Fiction Survival Stories

Something old lives beneath the mountain. And it remembers everyone who enters. When down-on-his-luck land surveyor Will Farris takes a solo job in a remote Appalachian valley, he thinks it’ll be a quick payday—just map out an abandoned mining claim and be done. But the locals won’t go near the place. They mutter about Hollow Number 6. About claw marks in stone. About voices that call to you in the voice of someone you lost. Will ignores the warnings. Until the mine starts groaning. Until he finds bones in the dark. Until he sees something massive watching from deep in the shaft—...

Cassy has joined with Frank and his group, and the group members declare themselves a clan, pitting themselves as a group against the rising tide of darkness around them. Then the death of one of their own creates new tensions that may tear the clan apart before it ever reaches the promised oasis of Cassy's homestead farm. Worse, they are followed by a man bent on their destruction, who would take her farm for his own group if he can find it.

After their plan to rescue the prince of Gallica has gone horribly wrong, Will Treaty and his apprentice, Maddie, are being held captive at the Chateau des Falaises in Gallica. The dangerous baron Lassigny is intent on keeping them - and the prince - no matter what. But Will and Maddie are determined to escape. If they ever want to return to their home, they’ll have to find ways to outwit the baron and get outside the locked tower. When friends from home endeavor to find their own way to help, it seems escape is closer than ever.

When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. She’s alone—left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned. With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. Her only companions are a Rottweiler named George and all the books she can read. After a rough start, Maddie learns to trust her own ingenuity and invents clever ways to survive in a place that has been deserted and forgotten.

Eleven-year-old Japanese American Owen has been in Japan for his sixth-grade year. By March he finally feels like he's getting the hang of the new culture, making friends at school, and feeling at home with the "weird" food. But early one morning, everything changes - and Owen suddenly finds himself just trying to survive one of history's most devastating disasters.

World War II Begins... It's September of nineteen-thirty-nine, and King George of England has just announced to his people that he has declared war on Germany due to their invasion of the Allied country of Poland. This ghastly news immediately falls on the ears of Simon Bentley while he sits enjoying himself at his younger brother George's wedding. Being a Squadron Leader in the Royal Air Force, he knows he must act immediately, so without any hesitation, Simon flees the church basement reception and heads straight for his air base. It is time for all the years of his pilot training to be ...

Twelve-year-old Addison Cooke just wishes something exciting would happen to him. His aunt and uncle, both world-famous researchers, travel to the ends of the earth searching for hidden treasure, dodging dangerous robbers along the way, while Addison is stuck in school all day. Luckily for Addison, adventure has a way of finding the Cookes.

The storm isn’t the only thing that kills. When a supercell touches down across the American Midwest, seasoned storm chasers race to capture its fury. But as the skies darken and the winds rise, a violent gang of looters follows the destruction—robbing, hunting, and silencing anyone in their way. Caught between the storm and the savages, a scattered group of chasers must survive tornadoes, betrayal, and chaos on the open road. As towns are shredded and secrets exposed, only one thing is certain: not everyone will make it out alive. Perfect for fans of Twister, Into the Storm, and ...

Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods - all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, 40 dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever.

Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, 300 years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end 50 years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

In 1985 southern Sudan is ravaged by war. Rebels and government forces battle for control, with ordinary people…people like the boy, Salva Dut…caught in the middle. When Salva's village is attacked, he must embark on a harrowing journey that will propel him through horror and heartbreak, across a harsh desert, and into a strange new life. Years later, in contemporary South Sudan, a girl named Nya must walk eight hours a day to fetch water. The walk is grueling, but there is unexpected hope.

An Adventure Story in the Heart of Alaska. Jack’s idyllic Alaskan sanctuary is interrupted when a lost, half-starved woman shows up at his favorite fishing spot on the last day of summer. Soon after, Jack is shocked to learn that his beloved pet wolves are not wolves at all. To complicate matters, he might lose his homestead he spent years building, and the nearby townspeople are in trouble. How will he save his home, his friends, and the nearby town?

In Never Say Die, 15-year-old Inuit hunter Nick Thrasher takes a trip downriver with his half-brother Ryan, who’s visiting Canada’s Arctic to photograph the caribou migration. But when disaster strikes, Nick is forced to survive alone in a landscape filled with dangerous predators. Most of all, he fears the terrifying “grolar bear”, the half-grizzly, half-polar-bear hybrid that isn’t supposed to exist - except Nick has seen it with his own eyes.

Spensa made it out of the Nowhere, but what she saw in the space between the stars has changed her forever. She came face to face with the Delvers, and finally got answers to the questions she’s had about her own strange Cytonic gifts. The Superiority didn’t stop fighting for galactic dominance while she was gone, though. Spensa’s team, Skyward Flight, was able to hold Winzik off, and even collect allies to help with the cause, but it’s only a matter of time until humanity—and the rest of the galaxy—falls.

After camping in Rocky Mountain National Park, Jake and his friends travel to the Great Sand Dunes in southern Colorado. Exploring the heart of the dunes, they stumble upon something both unexpected and dangerous. Through more twists and turns, Jake’s friendships and integrity are tested by choices that will demand smarts and courage.

Albert and Scarlett are a formidable pair. With his ability to read minds and her way with a weapon, no bank can keep them out and no jail can keep them in. But their notoriety may have spread a bit too far. Now old enemies from Scarlett’s past and a sinister new threat from Albert’s world are boxing them in—and holding their friends hostage. To win their freedom, the outlaws Scarlett and Browne are charged with pulling off an impossible mission. And the clock is ticking . . .

It's been several months since Lina and Doon escaped the dying city of Ember and, along with the rest of their people, joined the town of Sparks. Now, struggling through the harsh winter aboveground, they find an unusual book. Torn up and missing most of its pages, it alludes to a mysterious device from before the Disaster, which they believe is still in Ember.

Some monsters don’t wait for the ash to settle. During the violent eruption of Mt. St. Helens, two campers find themselves cut off from civilization—smoke choking the sky, fire raining down, and something massive lurking just beyond the treeline. What they discover isn't just a matter of life or death. It’s something wounded. Something hunted. Something not supposed to exist. Set decades before the events of Shadows in the Timberline, this novella reveals a forgotten piece of the forest’s dark history—and a single moment that changed everything. Shadow’s Ashes is a gripping, ...

From number one best-selling author Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson comes the final of three Skyward series novellas, each told from the perspective of a different member of the team back on Detritus. Listen to Jorgen's story along with Cytonic.

Chick Bowdrie could have been an outlaw, but he rode a different trail. The Texas Rangers recruited Bowdrie to help pursue the most wanted men in the Southwest. And Bowdrie knew the terrain all too well: the dusty trails, bitter cattle feuds, the desperate killers, and the weather-beaten towns that could explode into chaos at the wrong word. The Rangers were called in to handle the tough cases, and Bowdrie was the toughest and smartest.