When the pandemic hit, nobody was expecting it to be as bad as it was. The economy barely survived the lockdowns, but it staggered along until civil unrest shattered people’s hope of better times to come. With it being an election year, more and more Americans were waking up to the idea that they truly were behind the curve. The hope was if they did not get sick, run out of money, or could avoid violent mobs, they would be fine.

Grace Hardwick's dad is a science fiction writer who makes his living destroying the world. When Grace decides to go away for her first year of college her dad, Robert, can't help but think of all of the potential ways that society could collapse and strand his daughter hundreds of miles from home. Then, near the end of her freshman year, it happens.

For Megan Wolford, life as she knew it came to an end after the world was decimated by an EMP. Now, she does her best to survive and protect her daughter, Caitlin. But when the young girl falls ill with a mysterious virus, Meghan must leave the safety of their home and embark on a dangerous journey to forage for medical supplies.

With no power, no heat, and a total grid collapse, tough times keep getting tougher. But when America is struck with an EMP, this small group of survivors will be forced out of the frying pan and into the fire. Only there can they fight for their homes, their families, their community, and their right to be free from the restraints of an oppressive world force.

While he sat back and watched the United States rattle swords with Korea, play chicken with Russia, and strong-arm China, he felt sure if the lights went out that he and his family would be ready and safe—whether it was due to a natural disaster or a man-made event. They had everything they needed at their homestead.

If society collapsed, could you survive? When Morgan Carter's car breaks down 250 miles from his home, he figures his weekend plans are ruined. But things are about to get much, much worse: the country's power grid has collapsed. There is no electricity, no running water, no Internet, and no way to know when normalcy will be restored - if it ever will be.

Joe doesn't care about politics, or what happened. The grid is down, and every day is a struggle to survive. He just knows his world went to Hell when the EMPs ended life as he knew it. Joe scrambled to hide from all of the craziness, but kept his sanity, and improved his lot in life by reading some witty survival notes that his dead grandma had left him. She'd been a prepper all her life, and she had been close to Joe. Joe grows and learns, but can he survive? Listen to this complete series to find out how a regular guy survives in a post-apocalyptic world.

If society fell apart, could your family survive? Jim Powell thought he was ready. He was a regular guy who travelled a lot for work and hated every second he was away from his young family. But when ISIS operatives unleashed a coordinated attack on America’s infrastructure, his entire world shattered. The electrical grid collapsed, communication networks were damaged, critical bridges and dams were destroyed, and major fuel refineries have gone up in massive fiery clouds.

Ty Stone never wanted to be anything but a soldier. While in Afghanistan, an operation under his command goes horribly wrong, ending his military career. Ty is thrust back into civilian life, stuck working as a security guard at a truck stop. To make matters worse, he struggles every day with the demons that followed him home from the war. His new job is routine, even boring, until a young girl is abducted while he’s on duty.

Teenager Amanda Castle was like a lot of people, posting pictures of her everyday life to a variety of social media sites. Not everyone who viewed her pictures was there to share in her experiences. One was there to steal her profile pictures. A terrorist in Frankfurt was desperate to please his leadership. He planned the perfect attack, one in which vulnerable people would be invited through social media to participate in a flash mob. There, the unwitting participants, thinking they were taking part in a random act of kindness, would find themselves engaged in a random act of terror.

In the near future, in the picturesque town of Burning Hollow, Tennessee, a century-old squabble between two families is brewing. For four generations, blood has spilled between the patriarchs, shifting the tides of power. But after each significant change, a new war begins. Will an EMP strike on a failed economy prove lethal to a besieged nation? Or will its citizens rally to protect their homesteads and safeguard their families?

Westley Flagg isn't your usual lawbreaker. He's a poacher, a moonshiner, and a prepper, out of necessity. Despite trying to live on the straight and narrow, he knows the law can turn things on you in a heartbeat. When Wes has to come up with money for his Grandpa's surgery, he gets involved with an unsavory group. Living deep in poverty for most of his life, he's become resilient and flexible, but college education can only take him so far. A solar storm sends the northern lights as far south as Texas, and cascading failures in the grid cripple the nation. Now, without communications, Flagg has to prove he has what it takes to still survive.

This is a gritty and compelling survival tale about human courage and steadfast determination to live, to endure, and to persevere against all odds.

When Agent Joshua Stone is called to a high-level meeting at the Department of Homeland Security, he learns about a new global order which will be transitioning into power. Stone is read in on the plan for a single planetary government and a world-wide cashless-currency, which will step in to fill the void left by the failing monetary system. To win wide acceptance by the nations of the world, the old system must first be allowed to fail, bringing about a state of global chaos never before seen by mankind.

