Fiction Survival Stories

Eleven-year-old Japanese American Owen has been in Japan for his sixth-grade year. By March he finally feels like he's getting the hang of the new culture, making friends at school, and feeling at home with the "weird" food. But early one morning, everything changes - and Owen suddenly finds himself just trying to survive one of history's most devastating disasters.

Simon, Michael, and Lily are playing on a multiplayer server when a strange lightning storm hits their town. In the middle of an intense game, a bolt of lightning strikes, sucking the three friends into the game! They discover that they've been transformed into their Minecraft characters. They try to escape, but they are trapped in the Overworld.

The graphic, coming-of-age tale of a modern Eskimo lad and his consuming vision quest and harrowing struggle for survival. Troubled by changes in his Alaskan village, 14-year-old Russell Suskitt seeks the counsel of the village elder - and only dog team owner. After his training in the ancient arts of hunting with bow and lance, handling sled dogs, and surviving arctic dangers, Russell embarks upon his lonely search for Eskimo manhood.

Maddie and Logan were torn apart by a kidnapping attempt when they were young. They were only kids - Logan's dad was POTUS and Maddie's father was the Secret Service agent meant to guard him. The kidnappers were stopped - but Maddie was whisked off to Alaska with her father, for safety. Maddie and Logan had been inseparable...but then she never heard from him again. Now it's a few years later. Maggie's a teenager, used to living a solitary life with her father. It's quiet - until Logan is sent to join them.

Amy and Elder have finally left the oppressive walls of the spaceship Godspeed behind. They're ready to start life afresh - to build a home - on Centauri-Earth, the planet that Amy has traveled 25 trillion miles across the universe to experience. But this new Earth isn't the paradise that Amy had been hoping for. Amy and Elder must race to uncover who - or what - else is out there if they are to have any hope of saving their struggling colony and building a future together. But as each new discovery brings more danger, Amy and Elder will have to look inward to the very fabric of what makes them human on this, their most harrowing journey yet.

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.

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?

When seventeen-year-old Dee Guerrera wakes up in a haze, lying on the ground of a dimly lit warehouse, she realizes she's about to be the next victim of the app. Knowing hardened criminals are getting a taste of their own medicine in this place is one thing, but Dee refuses to roll over and die for a heinous crime she didn't commit. Can Dee and her newly formed posse, the Death Row Breakfast Club, prove she's innocent before she ends up wrongfully murdered for the world to see? Or will The Postman's cast of executioners kill them off one by one?

When a run-in with the local bully means the boys risk losing their beloved dog, they hatch a plan to keep him safe. They'll take him to live with their grandmother in the Sierra Nevada mountains. He'll be safe there, and Grandma—who lives off the grid—will benefit from the companionship. But first they've got to figure out exactly where in the mountains she is. Following clues left in postcards and pictures and using their keen senses of deduction, they finally find her tract of land. But when they get there, they discover that a group of developers is trying to bully her off her property.

Pittacus Lore finished telling the story of the Lorien Nine in the New York Times best-selling I Am Number Four and Lorien Legacies Reborn series. Now he’s back to recount an all-new adventure rooted in the real mysteries surrounding Roswell, New Mexico, that will enthrall fans of Brandon Sanderson, Jay Kristoff, and Amie Kaufman.

An electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, destroying every electronic device and killing billions. Alex hiked into the woods to say good-bye to her dead parents and her personal demons. Now desperate to find out what happened after the pulse crushes her to the ground, Alex meets up with Tom, a young soldier, and Ellie, a girl whose grandfather was killed by the EMP. For this improvised family and the others who are spared, it's now a question of who can be trusted and who is no longer human.

For Alex, being left home alone for the weekend means the freedom to play his computer games and hang out with his friends without hassle from his mother. Then the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, plunging his hometown into a nightmare of darkness, ash, and violence. Alex begins a harrowing trek to search for his family and finds help in Darla, a travel partner he meets along the way. Together they must find the strength and skills to survive and outlast an epic disaster.

The first in an exciting new series for children from ex-SAS officer and best-selling adult author Chris Ryan. Five kids: Alex, Li, Paulo, Hex and Amber, are marooned on a desert island where they must face the ultimate test: survival! Killer komodo dragons, sharks, and modern day pirates are amongst the dangers they face. Can the five bond as a team, and stay alive? New to audio, this gripping story is read by Adrian Lester, best-known for his role in Spooks on TV.

First they defeated Mr. January. Next they trapped his sister, Mrs. Prosper. Now Eleanor and her best friends, Pip and Otto, have one last chance to escape the People Who Look Away. The last of the evil siblings is their most formidable opponent yet, with two vicious hounds at her side and the ability to open roads across time and worlds.

In this memorable story, a ranger comes across a fox caught in a trap. The ranger frees the fox and promises only to tend to its wounds. The fox recovers and remains curiously close to the ranger, and when unexpected twists occur, the fox ends up being the helper. The ranger asks the fox, "Does this make us even?" and almost immediately feels regret - keeping score has no place in friendship. And so the two continue their journey together.

Teens across the globe have developed incredible powers known as Legacies. Although they were meant to use these abilities to help the world, dark forces have been working against them from the shadows. Six and Sam Goode used to be part of a covert group that investigated suspicious incidents surrounding these Human Garde. Then they discovered they could no longer trust who they were working for and quit. But they’ll still do whatever it takes to protect these teens.

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 all started with the dreams. But Cassie didn't pay much attention to them. She and her friends have been having nightmares ever since they acquired the power to morph. But when Cassie discovers that Tobias has been having dreams too - the exact same dreams - about the ocean, and a voice that's calling to them for help, she decides it's time to start listening. Now, she and the others have to figure out if the dreams are a message, or a trap.

From the acclaimed author of the Chaos Walking trilogy and A Monster Calls comes one of the most provocative teen novels of our time. A boy named Seth drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments. But then he wakes. He is naked, thirsty, starving. But alive. How is this possible? He remembers dying, his bones breaking, his skull dashed upon the rocks. So how is he here? And where is this place? The street seems familiar, but everything is abandoned, overgrown, covered in dust.

After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother. But nothing is easy when you’re a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodemus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880s America.