Fiction Survival Stories

Warsaw, 1942. Sixteen-year old Mira smuggles food into the ghetto to keep herself and her family alive. When she discovers that the entire ghetto is to be "liquidated" - killed or "resettled" to concentration camps - she desperately tries to find a way to save her family. She meets a group of young people who are planning the unthinkable: an uprising against the occupying forces. Mira joins the resistance fighters who, with minimal supplies and weapons, end up holding out for 28 days, longer than anyone had thought possible.

When Leo and Naomi are drafted, along with 22 of the world's brightest teenagers, into the International Space Training Camp, their lives are forever changed. Overnight, they become global celebrities in contention for one of the six slots to travel to Europa - Jupiter's moon - and establish a new colony, leaving their planet forever. With Earth irreparably damaged, the future of the human race rests on their shoulders. But Naomi is suspicious of the ISTC and the fact that a similar mission failed under mysterious circumstances, killing the astronauts on board.

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.

Newbery Honor author Rodman Philbrick presents a gripping yet poignant novel about a 12-year-old boy and his dog who become trapped in New Orleans during the horrors of Hurricane Katrina. Zane Dupree is a charismatic 12-year-old boy of mixed race visiting a relative in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hits. Unexpectedly separated from all family, Zane and his dog experience the terror of Katrina's wind, rain, and horrific flooding.

It is 1939 in Berlin, Germany, and 12-year-old Lillian and her Papa are on the run from Nazi soldiers. Because they are Jewish, they are in danger of being arrested and put in prison. Lillian’s father is blind, and it seems no one is willing to help them - until they meet Otto Weidt. Mr. Weidt runs a factory that makes brushes for the Nazi army, and his secret is that he employs blind Jewish workers. Lillian learns that Otto Weidt is determined to keep her, Papa, and all the Jewish workers safe. But will he be able to?

Thirteen-year-old Lily Hartman always dreamed of adventure. A strong-willed girl, Lily felt trapped in a life of Victorian stuffiness at her prim boarding school. But after her father - a famous inventor - disappears on a routine zeppelin flight, Lily's life gets turned upside down. Now cared for by her guardian, the heartless Madame Verdigris, Lily is quite certain that she's being watched. Mysterious, silver-eyed men are lurking in the shadows, just waiting for their chance to strike. But what could they possibly want from her?

When the world started to fall apart, the government gave everyone two choices: move into the Bubble Cities... or take their chances outside. Twelve-year-old Maggie and her family chose the latter. They live in the world that was left behind. Deciding it's time to grow up and grow tough, Maggie rechristens herself "Ford Falcon" - a name taken from the beat-up car she finds at a nearby junkyard. This is where Ford's family goes to scavenge for things they can use and barter with.

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.

Acclaimed novelist Jewell Parker Rhodes is an American Book Award winner. Rhodes’ Ninth Ward is a stunning tale set against the horrors of Hurricane Katrina. Orphaned 12-year-old Lanesha lives with Mama Ya-Ya, the midwife who birthed her, in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. Although Lanesha is different—able to see ghosts like that of her dead mother—she never feels unloved, an empowerment that helps her survive the devastating storm.

Best friends Tamanna and Yasmine cannot believe their good fortune when a school is set up in their Afghan village; however, their dreams for the future are shattered when the Taliban burn down the school and threaten the teacher and students with death. As Tamanna faces an arranged marriage to an older man, and the Taliban target Yasmine’s Western-educated family, the girls realize they must flee.

Fast-paced, evocative, and intensely suspenseful, Tim Wynne-Jones’s latest psychological thriller finds a teenager setting his wits against the frigid wilderness and a menacing crew of escapees.

Charlie West went to bed one night an ordinary high school student. He woke up a hunted man. Terrorists are trying to kill him. The police want to arrest him for the stabbing death of his best friend. He doesn't know whose side he's one or who he can trust. With his pursuers closing in on every side, Charlie makes his way back to his hometown to find some answers.

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 one year since all the adults disappeared. Gone. Despite the hunger, despite the lies, even despite the plague, the kids of Perdido Beach are determined to survive. Creeping into the tenuous new world they've built, though, is the worst incarnation yet of the enemy known as the Darkness: fear. Within the FAYZ, life breaks down while the Darkness takes over - turning the dome-world of the FAYZ entirely black.

In a north London cemetery, a professor is kidnapped at gunpoint. Then, a suspicious letter crammed with cryptic clues arrives at Eton. To decipher the deadly mystery, James Bond must take a series of dangerous gambles. Once the code is cracked, he has just 48 hours to save the professor from the dark forces that threaten to destroy them both. And if they can't escape, it's not only their future under threat; it's the rest of the world.

In the final installment of an exhilarating sci-fi adventure trilogy in the vein of The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Red Rising, Scott Sigler's unforgettable heroine, Em Savage, must come to grips once and for all with the perilous mysteries of her own existence.

As a lethal plague sweeps through the land, Ani Mells is shocked when she is unexpectedly captured by the governor's wardens and forced to submit to a test for the deadly Scourge. She is even more surprised when the test results come back positive, and she is sent to Attic Island, a former prison turned refuge - and quarantine colony - for the ill. The Scourge's victims, Ani now among them, can expect only to live out short, painful lives there.

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.”

Ariane's life is complicated. Her mother suddenly disappeared two and a half years ago, she's trying to get used to living with her aunt after bouncing around a series of foster homes, and she's taking a lot of grief from the clique of "in" girls at school. To make matters even worse, now she's having strange dreams involving swords and knights and battles, and things seem to get weird whenever she touches water. Next thing she knows, she's been sent on a quest to find the five scattered shards of Excalibur.

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.