Family Survival Fiction

Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It enthralled and devastated listeners with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event - an asteroid hitting the moon, setting off a tailspin of horrific climate changes. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of 17-year-old Puerto Rican Alex Morales.

September, 1939. The six Zaks siblings watch in silent horror as the Wehrmacht marches into their quiet hometown in southern Poland. Concerned for their survival, Yisrael Zaks leads his wife Haiya and his brothers Volf and Avraham toward the Russian border. But their escape does not go unhindered; and as they are captured by the invading German forces, they can hear their father’s last commandment still echoing behind them: “Never break the family apart. And whatever you do: never, ever leave any one of your siblings behind.”

3:47 a.m. That's when they come for Wren Clemmens. She's hustled out of her house and into a waiting car, then a plane, and then taken on a forced march into the desert. This is what happens to kids who've gone so far off the rails, their parents don't know what to do with them anymore. This is wilderness therapy camp. Eight weeks of survivalist camping in the desert. Eight weeks to turn your life around. Yeah, right.

Nowhere to run, one place left to hide. You're running from bullets through the streets of your own town. Your life's on the line and no-one's there to help. What's happened? When did safety turn to fear, peace turn to war, happiness turn to panic? When did your normal day become a nightmare? Ellie and her friends struggle with the biggest questions life can offer.

Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas indefinitely, and his mom has moved in his one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the pandemic, adding to his stress and isolation. But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret.

On the stunning coastline of western Ireland, a web of intrigue surrounds the O’Brien family and their five daughters. Aoifa was bestowed a spiritual gift from her mother and her grandmother before her but bizarrely it suddenly vanishes throwing her into turmoil and confusion. From the outside, it seems to be a life dreams are made of, but the family is besieged by tragedy and misfortune as sinister twists and turns begin to haunt their lives.

For a brief period after the world changed forever, the self-reliant community of Trout Run Valley managed to avoid conflict. They practiced subsistence, and found safety and security within their numbers. As the post-apocalyptic timeline moved forward, it began to spiral downward. Takers had made their presence known, and their malevolent intentions clear, transforming the once benign community into a violent battleground.

It's been three months since Amy was unplugged. The life she always knew is over. And everywhere she looks, she sees the walls of the spaceship Godspeed. But there may just be hope: Elder has assumed leadership of the ship. He's finally free to enact his vision - no more Phydus, no more lies. But when Elder discovers shocking news about the ship, he and Amy race to discover the truth behind life on Godspeed.

When Rio is sent to live with a grandmother he barely knows in California, he feels completely alone. Then he makes a new friend on the foggy beach—a girl named Marina, who teaches him about the massive grey whales that migrate nearby. As Rio grows to love the whales, he discovers that his mother loved them, too. He’s suddenly sure that if he can somehow find a way to connect her with these gentle giants – and especially with a particular whale named White Beak – she will get better and come to join him in California.

Before the war, Eden's life was easy. Then the revolution happened, and everything changed. Now a powerful group called the Wolfpack controls the earth and its resources. And even though Eden has lost everything to them, she refuses to die by their hands. She knows the coordinates to the only neutral ground left in the world, a place called Sanctuary Island, and she is desperate to escape to its shores.

Bick, Beck, Storm, and Tommy Kidd have uncovered and rescued some of the world’s greatest treasure, without ever seeking out fame and glory. So they aren’t happy when the Collier Kids (as in Nathan Collier, the Kidds’s nemesis) start treasure hunting for the camera, more focused on looking good and selling ads for their streaming show than actually recovering treasure. When the Kidds are invited to compete with the Colliers for the title of “The World’s Greatest Treasure Hunting Kids,” they jump at the chance to show the world what real treasure hunting looks like.

To keep their family ties strong, the five Reeves sisters meet regularly to give each other a reality check. But explosive family secrets begin to pour out like molten lava and forever change all they treasure most.

The Kidds - treasure hunting family extraordinaire - are heading to China on a journey that will lead them beyond the Great Wall and into the underbelly of Berlin. Bick and Beck Kidd are desperately trying to secure the ancient Chinese artifact that will buy their mother's freedom from renegade pirates.

Matt and Mike are best friends, just two working-class guys trying to earn some money in Montauk for the summer. When they meet Driana, JoJo, and Stef, three friends who live much different lives of privilege, Matt and Mike find themselves in a sticky situation where temptation rivals sensibility. Worlds collide when the group ventures out to sea aboard a small boat that Stef sneaks out from her dad's dock. As the waves rise and the fragile vessel weakens, things go horribly wrong. Adrift at sea for days, who will have what it takes to survive?

Victoria Secord, a 14-year-old Alaskan dogsled racer, loses her way on a routine outing with her dogs. With food gone and temperatures dropping, her survival and that of her dogs and the mysterious boy she meets in the woods is entirely up to her. The author Terry Lynn Johnson is a musher herself, and her crackling writing puts listeners at the reins as Victoria and Chris experience setbacks, mistakes, and small triumphs in their wilderness adventure.

Three years after the EMP attack brought America to its knees, the Miller family has finally put the worst of the disaster behind them. While modern conveniences like electricity, telephones, and running vehicles are a distant memory, they have turned their West Virginia homestead into a productive and self-sustaining farm. Life is hard, but there is food on the table and they have hope for the future. Kenny Miller, soon to be 18, is ready to become a man in his own right. Engaged to Sarah, a beautiful young woman from a nearby farm, he plans on starting a family of his own next fall.

Maximum Ride and her "flock" - Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman, and Angel - are just like ordinary kids, only they have wings and can fly. It may seem like a dream come true to some, but their lives can morph into a living nightmare at any time. Angel, the youngest member of the flock, is kidnapped and taken back to the "School" where she and the others were experimented on by a crew of whack job.

When a deadly fly flu sweeps the globe, it leaves a shell of the world that once was. Among the survivors are 18-year-old Nico and her dog, on a voyage devised by Nico's father to find a mythical portal; a young artist named Kit, raised in an old abandoned cinema; and the enigmatic Deliverer, who lives life after life in an attempt to put the world back together. As swarms of infected flies roam the Earth, these few survivors navigate the woods of post-apocalyptic New England, meeting others along the way, each on their own quest to find life and love in a world gone dark.

The Swiss Family Robinson has delighted generations of readers with its exciting tale of a family which, though shipwrecked, displays “the right stuff” and builds a charming colony that later, they do not want to leave. Cut off from the comforts and companionship of other humans, they use a familiarity with natural history and biology to find the resources and build the tools to construct a canoe, weave cloth, irrigate a garden, and turn an immense hollow tree into a lofty house with a spiral staircase.

Bick Kidd and his globe-trotting siblings Beck, Storm and Tommy may have completed their first treasure hunt after their father was lost at sea, but their kidnapped mother is still in the hands of nasty pirates. Their search for a rescue plan takes them down the Nile river in Africa, where they'll have to navigate everything from Egyptian pyramids in the desert to wet-and-wild jungles—not to mention life-threatening encounters with wilderness diseases, angry hippos and some seriously bad guys—in order to find the treasure and save the day.