Fiction Survival Stories

Esna Donovan was stranded on a planet full of people that didn't look like her as a child along with her brother. Their father was murdered, leaving them sitting in their spaceship waiting for his return. They remember almost nothing from before that time, when two Calavari who were business associates of their father took them in and told them they could never be seen outside their full body armor. They've honored their father's dying wish, living and working on the Calavari's farm while exploring the barren wastelands looking for bits of technological salvage.

Weeks after arriving in Colorado to start a new farm, the Hollowell family is looking at disaster when 15-year-old Owen witnesses the theft of their mules. Learning that Hercules and Peaches will likely be sold to the mines, Owen sets out to track the rustler over the mountains. It’s all Ma can do to hold back little brother Till, who’s more than a handful. The outlaw’s trail leads to Telluride, the turbulent “City of Gold.” Owen gets help from a resourceful girl named Molly and dubious assistance from Till, who shows up on the train from Durango.

The world is different now. There are no rules, no governments, and no guarantees that you'll be saved. Rival factions have taken over, fighting each other for survival with no loyalty to anyone but their own. At 21, Hayden has taken over Blackwing and is one of the youngest leaders in the area. In protecting his camp from starvation, raids from other factions and the threat of being kidnapped, he has enough to worry about before he finds Grace. The daughter of the head of the rival camp Greystone, she is slow to trust anyone, much less the leader of those she has been trained to kill.

The New York Times bestselling author of Orphan X, Gregg Hurwitz, returns to Creek's Cause to follow the Rains brothers as they fight an alien threat that has transformed everyone over the age of 18 into ferocious, zombie-like beings, in this thrilling sequel to The Rains. Battling an enemy not of this earth, Chance and Patrick become humanity's only hope for salvation.

Joel Walker wakes up to a world suddenly and frighteningly changed. In the wake of a massive power outage, an otherworldly siren begins to blare, changing all that listen to it for too long in frightening ways. Desperate to find his mother and little sister, Joel will have to survive in a world that is coming apart at its seams.

The Polaris is on a mission to explore new lands, and its crew is eager to bring their discoveries back home. But when members of the advance landing party mysteriously disappear, the remaining adults abandon ship, leaving behind the young cabin attendants and deckhands - none of them older than 12. With whispers of mutiny, a strange tropical illness, and perhaps even a wild beast shadowing them, the young sailors are desperate to steer the vessel to safety.

Dean, Alex, and the other survivors of the Monument 14 have escaped the disaster zone and made it to the safety of a Canadian refugee camp. Some of the kids have even been reunited with their families, and are making tentative plans for the future. Then, Niko learns that his lost love, Josie, has survived! Or is it? For Josie, separated from the group and presumed dead, life has gone from bad to worse. Trapped in a terrible prison camp with other exposed O’s and traumatized by her experiences, she has given up all hope of rescue.

The story begins when the young teen who suffers a head injury emerges from a sailboat that ran aground during a hurricane. The trauma of discovering she is amnesic is soon dwarfed by the realization she is totally alone. Gradually, her expectation that people will return to the community they evacuated is replaced with the startling truth that everyone is gone. Vanished from the face of the Earth. Hindered by a selective memory that affords only brief glimpses of her past, Ivy and her new friend Tonka—a West Highland White Terrier—set off on a quest to find other people.

Jeff and his best friend Keith are ice-fishing in the middle of Big Lake. It’s been hours without a bite, but they’re still having a blast - until the storm of the decade closes in. Soon, the entire landscape is buried in three feet of snow and the snowfall shows no sign of stopping.

Rick, Tina, and their new family members embark on a journey with Annette to Miami, Florida, for a cruise where trouble was brewing. Once again, Rick, Tina, and their furry owners must use their preps and wits to survive the fury of more than a mere hurricane. With first Tina and then Owen going missing, Rick and his canines must race to find them before it's too late.

Each of the three seeds in this story - a cherry seed in the Middle East, an acacia seed in Australia, a lotus seed in Asia - survives a difficult journey through flood, fire, or drought, then sprouts (in the case of the lotus seed, a hundred years later) and flourishes. To author Stephie Morton, nature's powerful forces are a metaphor for the hardships faced by displaced children. Kids, like seeds, thrive when given a chance.

It is 1992, and Bihac, Amra's hometown, is a multicultural city with Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. But when tensions escalate, the Serbs turn on their Bosnian neighbors. The Serbs control the army, and now they have peaceful Bihac surrounded. Soon Amra and her family are dealing with starvation and the threat of brutal violence; school, friendships, and the attentions from a new boy have to take a back seat to finding food and the tragic fallout from rising bigotry and ethnic hatred. Through it all, a stray cat, Maci, serves as a guardian spirit to the entire family.

Jarra is one of the unlucky few born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Derided as an “Ape” - a “throwback” - by the rest of the universe, she is on a mission to prove that Earth girls are just as good as anyone else. Except now the planet she loves is under threat by what could be humanity’s first-ever alien contact. Jarra’s bravery - and specialist knowledge - will once again be at the center of the maelstrom, but will the rest of the universe consider Earth worth fighting for?

When a spontaneous time leap sends Nickolas Flux back to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, what's a teenage history buff to do? Try to avoid being buried alive in Pompeii, of course! From hot falling ash to a catastrophic pyroclastic surge, Nick must survive one of the most famous volcanic eruptions in history.

Christopher has never rafted on a river like Australia's Franklin River. Will he be brave enough to tackle the whitewater?

Kirk and his Granddad are out hiking in the mountains when Granddad injures his ankle. Since he can’t hike anymore, it’s up to Kirk to face the mountain and its unpredictable weather by himself to get back to the smokechasers’ tower and call for help.

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.

For the past four years, Rick Walker has been shuffled between foster care and group homes. At 14, he’s a kid nobody wants or cares about. Now he’s headed for Blue Canyon Detention Center. For Rick, life is a maze full of dead ends. But when he is threatened at Blue Canyon and runs away, Rick finds himself in a real maze - the enormous rocky expanse of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. There, Rick meets a biologist who has devoted his life to reintroducing the condor to its natural habitat. As Rick joins him to protect the giant birds, the teenager will begin to see choices instead of dead ends.

Finn Driscoll is counting down the days until she can leave for college. With her beloved brother, Noah, in a coma and her high school social life sinking every day, she’s ready for a fresh start. Until the night she sees Noah in a dream. He begs for her help. At first, she shakes it off as just a nightmare. Then it happens again. And again. Frightened, Finn confides in her grandmother, only to learn the shocking truth about her family. They’re Dreamwalkers - heroes who step into the River of Dreams and fight the monsters in other people’s nightmares.

National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson takes the wheel of this thrilling chapter in the race for survival. The journey through the rift becomes even rockier as the survivors are forced to take to the water, crossing a vast deepwater basin on improvised boats. To make it, Molly and the others must work together, but a rift of a different kind is forming among the survivors. If they aren't careful, it could eat them alive.