Dystopian Mystery

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.

After Del’s death, Jimi wants to pick up the pieces of her life and move on. But she’s become a public figure in her defense of chimeras, and she can’t quite shake the spotlight—or her suspicion that she’s being followed. When her friend Dr. Guzman, a chimera sympathizer, is arrested for the murder of a chimera wearing a strange medical bracelet, Jimi does some digging—and eventually discovers that Howard Wells, the venal businessman and proponent of the Genetic Heritage Act, is supporting a hospital that ostensibly provides healthcare for chimeras.

When an EMP decimates the United States, Lori, a former Marine Raider, must embark on a treacherous journey with her daughter across the former United States from Pennsylvania to a rumored sanctuary in Washington State. Can what has been lost be rebuilt? Lori, and her daughter Avah, fight to answer that question as they trek across what remains of the United States after a devastating EMP attack. Together with her new family, Lori must contend with armed bandits and roaming gangs who challenge her at every turn.

I volunteered to be a spy, not an assassin. I know this is war...but I just want to do what's right. If you ask me, none of us should be here - but no one gave me a choice. And I won't blindly follow orders. I am essential to the plan. And I will be a hero for my country. If I were normal, I wouldn't be old enough to join the army. But I'm not normal. I'm a weapon.

When Alabine Rivers, a politically active young woman with a bright career and romance ahead of her, finds out the devastating news that she has terminal cancer, the only thing that gives her solace is the possibility of a second life through the emerging field of cryogenics.

While a cyber-attack crippled half the nation’s power grid, enemies of the United States launched an super EMP over the midwest sending the nation back to the stone age. For Raine Caldwell and her neighbors, it couldn't have come at a worse time. Deep into the coldest midwest winter on record, the nation is plunged into frigid darkness. Seeking Safety is a gripping tale of an ordinary group of people as they fight to survive after an EMP plunges the nation into frigid darkness. Would you have what it takes to survive the cold, dark, dangerous streets and make it to safety?

A neuroscientist walks out of her life and isolates herself in the woods, intending to blow the whistle on a pharmaceutical company and its creativity drug gone wrong. A recently orphaned graduate school dropout is hired as a "literary detective" to decode the work of a mysterious Internet poet who writes about disappearances and murders with an inexplicably precise knowledge of private details. And a virologist discovers her identity has been stolen by a conceptual artist in whose stories someone always goes missing.

After his impeachment, the president of the United States refuses to leave office, and the country erupts into a fractured and violent war. Orphaned by the fighting and looking for a home, 10-year-old Hannah Miller joins a citizen militia in a besieged Indianapolis. In the Free Women militia, Hannah finds a makeshift family. They'll teach her how to survive. They'll give her hope. And they'll show her how to use a gun.

Dark destiny. When Steadman agreed to investigate the disappearance of a young Mossad agent, he had no idea he would be drawn into a malevolent conspiracy. Neo-Nazi cultists are bent on unleashing an age-old unholy power on an unsuspecting world-power rising out of a demonic relic from man's dark primal past to threaten humanity with horror beyond any nightmare. James Herbert was one of Britain’s greatest popular novelists and our #1 best-selling writer of chiller fiction.

Everything changed when scientists discovered the drug. It looked like the cure for aging, but comes with a price tag. The blood of “carriers” is the most valuable commodity on earth. When treated with a new wonder drug, it cures disease, increases power, and makes the recipient a virtual superman. It also makes the carriers targets. Young people with the right genes are ripped from their families and stashed in “blood farms”. Ellie Bautista became an LAPD officer specifically to fight this evil as a member of the Blood Squad, but her ambitions are thwarted....

In a future world, life is tightly controlled by the all-powerful PareCo. Standing out from the crowd is dangerous, so misfit Luna hides her secrets carefully, not realising her own power. Unlike her friends and family, Luna has never been able to plug in to Realtime, PareCo's virtual world, where almost everyone now lives their lives. So how do PareCo know about Luna, and why do they want her for their elite think tank?

The thrilling sequel to The Immune! The end of the world was only the beginning. Thirteen years have passed since the Medusa plague wiped out nearly 99 percent of the world’s population and pushed humanity to the brink of extinction. Climate change triggered by nuclear skirmishes in the last fevered days of civilization decimated agriculture and livestock, and the hardened survivors battle for what few resources remain. Will Callahan is one of the lucky ones. In his small community in Nebraska, he and his family have access to food, clean water, weapons, and medical care.

Dahlia 16 sees her face in every crowd. She's nothing special - just one of 5,000 girls created from a single genome to work for the greater good of the city. Meeting Trigger 17 changes everything. He thinks she's interesting. Beautiful. Unique. Which means he must be flawed. When Dahlia can't stop thinking about him - when she can't resist looking for him, even though that means breaking the rules - she realizes she's flawed, too. But if she's flawed, then so are all her identicals. And any genome found to be flawed will be recalled.

Ahead, not too many years from now, everyone has been linked to a network of government-mandated brain implants. The Interface has become a way of life, connecting all people to limitless information, nonstop personal messaging, and instantaneous news flashes. Gone are the days of cell phones and laptops—even loneliness itself is obsolete.

Kyle Tait, having survived the harrowing, cross-country journey home to his family, must now struggle for existence in a post-EMP world that no one could have imagined just three short months prior. Each day brings new challenges - how to fight the bitter cold, where to scavenge food for the table, and how to best fend off intruders and keep their community safe. As the cold, dark days of winter begin the slow transition to spring, the Tait family is faced with a challenge that dwarfs all others.

From Dan Wells, author of the New York Times best-selling Partials Sequence, comes the first book in a new sci-fi-noir series. Los Angeles in 2050 is a city of open doors, as long as you have the right connections. That connection is a djinni - a smart device implanted right in a person's head. In a world where virtually everyone is online 24 hours a day, this connection is like oxygen - and a world like that presents plenty of opportunities for someone who knows how to manipulate it.

Months after a super-EMP attack devastated the United States, the country is now unrecognizable. Major cities are run by gangs, survivors are dying of starvation and the government is falling victim to lawlessness. Those who were prepared for the end find that they weren't really prepared at all. While some seek vengeance for their losses, others are determined to restore the nation. Gordon, Samantha, Sebastian, Barone, Connor and Pablo are all on different paths, but they are all in search of a home away from chaos.

The brilliants changed everything.

Since 1980, 1% of the world has been born with gifts we'd only dreamed of. The ability to sense a person's most intimate secrets, or predict the stock market, or move virtually unseen. For thirty years the world has struggled with a growing divide between the exceptional...and the rest of us.

Wolfe is the bunker's resident pharmacist. While the inhabitants wait for the outside world to heal, she doles out ibuprofen, sanitary towels and Xanax—all under the watchful eye of the increasingly erratic and paranoid leader. But when the leader starts to ask things of Wolfe, favours she can hardly say no to, her world is thrown off its axis once again. Forming an unlikely alliance with the young Doctor Stirling, her troubled assistant Levitt and Canavan, Wolfe has to navigate the powder keg of life underground, knowing her every move is being watched.

Sam thinks his job at the Zombie Apocalypse Call Center is a joke. Zombies aren’t real, and the customers who call in for support about their guns and conspiracy theories are crazy! Sam knows a zombie apocalypse will never happen. Until one day, the zombie apocalypse does happen. Now Sam and his fellow analysts have to figure out how the zombie apocalypse started, and how to cure the zombies, while also keeping the customers alive and well-stocked with ammo.