John Beck wants to be a good man, a great father, and a supportive husband. Though his inner demons have put those goals far out of reach. Could the end of the world be the beginning a second chance for Beck? When a surprise EMP attack on the United States sends the nation into a tailspin, Beck goes into action. He works to be the man he always wanted to be and in the process becomes a legend.

In a steel-and-lead-encased bunker 20 feet below the basement level of his house, a soldier waits for his final orders. On the surface, a plague ravages the planet, infecting over 90% of the populace. The bacterium burrows through the brain, destroying all signs of humanity and leaving behind little more than base, prehistoric instincts. The infected turn into hyper-aggressive predators, with an insatiable desire to kill and feed. Someday soon, the soldier will have to open the hatch to his bunker, and step out into this new wasteland, to complete his mission....

One woman's story as she blogs about - and fights back against - the zombie apocalypse.

Allison Hewitt and her five colleagues at the Brooks and Peabody Bookstore are trapped together when the zombie outbreak hits. Allison reaches out for help through her blog, writing on her laptop. It may also be her only chance to reach her mother. But as the reality of their situation sinks in, Allison's blog becomes a harrowing account of her edge-of-the-seat adventures.

Edgar Award nominee Victor Gischler “specializes in morbid humor, dark sarcasm, and comic noir, complete with violence and mayhem” ( Library Journal). Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse picks up 10 years after the end of the world. Former insurance salesman Mortimer Tate leaves his secluded cabin and discovers a desolate landscape complete with cowboys, bandits, and cannibals, where the only traces of civilization are found at Joey Armageddon’s Sassy-a-Go-Go club.

David was caught in the middle of the city when the zombie outbreak started. His wife and daughters were at home, stranded on the roof as zombies waited below. He would have to fight through hordes of undead, merciless other survivors, and a series of death defying stunts to get home. However, even if he makes it there, how can he be sure they're safe? Deadlocked puts you into David's head as he struggles to get home. Then a final confrontation occurs that could guarantee his family's survival, but at what cost?

Awakening in a bleak landscape as scarred as her body, Cass Dollar vaguely recalls surviving something terrible. Having no idea how many weeks have passed, she slowly realizes the horrifying truth: Ruthie has vanished. And with her, nearly all of civilization. Where once-lush hills carried cars and commerce, the roads today see only cannibalistic Beaters - people turned hungry for human flesh by a government experiment gone wrong.

Summer 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon's Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster - another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Ben McKelvie believes he's moving up in the world when he and his fiancée buy a house in the cushy Washington, DC, suburb of Barcroft. Instead he's moving down - way down - thanks to Madeleine Roux, the crazy neighbor whose vermin-infested property is a permanent eyesore and looming hazard to public health. First Ben's fiancée leaves him; then his dog dies, apparently killed by a predator drawn into Barcroft by Madeleine's noxious menagerie. But the worst is yet to come for Ben.

Anna Strong is trained for anything-until she's attacked one night, only to awaken in a dark world that exists between the living and the dead. Here, Anna struggles with her love for the two men who inhabit the realms of each: Max, a human DEA agent, and Avery, a Night Watcher who joins Anna in pursuit of the vampire who changed her life. Now, as her two worlds collide, fate plunges Anna into the ultimate battle between good and evil - where survival is not just for the living.

Greed, terrorism, and simple bad luck conspire to bring mankind to its knees as a viral infection spreads out of control, reducing those infected to undead horrors that feed upon the rest. It's a time of misery and death for most, however there are some who are lucky, some who are ruthless, and some who are just too damned tough to go down without a fight. This is their story.

Nineteen-year-old Remy King is on a mission to get across the wasteland left of America, and nothing will stand in her way - not violent marauders, a spoiled rock star, or an army of flesh-eating zombies.

With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.

As the captain of Field County's ice rescue dive team, Callum Cook is driven to perfection. But when he meets new diver Louise "Lou" Sparks, all that hard-won order is obliterated in an instant. Lou is a hurricane. A walking disaster. And with her, he's never felt more alive... even if keeping her safe may just kill him. Lou's new to the Rockies, intent on escaping her controlling ex, and she's determined to make it on her own terms...no matter how tempting Callum may be.

They call me the Spider. I'm the most feared assassin in the South -- when I'm not busy at the Pork Pit cooking up the best barbecue in Ashland. As a Stone elemental, I can hear everything from the whispers of the gravel beneath my feet to the vibrations of the soaring Appalachian Mountains above me. My Ice magic also comes in handy for making the occasional knife. But I don't use my powers on the job unless I absolutely have to. Call it professional pride.

