Fiction Survival Stories

Electroshock therapy, child abuse, and modern-day slavery... just another day in Christine's life. Take a heart-wrenching yet inspiring ride through one woman's incredible journey that is so compelling that you are simultaneously trying to look away and unable to stop yourself from listening on. Christine's father is a wealthy, tyrannical man renowned in the diamond business. At the age of just five, little Christine is cast aside into a boarding school where she is ridiculed for two embarrassing problems. She grows up in a never-ending circle of traumatic experiences.

Emmett Atwater thought Babel's game sounded easy. Get points. Get paid. Go home. But it didn't take long for him to learn that Babel's competition was full of broken promises, none darker or more damaging than the last one. Now Emmett and the rest of the Genesis spaceship survivors must rally and forge their own path through a new world. Their mission from Babel is simple: extract nyxia, the most valuable material in the universe, and play nice with the indigenous Adamite population. But Emmett and the others quickly realize they are caught between two powerful forces.

Eden Wing has been living in his brother’s shadow for years. Even though he’s a top student at his academy in Ross City, Antarctica, and a brilliant inventor, most people know him only as Daniel Wing’s little brother. A decade ago, Daniel was known as Day, the boy from the streets who led a revolution that saved the Republic of America. But Day is no longer the same young man who was once a national hero. These days he’d rather hide out from the world and leave his past behind. All that matters to him now is keeping Eden safe.

When the world sees Frey, they think they see her twin sister, Rafi. Frey was raised to be Rafi’s double, and now she’s taken on the role...without anyone else knowing. Her goal? To destroy the forces that created her. But with the world watching and a rebellion rising, Frey is forced into a detour. Suddenly, she is stranded on her own in Paz, a city where many of the citizens attempt to regulate their emotions through an interface on their arms. Paz is an easy place to get lost...and also an easy place to lose yourself.

Long the dominant icon embodying the spirit of America's frontier past, the image of the cowboy no longer stands alone as the ultimate symbol of independence and self-reliance. The great canvas of the Western landscape - in art, books, film - is today shared by the figures called "Mountain Men". Tales of the Mountain Men presents in one book many of the most engaging and revealing portraits of mountain men ever written.

No one ever saw Faolan as a leader. Banished as a pup, he survived and returned as a gnaw wolf - the lowest member of the wolf pack. But Faolan wasn't meant to be a gnaw wolf. It's not just his strange, splayed paw, or his uncanny connection with the bears. There's something about Faolan that inspires certain wolves...and leaves others deeply suspicious. Now, with a dangerous threat on the horizon, the pack must make a choice. Will they trust the silver outsider with the task of leading?

Syd Chambers grew up on Earth with his human mother and barely remembers his alien father from Denza, who left on a mission when Syd was very young. After leaving Earth, Syd learned the truth of his father’s disappearance on the planet Ashfall—his father had died protecting a devastating secret about the history between humans and Denzans.

It’s been over six months since the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Alex and Darla have been staying with Alex’s relatives, trying to cope with the new reality of the primitive world so vividly portrayed in Ashfall, the first book in this trilogy. It’s also been six months of waiting for Alex’s parents to return from Iowa. Alex and Darla decide they can wait no longer and must retrace their journey into Iowa to find and bring back Alex’s parents to the tenuous safety of Illinois.

Thrown into solitary confinement for his failed escape attempt from furnace prison, Alex Sawyer struggles not to let the hellish pitch-black silence overwhelm him. Before another escape attempt is even possible, he must first survive the nightmare that now haunts his endless nights. Because the hole doesn’t need monsters to do its dirty work — not the usual brutes in black suits and their silver-eyed, fleshless hounds, or wheezing freaks with filthy syringes.

Twelve-year-old Ann understands there is only one thing to be grateful for as a slave: having her family together. But when the master falls into debt, he plans to sell both Ann and her younger brother to two different owners. Ann is convinced her family must run away on the Underground Railroad. Will Ann's family survive the dangerous trip to their freedom in the North? This Girls Survive story is supported by a glossary, discussion questions, and nonfiction material on the Underground Railroad, making it a valuable resource for young listeners.

Last week, 12-year-old Sky found a cryptic message from her dad, who mysteriously fled the safety of their underground compound five years ago. The note said the fate of the world depended on her going topside, to a lost world that's ruled by dinosaurs. Today, after a treacherous journey through the wilderness, Sky and her friends have made it to their destination: Lake Michigan.

For generations, the Seven Prophets guided humanity. Using their visions of the future, they ended wars and united nations - until the day, 100 years ago, when the Prophets disappeared. All they left behind was one final, secret prophecy, foretelling an Age of Darkness and the birth of a new Prophet who could be the world’s salvation...or the cause of its destruction. Five souls are on a collision course: A prince exiled from his kingdom. A ruthless killer. A once-faithful leader torn between his duty and his heart. A reckless gambler. And a dying girl on the verge of giving up.

Sixteen years ago the Kingdom of Winter was conquered and its citizens enslaved, leaving them without magic or a monarch. Now the Winterians' only hope for freedom is the eight survivors who managed to escape, and who have been waiting for the opportunity to steal back Winter's magic and rebuild the kingdom ever since. Orphaned as an infant during Winter's defeat, Meira has lived her whole life as a refugee, raised by the Winterians' general, Sir.

Valora Luck has two things: a ticket for the biggest and most luxurious ocean liner in the world, and a dream of leaving England behind and making a life for herself as a circus performer in New York. Much to her surprise though, she's turned away at the gangway; apparently, Chinese aren't allowed into America. But Val has to get on that ship. Her twin brother, Jamie, who has spent two long years at sea, is there, as is an influential circus owner, whom Val hopes to audition for. Thankfully, there's not much a trained acrobat like Val can't overcome when she puts her mind to it.

When four recent high school graduates return home from a weekend of camping, they expect to go back to life as usual. Instead, the boys discover empty streets, abandoned cars, and utter silence - everyone has disappeared. As the friends attempt to solve the mystery, they stumble upon more questions than answers. Why won’t the electronics work? Where did the wind go? What do the notebooks full of gibberish mean? With each new discovery, they learn that nothing was ever quite what it seemed on Echo Island and that a deep secret is drawing them in - if only they'd surrender to it.

A young girl, Rella Deveraux-PenSword, is called to protect and defend Hleo: an enchanted refuge for the children of Earth One. Rella must stop a plague of Shadowsplitters, the miscreations of the plagiarist Archimago, from destroying the Wondercurrent: a source of life and hope for all the children under Hleo's protection. Rella's parents, Winter and Julian, are part of a secret alliance of Storykeepers. First, her mother disappears. Then, a few years later, when her father goes missing, Rella is forced to flee her home in the rural village of Ensea.

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever. In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.

When Black Beauty is just a foal, his mother tells him to be gentle and good, hard-working and obedient to his humans always. Beauty's first job, as carriage horse to Squire Gordon, rewards his good behavior. But when the Gordons fall on hard times, Beauty is sold to an estate whose mistress insists on the bearing rein, a device that forces a horse's head into an uncomfortable but chic position. After scarring his knees in a fall, Beauty is sold once again, to a hard life in a livery stable.

In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world - as they know it - apart.

In The Winter Pony, Iain Lawrence pens the mesmerizing tale of a young white Siberian pony who escapes a group of cruel masters only to enter the company of Englishman Robert Falcon Scott. Joining Scott’s men and their race to the South Pole, the pony is soon given a name, James Pigg, as he and the rest embark on a thrilling race to reach the bottom of the world - a race in which not everyone will survive.