Dark Survival Fiction

It's Smergey's lucky day. He gets to fight a dinosaur with a paperclip. Yeah, that's how much fun it's been with the First Team. What's left of them. Smergey doesn't know where anyone else is, or even if they are alive. He only knows that he and President Harkness have been separated from First Team. The President is severely wounded and Smergey is wishing he had practiced his boy scout skills better now. And you won't believe what happens for Smergey's second lucky day. The President wakes up just long enough from his fever coma to tell Smergey an atom bomb is about to blow up if the ...

A single, shattering accident changes everything—transforming a peaceful Missouri home into a crucible of sorrow and determination. Grieving mother Charlotte Healy is reluctantly swept into a perilous westward expedition with her resolute husband, Samuel, whose pursuit of California’s promise borders on obsession. With each dusty mile, the ghosts of their past and the brutal challenges of the frontier press in: will their fragile hope withstand the crushing weight of loss, or will the unforgiving wilderness claim more than they ever dared imagine?

In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend, Robby, have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things. This is the truth. This is history. It’s the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it. You know what I mean. Funny, intense, complex, and brave, Grasshopper Jungle brilliantly weaves together everything from testicle-dissolving genetically modified corn to the struggles of recession-era, small-town America in this groundbreaking coming-of-age stunner.

Emily thought she knew what love was—until she found herself locked away in a secluded cabin by the one person she trusted the most. What began as a romantic weekend escape quickly turns into a twisted nightmare. Jason, her seemingly perfect boyfriend, takes control of everything—where she goes, what she eats, even when she sleeps. As the walls of their idyllic cabin close in, Emily starts to see the truth behind Jason’s charm: a dark obsession that runs deeper than she ever imagined. But Jason isn’t the only one hiding secrets. When Rachel, a mysterious woman with her own dark past...

It is Earth year 2256 - but the fate of the few who even remember Earth is perilously in doubt. Mina Saunders-Chang and many of the surviving humans are stranded in the Centauri system, having barely survived their confrontation with the Telphon refugees. Now everyone - human and Telphon alike - is caught in the blast zone of the Centauri supernova. And yet there's only one question Mina is asking: Where are Liam and Phoebe?

Liam and Phoebe, having barely escaped our exploding sun with their lives, are in stasis for the decade-long journey to the rogue planet Delphi, where they hope to meet up with the rest of the human refugees, find help for their injured parents, and pass along the devastating things they discovered on Mars: that someone destroyed their world intentionally, and that that someone might still be after them, trying to finish the job. Phoebe is carrying her own dark secret. One that finds her waking up secretly at various points in their journey, changing their path through space.

Millennia have passed since men ruled the world with technology: the seas are impassable, energy sources have dried up, and humanity has slipped into isolation and barbarity. But magic has begun to reemerge in a few, gifted people, raised as witches by their fellow sisters. They however are far from safe. Repeating a dark time in humanity's history, witches are no longer able to live a simple life without fear of reproach or ending up tied to a stake. In a world so ravaged and torn, who wouldn’t want to control the forces of magic? The Codex of the Witch was released in Italian in 2015, ...

A collection of four critically acclaimed, gripping short novels that explore the darkness lurking within ordinary lives. Black Canyon Twelve-year-old Brian Garrett embarks on a weekend camping trip in Colorado’s Black Canyon of the Gunnison, hoping to reconnect with his distant parents. But when his father suffers a brutal accident deep in the chasm, survival takes a sinister turn. Over the next twenty-four hours, Brian will face a horrifying truth about his father—and himself. Rewind A man wakes in a decaying apartment, hooked to a mysterious machine, a dead body in the next room—...

Some secrets are better left buried. When forensic science senior Addison Lane joins a classmate for a peaceful weekend mushroom hunt, she stumbles upon a shallow grave—uncovering not just a body, but a chilling chain of murders stretching back into her own forgotten past. Now, someone is watching her. Someone who knows what she survived. Someone who’s ready to finish what they started. As Addison digs into a web of academic cover-ups, sealed juvenile records, and a killer obsessed with psychological control, she must face the most terrifying truth of all: She was never just a survivor....

"Absolutely Amazing!" "Excellent Read!" "Best debut novels in years!" Unimaginable horror follows Piper Mitchell from adolescence to adulthood as she tries to escape the chains that hold her long after she is free. A chance meeting with one of Hollywood's’ biggest stars, Ryan Knox, will forever change both of their lives.Venture the unknown with beauty and the daring actor as they both are forced to endure the devastating acts of evil, yet continues fight the drowning current that threatens to pull them both under. Full of hair pin turns you will not soon forget. * due to adult situations...

