Detective Elijah Wade is on the trail of a serial killer when the skies above Los Angeles erupt into the most spectacular light show humanity has ever seen. And the most deadly. His daughter is in a hospital bed on the other side of the continent, but where does his duty lie now? To her, to justice, or to his species?

Roland Stang never intended to become the caretaker of 30 abandoned children. He was just looking for a place to get out of the rain. His plan was to lay low and allow the world to reset itself after a worldwide economic collapse. But things do change. An orphan himself from an early age, the former soldier can't simply walk away and leave the children he finds. Leading a handful of teens and a busload of orphaned children, Roland sets out to find a safe haven for them. Along the way, he'll make friends, enemies, and the odd mistake or two. Or more.

Two years after an attack brought down the electrical grid across the United States, the recovery effort is well underway. A new network of armored trains carry supplies and industrial equipment crucial to rebuilding the country. But along the rails, one area of America is still mired in darkness, violence, and danger. Some call it the Badlands. Others the Wild West. The government simply refers to it as the New Frontier.

A volcanic eruption on the other side of the globe is the beginning of the end of the world. Oblivious to the changes were Ron Ash and his small Texas town. Then a dam brakes and washes away nearly everything and everyone they knew, including Ron’s wife.

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 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?

A lethal super-virus has wiped out much of the population, toppling governments, religions, and most of society. Stranded on a remote, faraway mission, Col. Noah Dresdon agonizes about what’s become of his family in Florida. Did his wife survive? The last time he talked to her, she was already sick.

When a series of devastating terror attacks brought down the United States, Conor and Barb assumed they were safe in their compound. They had everything they needed. They were armed and highly trained. But then, Barb was kidnapped. The kidnappers didn’t know why Conor was known as The Mad Mick. They didn’t know the fear and respect his name invoked in the shadowy underworld of covert operations. They didn’t know that when it came to protecting his family, he was without conscience, without compassion, and without equal. But they would soon find out.

Ben Davis was prepared for disaster. He just didn’t know it would come so soon. He and his teenage son, Joel, are miles deep in the backcountry of the San Juan Mountains when high-altitude nuclear electromagnetic detonations light up the pre-dawn sky. Ben, Joel, and their dog, Gunner, must make their way home - or to whatever’s left of it - on foot.

Young parents Ethan and Brooke Spencer are on a romantic ski vacation in the Rockies when the lights go out, cars stall, and communications fail. Stranded 800 miles from home, they are desperate to return to their four-year-old twins and are willing to do whatever it takes to reach them.

With little warning, a solar super flare erupts from the sun. A billion tons of superheated plasma hurtles through space toward Earth. As multiple solar storms strike Earth, transformers explode, the power grid fails, and communication networks collapse. Half the world goes dark, thrusting the planet into utter chaos. With society crumbling around them, the survivors must fight not only for their lives, but for everything they hold dear - hope amid devastation, justice in the face of depravity, and ultimately, the perseverance of the human spirit against all odds.

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.

On a Friday afternoon before Labor Day, Americans are getting ready for the holiday weekend, completely unaware of a long-planned terrorist plot about to be launched against the country. Kyle Tait is settling in for his flight home to Montana when a single nuclear bomb is detonated 300 miles above the heart of America.

At 58 years old, Jeff Mann had read dozens of those apocalyptic sci-fi novels, and all were wrong. The cause was the incompetence of the world's governments and the failure of the many financial Ponzi schemes. First, the riots and looting came, and then starvation and depravity followed. The billionaires built safe compounds while everyone else died off or fought to survive the holocaust at the end of the modern world. Jeff begins a crusade against human trafficking after saving two women from slavers. Can one man and two women make a difference in a world gone mad?

Molly is determined to get the troubled teens she teaches back on the right path and is convinced a trip to a local prison will show them the consequences of bad behavior. But when an EMP blast knocks out all power across the country, Molly and her five students, along with their former-Marine bus driver, Colton, are locked in with the prisoners with no safe exit. The guards are little help against clever convicts, and when a riot throws everything into chaos, Molly and Colton must find a way to get to freedom with their charges.

If you've never read a Repairman Jack novel, this is the place to begin. It's 1990. A twenty-one-year-old named Jack has dropped out of college, leaving his old life behind to build a new one in New York City. Manhattan's rough edges are jagged enough to shred any unwary newcomer, but perhaps not one who is determined to stay off the grid, at any cost, in the busiest metropolis on earth. And to do so, he'll have to take jobs of a less than legal nature.

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.

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.

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.

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?

In the darkness of a vast cave system, cut off from the world for millennia, blind creatures hunt by sound. Then there is light, there are voices, and they feed. Swarming from their prison, they multiply and thrive. To scream, even to whisper, is to summon death. Deaf for many years, Ally knows how to live in silence. Now, it is her family's only chance of survival. They must leave their home, shun others, and find a remote haven where they can sit out the plague. But will it ever end? And what kind of world will be left?

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....

Alex Duncan is a mother, a sister - and the daughter of a doomsday prepper. She always thought her father was insane, raving about an apocalypse she never believed in, but when a plague hits the United States and the dead no longer stay dead, Alex discovers heeding her deceased father’s advice is what will keep her family alive. Before he died, Alex’s father created a compound in Montana just in case situations like this arose. The dead walk, hungry for human flesh. With little time to spare, Alex must make split-second decisions to prevent her family from being devoured.

U.S. Marshal Jameson Arkeley, the country’s foremost authority on vampires, taught police investigator and vampire fighter Laura Caxton everything she knows about monsters. After a bloody war visited upon Gettysburg by an army of vampires, Arkeley gave up his own life to save others—except he didn’t exactly die.

Following the death of his 10-year-old son, physician Peter Croft embarks on a desperate, seemingly random search for a missing child, risking his sanity, even his life in a grief-induced quest. His journey propels him into the darkest reaches of human suffering and pits him squarely against an adversary whose own obsession defies all reason.

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.

Moving from Boston to remote Bearkill, Maine, isn't homicide cop Lizzie Snow's idea of a step up. But breaking away from tragedy and personal betrayal is at least a step in the right direction. Her dead sister's fate still torments her, as does her long-missing niece's disappearance. The town is full of people who see everything, say little, and know more than they'll share with an outsider.

That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. The hideous children - Want and Ignorance - beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Best-selling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.

Keisha Lewis lived a quiet life with her wife, Alice, until the day Alice disappeared. After months of searching, presuming she was dead, Keisha held a funeral, mourned, and gradually tried to get on with her life. But that was before Keisha started to see her wife, again and again, in the background of news reports from all over America. Alice isn't dead, and she is showing up at every major tragedy and accident in the country. Following a line of clues, Keisha takes a job as a long-haul truck driver and begins searching for Alice.

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.