Family Survival Fiction

Francie and her parents are on a spring road trip: driving from British Columbia, Canada, to hike in the Grand Canyon. When a shortcut leads them down an old logging road, disaster strikes. Their truck hits a rock and wipes out the oil pan. They are stuck in the middle of nowhere. Francie can't help feeling a little excited—she'd often imagined how she'd survive if she got stranded in the bush, and now here they are. But will her survival skills—building fires, gathering dandelion leaves and fir needles for tea—be enough when hours stretch into days?

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.

Two years ago, a freak weather event covered the Earth in ice, and temperatures plunged below freezing. Jarred, Fiona, and their fellow survivors thought they had found a safe haven in an underground cave system. But when a series of earthquakes destroys their home, they’re forced to flee their place of refuge… Jarred and Fiona are determined to keep everyone safe… But the world has only grown more dangerous since the new ice age began. And despite Jarred’s best intentions, his daughter, Hope, struggles against her father’s over-protectiveness.

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.

A unique collection of 41 groundbreaking essays, poems, and artwork by migrants, refugees and Dreamers—including award-winning writers, artists, and activists—that illuminate what it is like living undocumented today.

For Kirsten McKenna, the world is crumbling. Her parents are barely speaking to each other, and her best friend has come under the spell of the school's queen bee, Brianna. Only Kirsten's younger science-geek sister is on her side. Meanwhile, for Walker Jones, the goal is to survive at the new white private school his mom has sent him to because she thinks he's going to screw up like his cousin.

Eli and his family have lived in the Compound for six years. The world they knew is gone. Eli's father built the Compound to keep them safe. Now, they can't get out. He won't let them.

Benson Fisher escaped from Maxfield Academy's deadly rules and brutal gangs. The worst was over. Or so he thought. But now he's trapped on the other side of the wall, in a different kind of prison. A town filled with familiar faces. People from Maxfield who Benson had seen die. Friends he was afraid he had killed. They are all pawns in the school's twisted experiment, held captive and controlled by an unseen force.

When soldiers arrive at his hometown in Cambodia, Arn is just a kid, dancing to rock 'n' roll, hustling for spare change, and selling ice cream with his brother. But after the soldiers march the entire population into the countryside, his life is changed forever. Arn is separated from his family and assigned to a labor camp. Working in the rice paddies under a blazing sun, he sees the other children, weak from hunger, malaria, or sheer exhaustion, dying before his eyes.

It's 1944, and World War II is raging across Europe and the Pacific. The war seemed far away from Margot in Iowa and Haruko in Colorado—until they were uprooted to dusty Texas, all because of the places their parents once called home: Germany and Japan. Haruko and Margot meet at the high school in Crystal City, a "family internment camp" for those accused of colluding with the enemy. The teens discover that they are polar opposites in so many ways, except for one that seems to override all the others: the camp is changing them, day by day and piece by piece.

Aran has never truly fit in with his selkie clan. He was born in his human form, without a pelt to transform him into a sleek, strong seal. Each day he waits, left behind while his selkie family explores the deep ocean. What if his pelt never comes? Does the Moon even see him? Is he putting his clan at risk? When his mother undertakes a journey to the far north to seek help, Aran is left in the care of a reclusive human woman on remote Spindle Island. Life on land is full of more wonders - and more dangers - than Aran could have ever imagined.

From the beginning Jonathan is spooked by the deserted island where his family is camping - and his premonitions come true. After Jonathan's mother breaks her ankle, Jonathan and his younger sister, Abby, are left alone. Then a devastating earthquake hits. The bridge is destroyed, the trailer is smashed, and there's no food or water. Suddenly Jonathan and Abby are fighting for their lives...

Bick, Beck, Storm, and Tommy are stuck in Washington, DC without any priceless antiques to hunt - BORING! But everything changes when the Kidds uncover a dastardly conspiracy: a fake Bill of Rights! Now they're crisscrossing the country in a race to prove the document is a forgery. But the key to exposing the conspiracy may have been under their noses the whole time. And if they don't find it soon, the USA as we know it could be gone forever....

It's been a year since a meteor collided with the moon, catastrophically altering the earth's climate. For Miranda Evans life as she knew it no longer exists. Her friends and neighbors are dead, the landscape is frozen, and food is increasingly scarce. The struggle to survive intensifies when Miranda's father and stepmother arrive with a baby and three strangers in tow.

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 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.

Millie (Meike) Mosbach and her brother, David, manage to escape to the States just before Kristallnacht, leaving their parents and little sister in Berlin. Millie attends Bryn Mawr on a special scholarship for non-Aryan German girls and graduates to a magazine job in Philadelphia. David enlists in the army and is eventually posted to the top-secret Camp Ritchie in Maryland, which trains German-speaking men for intelligence work. Now they are both back in their former hometown, haunted by ghosts and hoping against hope to find their family.

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.

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.

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.