a time bomb.

The Burn


Annie Oldham - 2011
    That's what Terra's father tells her. She has lived her whole life in comfort in a colony at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. She hates it. And she would pay any price to leave. But when Terra finally escapes the colony, she finds out her father is right.She finds a group of survivors that quickly become friends, and every day with them is a race for survival. When she witnesses and commits unspeakable acts, she has to decide where her loyalty lies: with the colony she despises or The Burn, where every day is filled with nightmares.

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.

The Eden Plague


David VanDyke - 2012
    Who is the man he kills, the woman he shoots, and what is the Eden Plague? Fleeing the shadowy Company, Daniel turns to fellow soldiers. He fights back, seeks the woman, and wants answers. A secret threatens world stability and a conspiracy could change everything.

SurviRal


Ken Benton - 2014
    A Denver couple tries to escape the chaos of the city after a killer manmade virus causes the economic collapse of society.

The Kill Order


James Dashner - 2012
    But surviving the sun flares was easy compared to what came next. Now a disease of rage and lunacy races across the eastern United States, and there’s something suspicious about its origin. Worse yet, it’s mutating, and all evidence suggests that it will bring humanity to its knees.Mark and Trina are convinced there’s a way to save those left living from descending into madness. And they’re determined to find it—if they can stay alive. Because in this new, devastated world, every life has a price. And to some, you’re worth more dead than alive.