Apocalyptic Comedy

From professional athletes like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan to philosophers like Confucius, inspirational business books love to suggest that listeners can succeed in business and in life by adopting the traits of their famous subjects. In Z.E.O. by Scott Kenemore, frustrated employees will finally find inspiration in a source they can already relate to: zombies!

In this terrifying and hilarious prequel, we witness the genesis of the zombie plague in early 19th-century England. We watch Elizabeth Bennet evolve from a nave young teenager into a savage slayer of the undead. We laugh as she begins her first clumsy training with nunchucks and katana swords and cry when her first blush with romance goes tragically awry.

Japan, after suffering from a massive irreparable disaster, cuts itself off from the world. Children are so weak they can barely stand or walk: the only people with any get-go are the elderly. Mumei lives with his grandfather Yoshiro, who worries about him constantly. They carry on a day-to-day routine in what could be viewed as a post-Fukushima time, with all the children born ancient - frail and gray-haired, yet incredibly compassionate and wise. Mumei may be enfeebled and feverish, but he is a beacon of hope, full of wit and free of self-pity and pessimism.

Josh Levin is an aspiring screenwriter teaching ESL classes in Chicago. His laptop is full of ideas, but the only one to really take root is Zombie Wars. When Josh comes home to discover his landlord, an unhinged army vet, rifling through his dirty laundry, he decides to move in with his girlfriend, Kimmy. It's domestic bliss for a moment, but Josh becomes entangled with a student, a Bosnian woman named Ana, whose husband is jealous and violent. Disaster ensues, and as Josh's choices move from silly to profoundly absurd, The Making of Zombie Wars takes on real consequence.

Morag Murray works for the secret government organization 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.

In post-NK3 Los Angeles, a 60-foot-tall fence surrounds the hills where the rich used to live, but the mansions have been taken over by those with the only power that matters: the power of memory. Life for the community inside the Fence, ruled over by the new aristocracy, the Verified, is a perpetual party. Outside the Fence, in downtown Los Angeles, the Verified use an invented mythology to control the mindless and nameless Drifters, Shamblers, and Bottle Bangers who serve the gift economy until no longer needed.

Meet Andy Warner, a recently deceased everyman and newly minted zombie. Resented by his parents, abandoned by his friends, and reviled by a society that no longer considers him human, Andy is having a bit of trouble adjusting to his new existence. But all that changes when he goes to an Undead Anonymous meeting and finds a kindred soul in Rita, an impossibly sexy recent suicide with a taste for the formaldehyde in cosmetic products.

With The Last Days of California, Mary Miller bursts into the literary world, taking up the mantle of Southern fiction and rendering it her own with wry vulnerability and contemporary urgency. Miller’s revelatory protagonist, Jess, is fourteen years old and waiting for the world to end. Her evangelical father has packed up the family and left their Montgomery home to drive west to California, hoping to save as many souls as possible before the Second Coming.

The story opens with our newly married protagonists, Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, defending their village from an army of flesh-eating unmentionables. But the honeymoon has barely begun when poor Mr. Darcy is nipped by a rampaging dreadful. Elizabeth knows the proper course of action is to promptly behead her husband (and then burn the corpse, just to be safe). But when she learns of a miracle antidote under development in London, she realizes there may be one last chance to save her true love.

Jacob Elliot doesn’t want a temporary job in the mailroom at Delphi Enterprises, but after two post-college years of unpaid internships and living in his parents’ basement, he needs the work. Then, on his first day, the unthinkable happens: toxic gas descends on a meeting in Delphi’s outdoor amphitheater, killing all the regular employees and leaving Jacob stranded inside the vast office complex. Wandering through Delphi headquarters, Jacob finds other survivors: Lauren, a disillusioned classics major; Swati, a fitness instructor; and Dominic, a business-school student.

A heartwarming tale of terror in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Meet Sarah and David. Once upon a time, they met and fell in love. But now they’re on the verge of divorce and going to couples’ counseling. On a routine trip to their counselor, they notice a few odd things: the lack of cars on the highway, the missing security guard, and the fact that their counselor, Dr. Kelly, is ripping out her previous client’s throat. Meet the zombies....

I have a confession. I hate bachelorette parties. A night of awkward dancing, penis-shaped straws and being told “you're next, Kaitlyn!” Even worse: It's hosted at a super swanky Miami club where I stick out like a sore thumb. Couldn’t get any worse, right?

The town of Lake Woebegotton, MN is a small town, filled with ordinary (yet above average) people, leading ordinary lives. Ordinary, that is, until the dead start coming back to life, with the intent to feast upon the living! Now this small town of above average citizens must overcome their petty rivalries and hidden secrets in order to survive an onslaught of the dead.

The Krakau came to Earth in the year 2104. By 2105, humanity had been reduced to shambling, feral monsters. In the Krakau's defense, it was an accident, and a century later, they did come back and try to fix us. Sort of. It's been four months since Marion "Mops" Adamopoulos learned the truth of that accident. Four months since she and her team of hygiene and sanitation specialists stole the EMCS Pufferfish and stopped a bioterrorism attack against the Krakau homeworld. Four months since she set out to find proof of what really happened on Earth all those years ago.

The zombie apocalypse has been good to Sarah and David. Their marriage is better than ever. They communicate well, share responsibilities, and now, they're starting a business. ZombieBusters-for all your zombie extermination needs. There are lots of zombies and that means lots of customers . . . Except one of them doesn't want the zombies dead; he wants them alive and ready for experimentation. Mad scientists make for difficult clients, and this time Sarah and David might have bitten off more than they can chew.

In a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, large enough for only one resident at a time, citizens waiting to enter the country fall under the rule of the power-hungry and tyrannical Phil, setting off a chain of injustice and mass hysteria. An Animal Farm for the 21st century, this is an incendiary political satire of unprecedented imagination, spiky humor, and cautionary appreciation for the hysteric in everyone.

Certainly not the twins at the heart of the matter of all things Apocalypse, Calvin and Trent, who soon must decide what—or rather whom—they’re willing to sacrifice in order to delay your world’s dying gasps. Definitely not the high school principal, Gary Mustafa, whose hyperfixation on balloons will leave your mind only loosely tethered to your head. Then there’s Love and Yew, the former government hacker and ex-reality TV star, the latter a psychedelic therapist who thinks she’s better than you. The less said about these two women, the better.

Messiah traces the collapse of Christianity and the rise of the next great religion of Western civilization: Cavism. Founded by undertaker John Cave, Cavism holds that it is a holy thing to die. Packaged by a marketing genius, the new religion conquers the world more quickly than any prior memeplex, but pockets of resistance remain. Eugene Luther, formerly an apostle of Cavism, now a hunted apostate, writes his memoirs as a last gesture of freedom while the noose of a totalitarian religious state tightens around him.

Not much says crazy quite like a good, old-fashioned apocalypse. And for the world over, it has been one wacky, wild ride. From zombies to werewolves, vampires to superpowers, everything was practically guaranteed to never be the same. But for a small town in Iowa, things took a slightly different turn, one that placed the people of Orangerton in a precarious and nefarious peril most fowl.

At the end of the world, the zombies are not the scariest monsters. Something evil and vile now hides among the sheep seeking to devour its very heart. Pastor Mike Brown and his wife, Lauren, are loved by the congregation of the church that rose from the ashes of the zombie apocalypse. But a dark secret, if discovered, could destroy everything.