Fiction Survival Stories

Every summer Quill and his friends are put ashore on a remote sea stac to hunt birds. But this summer, no one arrives to take them home. Surely nothing but the end of the world can explain why they’ve been abandoned - cold, starving and clinging to life, in the grip of a murderous ocean. How will they survive such a forsaken place of stone and sea?

With Nazis bombing London every night, it's time for 13-year-old Ken to escape. He suspects his stepmother is glad to see him go, but his dad says he's one of the lucky ones - one of 90 boys and girls to ship out aboard the SS City of Benares to safety in Canada. Life aboard the luxury ship is grand-nine-course meals, new friends, and a life far from the bombs, rations, and his stepmum's glare. And after five days at sea, the ship's officers announce that they're out of danger. They're wrong.

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?

In the mid-21st century, dogs are all but extinct. An experiment gone awry caused every canine on Earth to become hyperintelligent. When as a species they stopped wagging their tails, hysteria ensued - followed by a program of mass euthanasia. Now the only surviving dogs are relegated to a sanctuary off the coast of Florida: Dog Island. There, they are studied in a wild, feral, and protected state. And there, too, their robot replacements are tested before being sold for mass consumption. Seventeen-year-old Nano Miller was born and bred on Dog Island, as were her two best friends, Jack and Wolf.

Helicity is well aware her name is unusual - kind of like Helicity herself. The word 'helicity' means to spin, and for as long as she can remember, Helicity has been fascinated by the weather. The weather is Helicity's escape from her own reality - be it school, her father's strict discipline, or her brother's imminent departure for college, where he's all set to play football. One fateful day, Helicity and her horse head out on a long ride to take a break from life at home. Even with her vast weather experience, Helicity is unprepared for the elements she faces.

Blue skies. Green grass. Clear ocean water. An island paradise like the ones that existed before the Melt. A lucky 500 lottery winners will be the first to go, the first to leave their polluted, dilapidated homes behind and start a new life. It sounds perfect. Like a dream. The only problem? Marin Carey spent her childhood on those seas and knows there's no island paradise out there. She's corsario royalty, a pirate like her father and his father before him, and she knows a con when she sees one. So where are the First Five Hundred really going?

School Library Journal calls this moving tale by Myron Uhlberg a "remarkable homage to New Orleans". A Storm Called Katrina follows Louis Daniel, a 10-year-old boy from New Orleans’ Ninth Ward who loves to play the horn just like his idol, Louis Armstrong. The morning after the devastating hurricane rips through his neighborhood, Louis - with his beloved cornet in tow - must brave the rising flood waters and seek shelter with his family at the Superdome.

For the past four years, Rick Walker has been shuffled between foster care and group homes. At 14, he’s a kid nobody wants or cares about. Now he’s headed for Blue Canyon Detention Center. For Rick, life is a maze full of dead ends. But when he is threatened at Blue Canyon and runs away, Rick finds himself in a real maze - the enormous rocky expanse of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. There, Rick meets a biologist who has devoted his life to reintroducing the condor to its natural habitat. As Rick joins him to protect the giant birds, the teenager will begin to see choices instead of dead ends.

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.

In The Winter Pony, Iain Lawrence pens the mesmerizing tale of a young white Siberian pony who escapes a group of cruel masters only to enter the company of Englishman Robert Falcon Scott. Joining Scott’s men and their race to the South Pole, the pony is soon given a name, James Pigg, as he and the rest embark on a thrilling race to reach the bottom of the world - a race in which not everyone will survive.

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.

Graham Salisbury has received numerous high-profile accolades from the ALA, VOYA, and several parent organizations. A Junior Library Guild Premier election, Night of the Howling Dogs is a rousing adventure set in Hawaii. On a Boy Scout trip, Dylan is looking forward to camping out at the foot of the Pu¹u Kapukapu volcano. But when an earthquake strikes, Dylan is forced to team up with a bully named Louie on a daring mission to rescue many of their scattered comrades.

When Helicity Dunlap flies for Texas to spend time with her best friend Mia, she hopes to leave the tragedies of the devastating tornado and flash flood back in Michigan - at least for a little while. Her responsibilities at Mia's Aunt Suze's beachfront bed-and-breakfast are pretty simple and leave her lots of time to enjoy hunting for sea glass, sunbathing, and exploring a summer romance. But Helicity comes by her name honestly - helicity means to spin - and her troubles from home follow her south.

When a magnitude 7.8 earthquake hits California, Ruby is trapped in a laundromat with Charlie, a boy she had her first conversation with only moments before. She can't see anything beyond the rubble that she's trapped beneath, but shes sure someone will come save them soon. As the hours and days tick by, Ruby and Charlie struggle to stay hopeful and stay alive. Ruby has only Charlies voice and her memories to find the hope to keep holding on.

Finn Driscoll is counting down the days until she can leave for college. With her beloved brother, Noah, in a coma and her high school social life sinking every day, she’s ready for a fresh start. Until the night she sees Noah in a dream. He begs for her help. At first, she shakes it off as just a nightmare. Then it happens again. And again. Frightened, Finn confides in her grandmother, only to learn the shocking truth about her family. They’re Dreamwalkers - heroes who step into the River of Dreams and fight the monsters in other people’s nightmares.

Para conseguir heredar miles de millones, Avery Grambs solo tiene que sobrevivir unas semanas más en la mansión Hawthorne. Pero los paparazzi no la dejan en paz, la presión sigue subiendo y el peligro acecha por todos lados. La luz al final del túnel son los hermanos Hawthorne, cuyas vidas están completamente entrelazadas con la de Avery. El momento en que Avery se convierta en la adolescente más rica del planeta se acerca, y es entonces cuando aparece un visitante que podría cambiarlo todo.

It's been three months since Quin transferred to Patrol and discovered the terrifying truth about the community she lives in. Citizens of The Beck are disposable and those in charge are capable of terrible cruelty. Vowing to protect those around her, Quin has joined the Resistance. But she knows she is risking everything.

A young girl, Rella Deveraux-PenSword, is called to protect and defend Hleo: an enchanted refuge for the children of Earth One. Rella must stop a plague of Shadowsplitters, the miscreations of the plagiarist Archimago, from destroying the Wondercurrent: a source of life and hope for all the children under Hleo's protection. Rella's parents, Winter and Julian, are part of a secret alliance of Storykeepers. First, her mother disappears. Then, a few years later, when her father goes missing, Rella is forced to flee her home in the rural village of Ensea.

Ten years ago, a horrifying disease began spreading across the West Texas desert. Infected people - "shakes" - attacked the living and created havoc and destruction. No one has ever survived the infection. Daisy Wilcox, known as Willie, has been protecting her siblings within the relatively safe walls of Glory, Texas. But when Willie's good-for-nothing father steals a fortune from one of the most dangerous shake-hunters in town, she finds herself on the hook for his debt. With two hunters, including the gruff and handsome Ben, to accompany her, she sets out across the desert in search of her father.