Fiction Survival Stories

We all come to crossroads in our lives where a step in one direction or another can dictate the rest of our time on the planet. It can happen just once for some, or like Stephen and his son Terry, it can happen often and each time they make a choice, they have half a chance to make the right one. If it is wrong then the next choice, even though it may be fueled by alcohol or drugs, may be a little more complex, and so it goes, life unfolds, and we take what we get.

Twenty years ago a man made a child he never intended to love. Ten years ago the world ended, and Emma turned her back on the man she believed was her father in an attempt to survive. Eight weeks ago she discovered the truth about her family, including the sister she never knew she had. Last week she had her heart broken by the one man she never imagined giving it to. Yesterday she turned her back on those she cared for in an attempt to help them survive.

Will can't escape the image burned into his mind—Leo's gunshot. The horror that followed. Daniel’s screams. Chip’s agonised barks. The wailing of his campmates. The nightmare which haunts them all. One thing is certain now: they are prisoners. Watched at every turn and under threat with each passing second. Powerless. Trapped. But just when all seems bleak, an opportunity emerges. A single, reckless chance at escape.

Tony, Craig and Shawn are trapped on an ice floe on the Petitcodiac River in the dead of winter, and the rapid current is pulling them toward the ocean. Twelve-year-old Petra arrives, and the boys think they’re saved, but their dangerous journey is only just beginning.

She's small. She's quiet. She's deadly. Lou survived the plague that killed her mother. As her father sheltered her from the evil that consumed the world, he taught her how to survive. After an ambush leaves her orphaned, the young, unassuming girl put her skills to the test. A wanderer every bit as brilliant as she is deadly, she forges a new path in the wilderness once known as Texas. But can she do it alone?

June, 1941. Eleven-year-old Shmuel Sucha is startled awake by the sound of German planes over his hometown in western Ukraine. As the Nazi shadow begins to fall on their small Jewish community, Shmuel’s parents smuggle their son away to a local farm, just on the border of the surrounding forest.

Our ‘fight of flight’ response is something hardwired into the primitive part of our brain. Our need to survive, to outlive whatever danger poses, that immediate threat to our lives is little short of a marvel. Everything else is abandoned in order to survive. Whilst in modern times that ability has been somewhat modified and ‘reasoned’ away to an extent, in past years it’s what usually kept you alive. In this volume people struggle valiantly to survive and to exist no matter the extent of the threat they face.

When the flu struck it wasn't like any before it. It carried such force that no one could have been ready for it. The CDC had predicted it to be one of the worst. However, what we expected and what was delivered were completely opposite. Unfortunately, it was not the same for everyone. There were three types of people. The first had no disease and remained able to care for loved ones and the ill. The second had the flu and felt like hell but the majority would recover. The Third and the worst were fostering a zombie virus that was going to bring the nation to its knees.

It's not as great as you'd think, living in a tourist town that's known as "the most magical place in America". Same boring high school, just twice as many monsters under the bridges and rival Families killing each other for power. I try to keep out of it. I've got my mom's bloodiron sword and my slightly illegal home in the basement of the municipal library. And a couple of Talents I try to keep quiet, including very light fingers and a way with a lock pick.

Pilgrimage is a stand-alone post-apocalyptic story of survival. It was previously published as three separate novellas: Crossing, Refuge, and Advent. High School teacher James Rockwell is vacationing in Maine with his family, when an earth-changing explosion sends them on a race for their lives. Their first step is escaping an island in the midst of a tsunami, and it only gets more dangerous from there. Can they find their way home as civilization crumbles around them? And if they do, what horrors will they find?

You have to use what you got to get what you want. For Journey Clayton, this statement rings more than true as she struggles under the weight of her mother’s cocaine addiction. She learns from a very young age that family doesn’t offer as much help as she hoped they would. It’s not until she befriends Khalid, the son of a neighborhood drug dealer, who is trying to stay above the struggle himself, that she starts to believe there might just be hope...even for little girls in the ghetto.

Brought to you by Penguin. From the incredible imagination of Chris Smith - bestselling author and now a major new solo talent - comes an extraordinary accidental adventure for fans of Cressida Cowell and Pixar's Onward. Frankie Best is not happy. She's stuck at Grandad's with her annoyingly...

It has been two weeks, and now Ruby is totally alone. People weren’t prepared for the rain, got caught out in it, didn’t realise that you couldn’t drink water from the taps either. Even a drip of rain would infect your blood and eat you from the inside out. Ruby sets off on a journey that will take her the length of the country – surviving in the only way she knows how.

It’s the end of the road, and no one is safe. After navigating a treacherous country torn apart by an EMP, Colby Riker struggles to adjust to the harsh existence back in Humboldt. When faced with a dangerous decision that could destroy his family and the community for good, he must face the ghosts of his past if any of them are to make it out alive. Will anyone survive?

Entertainment Weekly calls acclaimed author and essayist J. Maarten Troost a "funny, candid, and down-to-earth travel companion". Both witty and poignant, Headhunters on My Doorstep follows Troost as he retraces Robert Louis Stevenson’s path through the South Pacific. Somewhere between AA meetings in Tahiti and discovering how the Island of Merrymaking got its name, Troost reconnects with himself, his family, and the beauty of life.

The Barrier advances without sound or reason, swallowing land and memory alike. Yet beneath the fear lies something older, something waiting to be recognized. Across a collapsing homeland, a new generation begins to feel a pull the elders never fully explained—a call toward truth, remembrance, and the possibility of return.

The second part of the epic Ninja saga! Can Dave, Carl, and the Ninja Squad defeat the evil ninjas and save the day?

When an EMP wipes out the power grid, Caroline Thompson is alone on the family ranch while her husband, Luke, and their son are stranded in Fort Worth as chaos erupts. With no power, no law, and danger at every turn, Caroline must fight her way into the collapsing city to find them. But bringing her family back together is only the beginning. Looters are closing in, determined to take everything Caroline has fought to protect as their ranch turns into a battleground for survival.

Jo Rivers, safely back in Seattle, asks the same question daily - how does a math genius go from taking down international criminals and saving the world economy to living a normal teenage life? The only answer she can come up with is - she doesn’t. With an overprotective father on her back and Kai on the other side of the world, Jo accepts an offer from Prodigy Stealth Solutions (PSS), who may have found a way to get her gift back.

All praise Emperor Steve! The epic conclusion to season two of The Legend of Dave the Villager.