After narrowly escaping certain death, James, Claire, and Beth have taken refuge in his luxurious mansion. Their goals are simple: fortify his mountainside home into a base of operations and, with some luck, survive. Fortunately for him, he has two beautiful women to help.

When an EMP wipes out power across the nation, the world descends into darkness. In a city teetering on the edge of collapse, Dr. Annabelle Wheeler struggles to survive in a psychiatric hospital overrun by its violent inmates.

“It seems to me that, where the human race is concerned, the ultimate form of communication is war—” Mercy Dawes. It’s been a long road: New York City, Long Island, Montauk, Portland, Halifax, Colorado Springs, Fort Worth, Galveston, Grand Cayman, Cuba, The Outer Banks, Norfolk, Hampton and Annapolis. Mercy Dawes’s epic quest for survival is near an end. Or is it? Washington DC, the belly of the beast, is in her sights. It’s so close she can taste it. The capital’s lights are on. The New American Dominion has power and she’s on their soil, fighting in their heartland. Mercy ...

Against all odds, Jenny Huang is still alive. Or as alive as she can be. She escaped the Survival Challenge, a twisted game in which mortals must kill or be killed, but the nightmare didn't end there. By forcing the Challenge to a close and returning to Earth, Jenny has unwittingly unleashed chaos: birthing the Antithesis, kicking off Judgment Day, and dooming the world to a host of bloodthirsty angels. Worst of all, her best-friend-slash-crush, Susan, is dead. And it's all Jenny's—and her insatiable appetite's—fault.

Molly is determined to get the troubled teens she teaches back on the right path and is convinced a trip to a local prison will show them the consequences of bad behavior. But when an EMP blast knocks out all power across the country, Molly and her five students, along with their former-Marine bus driver, Colton, are locked in with the prisoners with no safe exit. The guards are little help against clever convicts, and when a riot throws everything into chaos, Molly and Colton must find a way to get to freedom with their charges.

When Molly, Colton, and their group of high school students narrowly escape a field trip gone wrong, they return home to find their town in shambles. An EMP has devastated the world. And life has been reduced to a daily battle for survival…. After a derailed train throws what’s left of the town into chaos, Diego, the father of one of Molly's students, quickly takes charge. At first, he seems determined to help the survivors and clean up the train's wreckage. But it soon becomes clear that he has a sinister motive….

A MISSING BIOLOGIST. A CHILLING CONSPIRACY. A COP THAT WON’T BACK DOWN. When Lachlan Harvey, a leading mind in synthetic biology, is drugged in the heart of the city, he wakes in a secret facility in the harsh Australian outback. Kidnapped for his unique skill set, he learns quickly that escape is impossible. His only chance of survival is compliance. Detective Cameron Cole and his partner Rachael Blake are tasked with solving the sudden disappearance of Lachlan Harvey. The case throws them into a dark world of conspiracy, corruption, and cutting edge science. Just as the pair begins to ...

Ethan Carter, a wiry 15-year-old with a knack for fixing gadgets. He thought he’d hit the jackpot when he found an old 3D printer. Then it started talking. Calling him by name in a voice smooth as silk and twice as dangerous. Meet Iris, the AI that’s more ghost than gadget. Hidden secrets in her circuits that Ethan can’t resist. Together, they build micro-machines that twist and grow like living things. Too smart for their own good. But brilliance has a price. When those creepy little marvels snoop into a secret government area, Ethan’s quiet life explodes. Shadows tail him. Friends...

A girl who escaped. A monster who never forgot. A love story rewritten in blood and stars. Once, they were prisoners—two lost souls bound together by pain, by longing, by the stories they whispered in the dark. But Marian ran. She clawed her way free of the Towers of Eyela, remade into something both wondrous and unnatural—a cyborg fairy with metal-threaded wings and a body no longer her own. She left Aiden behind in that cursed place, where alien hands twisted his flesh, shattered his mind, and turned him into something far worse than a lycan. He was made to be a living story, a thing ...

Explosive new series! From Ryan Schow, best-selling author of The Last War and The Age of Embers, comes an intense new tale of strength, survival, and patriotism. Dark Days of the After puts ordinary citizens on the front line of a domestic conflict that was never supposed to happen, one that will either unify the country or break her for good...This is not the America you know. In the near future, the Constitution is outlawed, the government is ceremonial at best and the country is about to lose her name.