The end begins with a viral outbreak unlike anything mankind has ever encountered before. The infected are subject to delirium, fever, a dramatic increase in violent behavior, and a one-hundred percent mortality rate. Death. But it doesn't end there. The victims return from death to walk the earth. When a massive military operation fails to contain the plague of the living dead it escalates into a global pandemic.

From this “master of the genre,” Christina Dodd, comes three suspenseful short stories of this “remarkable, mesmerizing series” (Library Journal starred review) set in the quaint—and deadly—coastal town of Virtue Falls.

Dan Slaughter has given up on appearances. With his wife dead and his kids grown, he’s slowly reverting back to the east Tennessee boy he used to be three decades earlier. He quit cutting his hair and started smoking pot. He drinks when he wants to and sings along with the classic songs of his lost youth.

As summer winds down in the mountains of Idaho, Dan and his group are preparing for a long winter in their hardened underground home. Unlike the majority of Americans, they have power, running water, and plenty of food thanks to the preparations of paranoid podcaster Kyle Cross.

If society fell apart, could your family survive? Jim Powell thought he was ready. He was a regular guy who travelled a lot for work and hated every second he was away from his young family. But when ISIS operatives unleashed a coordinated attack on America’s infrastructure, his entire world shattered. The electrical grid collapsed, communication networks were damaged, critical bridges and dams were destroyed, and major fuel refineries have gone up in massive fiery clouds.

Ty Stone never wanted to be anything but a soldier. While in Afghanistan, an operation under his command goes horribly wrong, ending his military career. Ty is thrust back into civilian life, stuck working as a security guard at a truck stop. To make matters worse, he struggles every day with the demons that followed him home from the war. His new job is routine, even boring, until a young girl is abducted while he’s on duty.

An EMP attack leaves single-father Will Fontenot and his son stranded in Houston, Texas. Wracked with guilt and struggling with PTSD from the accident that took his wife's life, he'll do whatever it takes to get his son out of the city. But an encounter with two injured women hurls them into a deadly game of cat and mouse and puts all their lives at risk.

Laurel was working in the ER, stabilizing a patient, when the unthinkable happened. An EMP hit. The power went out. And it never came back. In the devastating aftermath, she must turn South Minneha Hospital into a place of refuge, a beacon of hope for her fellow survivors. But a beacon attracts predators, too… Predators like Arlo Staaf, the brutal leader of a ruthless gang. Desperate to save his dying son, Arlo takes over the hospital and gives Laurel an impossible ultimatum: save his terminally ill boy, or watch everyone she cares for die.

In the near future, in the picturesque town of Burning Hollow, Tennessee, a century-old squabble between two families is brewing. For four generations, blood has spilled between the patriarchs, shifting the tides of power. But after each significant change, a new war begins. Will an EMP strike on a failed economy prove lethal to a besieged nation? Or will its citizens rally to protect their homesteads and safeguard their families?

Teenager Amanda Castle was like a lot of people, posting pictures of her everyday life to a variety of social media sites. Not everyone who viewed her pictures was there to share in her experiences. One was there to steal her profile pictures. A terrorist in Frankfurt was desperate to please his leadership. He planned the perfect attack, one in which vulnerable people would be invited through social media to participate in a flash mob. There, the unwitting participants, thinking they were taking part in a random act of kindness, would find themselves engaged in a random act of terror.

Grace Hardwick's dad is a science fiction writer who makes his living destroying the world. When Grace decides to go away for her first year of college her dad, Robert, can't help but think of all of the potential ways that society could collapse and strand his daughter hundreds of miles from home. Then, near the end of her freshman year, it happens.

Consumed by guilt over the accidental death of his daughter’s husband and child, a disabled veteran, John Sheridan leaves Florida and returns to his small town in the Black Hills of South Dakota to finalize the sale of a remote mountain cabin once shared with his wife. With his vision failing, he now believes this will be the last time he will see it and get to enjoy the biggest motorcycle rally in the world. But when a dirty-looking local teenage girl seeking safety breaks in and the power goes out, he learns a disturbing story and must decide whose survival matters more.

In the middle of the holidays, a biological attack wreaks havoc on the U.S. The virus is quick. Deadly. Unstoppable. The country is left in tatters. For Isaac Race, it’s especially bitter. After the death of his parents and sister, he was just getting his life back on track - the weaponized virus changes all that. Battered by the fresh deaths of his foster parents, but hardened by the year he’s endured, he emerges from the temporary safety of his home to seek out other survivors during the worst winter in years.