Fiction Survival Stories

A teenage girl awakens to find herself trapped in a coffin. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Fighting her way free brings little relief - she discovers only a room lined with caskets and a handful of equally mystified survivors. Beyond their room lies a corridor filled with bones and dust but no people and no answers. She knows only one thing about herself - her name, M. Savage, which was engraved on the foot of her coffin. She finds herself in charge. She is not the biggest among them or the boldest, but for some reason the others trust her.

Lida thought she was safe. Her neighbors wearing the yellow star were all taken away, but Lida is not Jewish. She will be fine, won't she? But she cannot escape the horrors of World War II. Lida's parents are ripped away from her and she is separated from her beloved sister, Larissa. The Nazis take Lida to a brutal work camp, where she and other Ukrainian children are forced into backbreaking labor. Starving and terrified, Lida bonds with her fellow prisoners, but none of them know if they'll live to see tomorrow.

You know we're out there, living among you. You know we're waiting for our day to come. You have seen the power of our legacies. You know this is why they hunt us. You may think you know our stories. You are wrong. We each have our own story. We know the time has come to share them with you. Our legacies are your only hope.

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?

Morgan's life is not easy. Growing up on the streets of City Four, he is constantly shunned by the other citizens. Morgan doesn't mind being ignored. What he does mind, though, are the constant beatings from the city guards due to his friendship with Sarah, the city lord's only daughter. Lord Simon wants him dead, but the laws of the kingdom are on Morgan’s side and even the guards won't kill him, just for being seen near his manor. Morgan’s time is running out, though. Lord Simon has deep pockets and his last visit to the manor may just have put him over the edge.

In a dark future America where violence, terror, and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man - a bioengineered war beast named Tool - who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses.

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.

The Human Garde Academy was created in the aftermath of an alien invasion of Earth. It was meant to provide a safe haven for teens across the globe who were suddenly developing incredible powers known as Legacies. Taylor Cook was one of the newest students and had no idea if she’d ever fit in. But when she was mysteriously abducted, her friends broke every rule in the book to save her. In the process, they uncovered a secret organization that was not only behind Taylor’s kidnapping but also the disappearance of numerous teens with abilities.

It’s 1942. German Nazis occupy much of France. And twelve-year-old Miriam, who is Jewish, is not safe. With help and quick thinking, Miri is saved from the roundup that takes her entire Jewish neighborhood. She escapes Paris, landing in a small French village, where the spires of the famous Chateau de Chenonceau rise high into the sky, its bridge across the River Cher like a promise, a fairy tale.

The human race is all but extinct after a war with Partials - engineered organic beings identical to humans - has decimated the population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by RM, a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island while the Partials have mysteriously retreated. The threat of the Partials is still imminent, but, worse, no baby has been born immune to RM in more than a decade. Our time is running out.

In the year 2043, with the nation destroyed by war, 17-year-old Kress and her conspiracy of friends embark on a dangerous cross-country mission to locate and recruit other Emergents, the name given to teenagers who have begun to exhibit strange evolutionary abilities. Not all Emergents are ready to accept who and what they are, however, and some have even started using their abilities for selfish or evil ends. Now Kress has to figure out who is friend and who is foe as she risks everything to expose the government’s lies and take down the tyrannical President Krug once and for all.

Twelve-year-old Sora and her family live under an iron set of rules: No travel without a permit. No criticism of the government. No absences from Communist meetings. Wear red. Hang pictures of the Great Leader. Don't trust your neighbors. Don't speak your mind. You are being watched. But war is coming, war between North and South Korea, between the Soviets and the Americans. War causes chaos - so war is the perfect time to escape. The plan is simple: Sora and her family will walk for weeks from their tiny northern village to the South Korean city of Busan.

Kira Walker has found the cure for RM, but the battle for the survival of humans and Partials is just beginning. Kira has left East Meadow in a desperate search for clues to who she is. That the Partials themselves hold the cure for RM in their blood cannot be a coincidence - it must be part of a larger plan, a plan that involves Kira, a plan that could save both races. Her companions are Afa Demoux, an unhinged drifter and former employee of ParaGen, and Samm and Heron, the Partials who betrayed her and saved her life, the only ones who know her secret. But can she trust them?

10:00 a.m. The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve. 10:02 a.m. The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class. 10:03. The auditorium doors won't open. 10:05. Someone starts shooting. Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student's calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.

I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Secret Histories is the second collection of action-packed novellas from Pittacus Lore. Initially published separately as digital originals, these three stories are now together in one volume.

Buildings were weaving in and out, the street pitched like a stormy sea and bricks were raining down all around him.... Experience first hand through young Jacob what it was like living through this country’s most destructive earthquake!

A catastrophic tornado struck Joplin, Missouri, in 2011. It was part of a larger tornado outbreak in the spring of that year and reached a maximum width of nearly one mile during its path through the southern part of the city, killing 158 people, and injuring over 1,000. It caused damages amounting to $2.8 billion, making it the costliest single tornado in US history. Lauren will bring her signature intensity to this distinctly American natural disaster, placing a young boy in the middle of one of the deadliest tornadoes to strike the United States since 1947.

Far from the owls of Ga’Hoole, a war is brewing. A bear cub has been snatched by a wolf - an unthinkable betrayal of the peace that has long existed between the wolves and grizzly bears of the Beyond. The bears are massing, roaring for revenge. The wolves claim to be innocent, but they must either fight back or face total annihilation. For Faolan, a young wolf raised by a grizzly bear mother, the threat of war starts a terrible race. Somewhere in the honorable wolf clans hides a traitor, and Faolan must stop him and rescue the lost bear cub before it’s too late.

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever. In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.

It was supposed to be a vacation - and a chance to get to know one another better. But when a massive storm sets in without warning, four kids are shipwrecked alone on a rocky, jungle island in the middle of the South Pacific. No adults. No instructions. Nobody to rely on but themselves. Can they make it home alive? A week ago, the biggest challenge Vanessa, Buzz, Carter, and Jane had was learning to live as a new, blended family. Now the four siblings must find a way to work together if they're going to make it off the island. But first they've got to learn to survive one another.