Young Adult Dystopian

Nightmares are plaguing me. I wake up smelling sulfur, feeling my skin burning, knowing that I’m burning to death on the surface of Abaddon, but I’m not. I’m on Sel’Ani, my father’s home planet. I’m alive and using my true name and finally free to be myself. And yet, I’m completely falling apart. Every time I wake up screaming, Lorne is there. I don’t understand how he knows when I need him, but he does, and even if I can’t say the words aloud, I’m so thankful that he’s there. Because I wouldn’t survive this without him.

As the final round in The Queen Trials begins, Clio has run out of people to trust. What happens when the field is narrowed to the final princesses who will become queens?

These 31 stories are fiction. Short and scary. Delivered to you in small, terrifying bursts, much the way you’d experience each individual room in a haunted-house attraction. They were specifically written to be enjoyed by both the not-too-young and old alike. Inside, you’ll find horror, drama, even a few laughs - and zombies. Zombies by the ton. Gnawing, gnashing, stumbling, and staring... Right. At. You. Waiting…for a bite-sized offering.

In a near-future where a virtual currency of digital content fuels a fame-hungry society, a brand-new experiment that combines social media and reality TV has been greenlit. Voted on, and contestants are sent to a maximum-security reform camp on an island where they can have no contact with the outside world. To lose means prison. But to win is to be free. The most popular young offender with the most upvotes by the end is given both a second chance in society and a cash prize.

Three weeks have passed since Cassandra Leung pledged her allegiance to ruthless pirate-queen Santa Elena and set free Bao, the sea monster Reckoner she'd been forced to train. The days as a pirate trainee are long and grueling, but it's not the physical pain that Cas dreads most. It's being forced to work with Swift, the pirate girl who broke her heart. But Cas has even bigger problems when she discovers Boa is not the only a monster swimming free.

As a slave in the war-weary kingdom of Faelen, 17-year-old Nym isn’t merely devoid of rights, her Elemental kind are only born male and always killed at birth - meaning, she shouldn’t even exist. Standing on the auction block beneath smoke-drenched mountains, Nym faces her 15th sell. But when her hood is removed and her storm-summoning killing curse revealed, Nym is snatched up by a court advisor and given a choice: be trained as the weapon Faelen needs to win the war or be killed.

A year ago, Flynn Cormac and Jubilee Chase made the now infamous Avon Broadcast, calling on the galaxy to witness for their planet and protect them from destruction. Some say Flynn's a madman; others whisper about conspiracies. Nobody knows the truth. A year before that, Tarver Merendsen and Lilac LaRoux were rescued from a terrible shipwreck - now they live a public life in front of the cameras and a secret life away from the world's gaze.

I volunteered to be a spy, not an assassin. I know this is war...but I just want to do what's right. If you ask me, none of us should be here - but no one gave me a choice. And I won't blindly follow orders. I am essential to the plan. And I will be a hero for my country. If I were normal, I wouldn't be old enough to join the army. But I'm not normal. I'm a weapon.

In order to put an end to the people who took everything from them, a 14-year old girl and the man who was supposed to usher her family to safety must go under cover in a hostile institution to uncover the government’s biggest weapon and darkest secrets… Fourteen year old Kara Mason used to live at a fusion energy generator station on the outskirts of a major city. She used to travel with her brothers every week to attend classes inside the safety of the city, surrounded by force fields meant to keep everything else out.

After seven months as a captive of Minerva, the insane Alpha queen, Lyric Walker has escaped to the surface. Her only goal is to warn the world about the Great Abyss. When she finally arrives back in Coney Island, she discovers a world she never expected, one where humans and Alpha are finally working hand in hand to rebuild the country. But she soon discovers that an old enemy allied with an old friend may kill them all before the monsters get their turn.

In the future the UN has brought back an ancient way to keep the peace. The children of world leaders are held hostage - if a war begins, they pay with their lives. Greta is the crown princess of the Panpolar Confederacy, a superpower formed of modern-day Canada. She is also a child of peace, a hostage held by the de facto ruler of the world: the great artificial intelligence, Talis. The hostages are Talis' strategy to keep the peace: If her country enters a war, Greta dies.

Tatum Masterson never went through The Program. She never had her memory stripped, never had to fight to remain herself. But when Weston, her longtime boyfriend and love of her life, was taken by handlers, she hoped he'd remember her somehow - that their love would be strong enough. It wasn't.

After 10 years of living on an isolated, tech-free ranch with her mother, 16-year-old Hedda is going back to the world of the Glare - her word for cell phones, computers, and tablets. Hedda was taught to be afraid of technology, afraid that it would get inside her mind and hurt her. But now she’s going to stay with her dad in California, where she was born, and she’s finally ready to be normal. She’s not going to go “off-kilter,” like her mom says she did when she was just a little kid. Once she arrives, Hedda finally feels like she’s in control.

It's been five years since the Biafran War ended. Ify is now 19 and living where she's always dreamed - the Space Colonies. She is a respected, high-ranking medical officer and has dedicated her life to helping refugees like herself rebuild in the Colonies.

Six months after Noam Álvaro helped overthrow the despotic government of Carolinia, the Atlantians have gained citizenship, and Lehrer is chancellor. But despite Lehrer's image as a progressive humanitarian leader, Noam has finally remembered the truth that Lehrer forced him to forget - that Lehrer is responsible for the deadly magic infection that ravaged Carolinia.

SETI has received a signal from an alien civilization. Is there time to save the world? In the aftermath of SETI’s receiving the signal, 13-year-old Kevin realizes he is the only one who can save the world. But is there time? What must he do? And what do the aliens plan next?

The year is 2113. In Jenna Strong’s world, ACID - the most brutal controlling police force in history - rule supreme. No throwaway comment or whispered dissent goes unnoticed - or unpunished. And it was ACID agents who locked Jenna away for life, for a horrendous crime she struggles to remember. But Jenna’s violent prison time has taught her how to survive by any means necessary. When a mysterious rebel group breaks her out, she must use her strength, speed, and skill to stay one step ahead of ACID and try to uncover the truth about what really happened.

On the day she went silent, Speth never meant for anyone to follow her lead - or to start a rebellion of Silents. But after taking down the tyrant Silas Rog and freeing the city from his grasp, everyone is looking to Speth for answers she doesn’t have. All she wants is to find her parents, who are shackled to a lifetime of servitude in exchange for a debt they can never repay. But how can Speth leave her friends to fend for themselves when she’s the reason their city is in chaos?

Waking on the edge of the lake, out beyond the perimeter wall, Brie has to think fast. She's lost, alone, and surrounded by toxic mist. And soon enough, she'll have other threats to contend with too. Needing to get back to the city fast, she sets her sights on the High Tower, the beacon that calls her home. And eventually, it's right to the summit that she needs to go. But first, she's got other business to attend to, business that will take her from the core of Inner Haven to the northern reaches of the underlands.

Every cure has a cost. Tatum Masterson learned this after years of being monitored by The Program. She witnessed it when her boyfriend, Wes, came back changed, erased. And now, even the newest “cure” has a heavy cost - one she and Wes paid. The Adjustment came into Tatum’s life just when she thought she needed it most, a promise for Wes to get back his forgotten memories. But when the procedure went wrong, a revelation shattered everything Tatum thought she knew. Now, with no one left to trust, Tatum must find out what really happened last summer.