Apocalyptic Adventure

Desert is consuming the North American continent, Europe was wiped out by a cataclysmic meteor shower, and the world's oceans are unsalvageable poison. Those who could afford to flee to space are long gone, leaving the rest behind in the dust. Nyx is completely alone, scavenging the ruins of humanity to get by. With her brother suddenly missing, the only people she can trust are herself and her busted-up Bronco. Scavenging earns her enough water credits to stay alive but with no margin for error. When a stroke of unexpected luck sends her back to the nearest tent city, things go sideways.

From out of the clear blue sky, an unknown chunk of rock from the frozen void strikes the Earth with unimaginable force, gouging a wound into the very crust of the planet. Millions die in an instant, and millions more await the end as the looming catastrophe unfolds...Thousands of miles away from the disaster, a call comes in the middle of the night. Families act, and react, and while panic spreads, the world keeps on spinning. Maybe a little slower, and perhaps with a teeny bit more of a tilt, but such things are a mere trifle to the existence of a planet.

From the ashes of a devastated Boston, a harrowing legend emerges. Thirteen years prior, the colossal kaiju, Nemesis, ravaged the city in her relentless pursuit of retribution. Today, mankind's survival teeters on the sacrificial offerings atop a chilling monolith known as The Altar, where the condemned pay the ultimate price to prevent Nemesis's wrath from consuming humanity.

Deathlands is a living hell, but there is someplace worse: a parallel Earth where the atomic mega-cull never happened. Now this Otherworld Earth is in its final death throes. Yet for an elite few, the reality portal offers a new frontier of raw energy, expendable slaves — a bastion of power for Dredda Otis Trask. Her invasion force of genetically engineered warrior women has turned the ruins of Salt Lake City into the deadly mining grounds of a grotesque new order — one that lies in wait for Ryan and his companions.

The best-selling Extinction Cycle series by Nicholas Sansbury Smith first introduced listeners to a world ravaged by an engineered virus that turned men into monsters. Humanity's only hope was not a cure, but another bioweapon. When deployed it killed 90 percent of the infected, but the remaining 10 percent transformed into even more terrifying creatures called Variants. Here's a collection of Extinction Cycle short stories that explore the human spirit and the fight for survival in the face of overwhelming odds from some of the leading voices in the post-apocalyptic genre.

It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.

The conspiracy of secrecy manipulating post-nuclear Earth takes a terrifying new turn as the mysterious oligarchy becomes something far more sinister. No longer shrouded in the cloaks of hybrid-human divinity, the nine barons have evolved into their true incarnation of ancient overlords, their avaricious scope expanded to reclaim the world they were forced to abandon and with it, the final subjugation of the human race.

In 2007, the Center for Automation in Nanobiotech (CAN) outlined the hardware and software platforms that would one day allow robots smaller than human cells to make medical diagnoses, conduct repairs, and even self-propagate. In the same year, the CBS network re-aired a program about the effects of propranolol on sufferers of extreme trauma. A simple pill, it had been discovered, could wipe out the memory of any traumatic event. At almost the same moment in humanity’s broad history, mankind discovered the means for bringing about its utter downfall. And the ability to forget it ever happened.

Dakota Sloane, a tough-as-nails former foster kid, has spent her life running from the past. Logan Garcia, a man haunted by secrets, has only one goal: to drink himself into oblivion. They're two strangers in a bar - until the news reports nuclear bombs in New York City and Washington, D.C. Fearing Miami may be next, Dakota's first thought is to grab her little sister - still trapped in the system - and get the hell out of Dodge. Then the world explodes. Logan and Dakota have less than 10 minutes to seek shelter before the lethal cloud of fallout descends.

Half of the earth's population has been wiped out. Impossible to predict or stop, the Gamma Ray Burst tore through the Earth like a bullet, its radiation wave killing hundreds of millions, and the after effects ensuring the deaths of billions more.

World War Z: The Complete Edition features 21 additional Hollywood A-list actors and sci-fi fan favorites performing stories not included in the original edition. New narrators include Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese, Spiderman star Alfred Molina, The Walking Dead creator Frank Darabont, rapper Common, Firefly star Nathan Fillion, Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg, and members of the casts of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes and more!

Surviving in a tough situation is not always the best option; sometimes dying is much better than staying alive. The Academy showed Paladin Yaropolk what makes the world go round: pragmatism and personal gain. Restart was set in motion, but it only makes players more frantic. Now everyone plays only for themselves. Yaropolk faces the same dilemma: be like all of them, or keep his humanity and be known as an odd duck. Because there is only one rule in this world: kill or be killed....

Thousands of years in the future, Earth is a desolate ruin. The first human ship to return in millennia discovers an abandoned wasteland inhabited by only a few degenerate or mutated human outcasts. But among them is a boy of immense native intelligence and determination who grows up to become the force behind a plan to make Earth flower again.

When Matt Perison first came to Gaia, everything was wrong and dangerous. He was promised redemption and repayment for dying of cancer, but that turned out to be a lie. He was promised a nice place in which to exist, but instead he got death. He was promised, in all ways, good. But what he has, in all ways, is bad. He's made the best of it though. Aided by his system guardian, Lucy, and the dungeon system itself, Barry, Matt began to build a life for himself. He's getting pretty good at surviving in a place where nothing else is alive. But surviving isn't all there is.

Across the Galactic Empire, from planet to planet, the lone Immortal fights. He has a plan, and he has all the time he needs. Gerswin, the Forever Hero, is determined to be the salvation of distant Earth and of humanity. Now, in the climax of L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s epic trilogy, the Forever Hero's plans come to fruition, as he destroys the decayed, bureaucratic Empire that feeds off humanity, living on as the most legendary of human heroes.

Basra is the eternal city - a paradise filled with relics of the old world. We are welcomed into the upper sanctum of Basranian society where sly smiles and wicked eyes tempt us with riches and lavish comfort, yet something seems hopelessly wrong. The city is decaying. A rotten core with a deadly key that unlocks something even more sinister. As an ambassador for Tartarus, it's my duty to bridge the gap between us and the other cities. But even more, as part of this team, it's my right to know the truth.

Bartering their expertise to a nautical band of brilliant technomads, Ryan's group finds trouble waiting in the steaming, fetid swamplands of the Louisiana Gulf. Merciless storms and pirates strand them in Haven. But the barony's inviting name masks a ville hijacked by fear, territorial conflict, and monstrous horror. With the gravely injured Krysty Wroth's fate uncertain, a desperate Ryan aids the strange but hospitable Baron Blackwell in his effort to save Haven from a genetic blood curse. He'll succeed, provided his luck - and his options - don't run out first.

It's called "the event", an unimaginable cataclysm that shatters 600 million years of the Earth's timeline. Our world is gone, instantly replaced by a new one made of scattered remnants of the past, present, and future, dropped alongside one another in a patchwork of "shards". Monsters from Jurassic prehistory, ancient armies, and high-tech robots all coexist in this deadly post-apocalyptic landscape. A desperate group of survivors sets out to locate the source of the disaster.

John Eric Carver and Shrek are a retired Navy SEAL war dog team, now living in the mountains outside of San Diego. Both man and dog thought their life was now settled, finding peace on the 40-acre ranch they had moved to. But life, and a mutated virus, changed all that.

When a new drilling method enables access to a deep source of renewable energy, all expectations are that Ultilitron will champion a new era in electricity production. When the lights go out and the killing starts, the country's emotions quickly turn from elation to fear.