A small mountain town is isolated by a snowstorm as an ancient evil, gone pandemic, turns the residents into the living dead. Almost overnight the town becomes a snowy tomb of the roaming, hungry infected. Stranded by the weather, hiding, a small group of survivors follows the progress of the disease as society around them and around the world begins to break down. Determined to escape, they find that the normal rules of civilization don't apply anymore. Will they be able to adapt to this strange, hungry new world?

It all starts with a single dead person coming back to life. Within three days, the undead have taken over most of town. Despite heroic efforts and swift initiatives from the government, disaster keeps spiraling. Soon, the infection reaches the nation's borders, threatening to become a worldwide pandemic.

When two teenagers stumble upon a frozen corpse deep in the woods, they make the fateful decision to bring it back to town—unaware they’ve just unleashed the apocalypse. In the morgue beneath the hospital, the dead begin to stir, attacking the living and spreading a relentless infection. The once-quiet town quickly descends into chaos as the hospital becomes a battleground, its halls soaked in blood as survivors fight to escape the growing horde.

The infection has begun, ravaging the American Southwest and leaving chaos in its wake. In this new world, there will be no last meal, no dying wish. The only reward left is to survive another day...The complete Contamination series - all in this one, special edition.

The world’s food supply grows aggressively, occupying every inch of earth, no matter how inhospitable. World hunger is averted. Humanity flourishes. RC-714 is digested, absorbed…and passed on. The Change affects small fast-breeding mammals first. They multiply with the same aggressive speed as the ExoGen plants, but an insatiable hunger drives them to violence. A war between species breaks out. When RC-714 reaches humanity, along with every other large creature on the planet, civilization implodes.

Rose Winter has enough problems. With a marriage going down the tubes and a dreaded anniversary party on the horizon, the last thing she needs is the zombie apocalypse. She wanted to get drunk and sing karaoke, not murder her undead neighbors. It’s clear the party’s over, however, now Rose has more problems - a missing husband, an overbearing houseguest, and keeping her family alive.

In the wake of the cataclysmic events that reshaped our world in 2020, a sense of relief washed over us all. By late 2023, I think we were ready to just live life again. I know I was. It was a time to make new friends and put the past to rest. Rayne and I hadn’t known each other long, but we were building a solid friendship, nothing more. It was our common interests that sent us on vacation together to my remote cabin. What we didn’t, couldn’t know, was that we were on a collision course with the end of the world as we knew it.

Joe works at a facility that performs human experimentation. His work just followed him home. The government wanted to unlock hidden abilities in the human mind. They put subjects in extreme sensory deprivation. All the test subjects went violently insane. But the research continued. Today it has been perfected. Almost perfected.

Survival is just the beginning....Dylan, hotheaded and fiery, finds herself on the wrong side of the clock when she's infected with the Vita virus. Doomed to turn into a flesh-eating zombie, she only has seventy-two hours to find a cure. The countdown has begun. In a race against time, she sets off on a desperate journey through the zombie-infested country. But the undead aren't the only dangers she'll face in her bid to find a remedy to the disease that's already begun to eat away at her sanity. Can she save herself before it's too late?

Adam and Kimberly Hall are enjoying a quiet suburban life with their daughter, Crystal, and their dog, Bowser, when an emergency message flashes on their phones: meteor impact imminent, seek immediate shelter. Minutes later, the shock wave rages through South Austin like a hurricane, and they’re left to pick up the pieces. As dusk begins to fall and horrific creatures come crawling out of the impact craters, they realize they’re under attack—and the attackers are not from Earth.

In this classic trilogy, a mysterious disease strikes millions and drives them to attack, overpower, and infect. Others continue to mutate, becoming horrific monsters. In a dying America, survivors ranging from soldiers to scientists to average people struggle on the razor's edge of survival. Each must ultimately choose how far they’ll go to survive and what they’re willing to lose to save humanity. This is a brutal vision of the apocalypse like no other. Will humanity survive the end of days?

New to the Hot Springs PD, Lisa Reynolds was not all that welcomed by her coworkers, especially those who were passed over for the position. But it didn't matter anymore. Her 30-day probation period ended on the same day of the Z-poc's arrival. Overnight the world goes from bad to worse as thousands die in the initial onslaught. National Guard and regular military units deployed the day before to the north leave the city in mayhem. All directions lead to death until one unlikely candidate steps forward with a plan.

Since childhood Nila Carter has been made to spend every weekend at the family cabin. In her teenage years she believes it to be a prison; as an adult it becomes her sanctuary and means to survive. When a mysterious outbreak occurs in India, Nila's brother, Bobby, a virologist with the CDC, places the family on a precautionary alert to be ready to bug out. Unlike anything he's ever seen, the rabies-like virus is not just deadly; it causes extreme violent behavior in those infected.

John Eric Carver and Shrek are a retired Navy SEAL war dog team, now living in the mountains outside of San Diego. Both man and dog thought their life was now settled, finding peace on the 40-acre ranch they had moved to. But life, and a mutated virus, changed all that.

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.

