Family Survival Fiction

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.

In December 1850, the dark hours before dawn make 12-year-old Patrick O’Connell shiver. He lives with his mother and older sister in a wet and drafty shack. Patrick has been the man of the family ever since Da, his father, sailed from Ireland to America. But now he has a problem he can’t solve: there isn’t enough money to pay the rent.

The Lockwood brothers are supposed to be able to survive anything. Their dad, a hardcore believer in self-reliance, has stockpiled enough food and water at their isolated Nevada home to last for months. But when they are robbed of all their supplies during a massive blackout while their dad is out of town, John and Stew must walk 96 miles in the stark desert sun to get help. Along the way, they’re forced to question their dad’s insistence on self-reliance and ask just what it is that we owe to our neighbors, our kin, and to ourselves.

The Austins have settled back into their beloved home in the country after more than a year away. Vicky Austin is discovering that slipping back into her old life isn't easy. She's been changed by life in New York City and her travels around the country while her old friends seem to have stayed the same. So Vicky finds herself spending time with a new friend, Serena Eddington - the great-aunt of a boy Vicky met over the summer. Aunt Serena gives Vicky an incredible birthday gift - a month-long trip to Antarctica. It's the opportunity of a lifetime.

Erik Carlson's life is going great. He's just passed his Hunter Safety Course and is scheduled to make his first hunting trip with his best friend, Patrick, that very weekend. His plans are shattered by the news that his parents, who are Army Reservists, have been unexpectedly called for duty in Iraq. With almost no warning, Erik is shipped off to North Dakota to stay with grandparents he barely knows. Though his grandmother is warm and welcoming, his grandfather, Big Darrell, is cold, gruff, and distant.

When Vee is picked to be a player in NERVE, an anonymous game of dares broadcast live online, she discovers that the game knows her. They tempt her with prizes taken from her ThisIsMe page and team her up with the perfect boy: sizzling-hot Ian. At first it's exhilarating - Vee and Ian's fans cheer them on to riskier dares with higher stakes. But the game takes a twisted turn when they're directed to a secret location with five other players for the grand-prize round.

When a tornado watch is issued one Tuesday evening in June, 12-year-old Dan Hatch and his best friend, Arthur, don't think much of it. After all, tornado warnings are a way of life during the summer in Grand Island, Nebraska. But soon enough things change and little do they know that even if they do survive the storm, their ordeal will have only just begun.

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?

Lauren Russell often wondered why her father had been so adamant about teaching her skills that most other fathers wouldn't even consider teaching their daughters. Ever since she was little, she had been taught how to live and survive outdoors, and how to use firearms to protect herself and those around her. Some of the training had been a bit extreme. Or had it been? Many of her questions were answered the day the world as she knew it ended.

Don't call them heroes. But these six Californian teens have powers that set them apart. Take Ethan, aka Scam. He's got a voice inside him that'll say whatever you want to hear, whether it's true or not. Which is handy, except when it isn't - like when the voice starts gabbing in the middle of a bank robbery. The only people who can help are the other Zeroes, who aren't exactly best friends these days.

It's been more than two years since Jon Evans and his family left Pennsylvania, hoping to find a safe place to live, yet Jon remains haunted by the deaths of those he loved. His prowess on a soccer field has guaranteed him a home in a well-protected enclave. But Jon is painfully aware that a missed goal, a careless word, even falling in love, can put his life and the lives of his mother, his sister Miranda, and her husband, Alex, in jeopardy. Can Jon risk doing what is right in a world gone so terribly wrong?

Young colt Sky was born with the urge to run. Alongside his band, he moves across the range searching for fresh water and abundant grazing. But humans have begun to encroach on Sky’s homelands. With fewer resources to share, Sky knows that he must leave if his family is to survive. He hopes that one day, he’ll be strong and brave enough to return and challenge the stallion to lead the herd. Being a lone wild horse in a vast landscape is not easy, and things get even more dangerous when Sky is captured and forced to run for the Pony Express.

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.

Adam and Thomas is the story of two nine-year-old Jewish boys who survive World War II by banding together in the forest. They are alone, visited only furtively every few days by Mina, a mercurial girl who herself has found refuge from the war by living with a peasant family. She makes secret journeys and brings the boys parcels of food at her own risk.

Laboring under a shared loss, Doug and his young son, Tim, set out on a late season backpacking trip through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. They find beauty and solidarity in the outdoors, making friends along the trail and falling into the rhythms of an expedition. But when reports of warfare and social collapse reach the ranger station, Doug—seeking to protect the only family he has left—withdraws even further into the backcountry.

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.

After the EMP brought America to its knees, Jack Miller and his family barely escaped Baltimore with their lives. Wyatt and the Millers made the trip to his West Virginia homestead, but without supplies, they are unprepared to face the difficult winter. Jack is forced to go far from his home in search of food. He stumbles on a cache of food large enough to feed his family for months but encounters another group who claims the resource for their own, setting in motion a conflict that will spiral of control.

In this eagerly awaited follow-up, brave bird-kid Max and her flock are discovered by an FBI agent and forced to go to "school." There is no such thing as an ordinary day as Max deciphers how and when she's supposed to save the world, and she faces her greatest enemy—a clone of herself.

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.”

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.