The living dead are more alive than ever! Zombies have become more than an iconic monster for the 21st century: They are now a phenomenon constantly revealing as much about ourselves - and our fascination with death, resurrection, and survival - as our love for the supernatural or post-apocalyptic speculation. Our most imaginative literary minds have been devoured by these incredible creatures and produced exciting, insightful, and unflinching new works of zombie fiction.

In 1968, after the first zombie outbreak, Wanda Mayhall and her three young daughters discover the body of a teenage mother during a snowstorm. Wrapped in the woman's arms is a baby - stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda, and he begins to move.The family hides the child - whom they name Stony - rather than turn him over to authorities who would destroy him. Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow....

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.

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.

Zombies are real. And we made them. Are you prepared for the zombie apocalypse? The Smith family is, with the help of a few marines. When an airborne "zombie" plague is released, bringing civilization to a grinding halt, the Smith family, Steven, Stacey, Sophia, and Faith, take to the Atlantic to avoid the chaos. The plan is to find a safe haven from the anarchy of infected humanity. What they discover, instead, is a sea composed of the tears of survivors and a passion for bringing hope.

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?

Laura Caxton vowed never to face them again. The horror of what the vampires did is too close, the wounds too fresh. But when Jameson Arkeley, broken and barely recognizable, comes to her with an unfathomable, unholy discovery, her resolve crumbles.

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.

When Victor Tookes went to work that beautiful spring day, he never expected to see a man eaten alive in the street in front of his office. After convincing himself that they really were zombies, he makes a trip from his house in Pennsylvania to his family home in Virginia, battling zombies all the way. His three and a half year old son was bitten on the leg, but doesn't turn into a zombie. Instead, he turns into something more than human.

Filled with adventurous human drama-and shocking inhuman horror - Rise Again is a vivid and powerful debut novel of the zombie apocalypse.

“Are you happy with your life?” Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the kidnapper knocks him unconscious. Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. Before a man he’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.” In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife.

Daniel Ash wakes after midnight to the cry of his daughter. Just a bad dream, he thinks. She's had them before. Yet he can't help but worry when she cries out again as he pads down the hallway. Stepping through her doorway, he expects to find her sitting up in bed, frightened by a nightmare. But the nightmare is his. It's real. And it's just beginning....

Logan Willis’s life is falling apart: he lost his job and found out that his wife is cheating on him all in the same day. Thinking that his world has ended, Logan checks into a hotel and turns on the TV to see that he's not far wrong - radio telescopes have detected mysterious signals coming from inside our solar system, and the source is moving toward us at over 500 miles per second. The media concludes that these signals must be of an alien origin. Still reeling from the news, Logan gets a phone call from his brother-in-law.

The Bourne Identity meets Divergent in this action-packed debut thriller with a Katniss-esque heroine fighting to regain her memories and stay alive, set against a dystopian hospital background.

Sarah starts a crazy battle for her life within the walls of her hospital-turned-prison when a procedure to eliminate her memory goes awry and she starts to remember snatches of her past. Was she an urban terrorist or vigilante? Has the procedure been her salvation or her destruction?

The answers lie trapped within her mind. To access them, she'll need the help of the teen computer hacker who's trying to bring the hospital down for his own reasons, and a pill that's blocked by an army of mercenary soldiers poised to eliminate her for good. If only she knew why…

"This is a snap-the-whip story, dark and fast. The sparks of humor in the voice won me over. Bottom line: I think the cocktail of suspense and believable smart-assery adds up to an addictive dose of reader appeal." —Blythe Woolston, author of the William C. Morris Award winner The Freak Observer

A small mountain town is isolated by a snowstorm as an ancient evil, gone pandemic, turns the residents into the living dead. Almost overnight the town becomes a snowy tomb of the roaming, hungry infected. Stranded by the weather, hiding, a small group of survivors follows the progress of the disease as society around them and around the world begins to break down. Determined to escape, they find that the normal rules of civilization don't apply anymore. Will they be able to adapt to this strange, hungry new world?

In a world where a virus has spread turning most of the population into flesh-eating monsters, there are two friends partying it up in New Orleans when the infection hits. Far away from home, they are trapped and trying to make sense of all that has happened with the help of new friends and enemies along the way. Zombies aren't the only thing to fear.

Will Kessler works a dead-end warehouse job in Tennessee, driving a forklift and unloading shipping containers. When he wakes up from a nap during his lunch break, he finds most of his co-workers have mutated into monsters, and they have turned the 50,000 square foot building into a war zone, murdering any other survivors. Alone and weaponless, Will must fight through the undead horde to secure the building and answer one question: Is he truly alone?

A deadly virus has been unleashed. A virus so vicious that it reduces the infected to a terrifying version of themselves that could lead to the end of our race as we know it. Elaina has been identified as the point of transmission and the reason for the chaos and havoc. She created the virus and let it out. Now, more than just the infected would like to see her head served up on a platter.

The world has fallen to a relentless enemy beyond reason or mercy. With no remorse they rend the planet with tooth and nail. One man stands against the scourge of death that consumes all. Teamed with a genius survivalist and a teenage girl, he must flee the teeming dead, the evils of humans left unchecked, and those that would seek to use him. His best weapon to stave off the horrors of this new world? His wit.