"Year of the Dead" by Jack J. Lee

3.71  ·   rating details  ·  232 ratings  ·  39 reviews
An advanced alien civilization sends out probes to study and preserve different planetary cultures and biospheres. A probe evaluates Earth and determines that humanity is headed toward extinction due to self-inflicted environmental degradation. In order to make Earth sustainable and to save humanity, the probe decides that Earth’s population must be radically reduced.

The probe is programmed with prime directives that force it to make all interventions culturally appropriate. Since pop culture is full of movies describing the end of the world by zombies and vampires, the probe manufactures viruses that create an outbreak of these creatures. Ninety-eight percent of humanity is wiped out by culturally-sensitive environmentalist aliens who are here to save us.

This is a story of people living in Salt Lake City, Utah when the alien probe destroys the world. The unlucky, slow, and foolish die quickly. This isn’t a typical zombie apocalypse story about a bunch of victims wandering the world slowly getting picked off one-by-one. This novel is about people, who refuse to be victims. They understand that the only way to survive is to band together and to control their environment. The aliens, zombies, and vampires need to be taught that on Earth the top predator will always be human. (less)
Kindle Edition, 210 pages

"Year of The Griffin" by Diana Wynne Jones

4.09  ·   rating details  ·  5,615 ratings  ·  158 reviews
It is eight years after the tours from offworld have stopped. High Chancellor Querida has retired, leaving Wizard Corkoran in charge of the Wizards' University. Although Wizard Corkoran's obsession is to be the first man on the moon, and most of his time is devoted to this project, he decides he will teach the new first years himself in hopes of currying the favor of the new students' families—for surely they must all come from wealth, important families—and obtaining money for the University (which it so desperately needs). But Wizard Corkoran is dismayed to discover that one of those students—indeed, one he had such high hopes for, Wizard Derk's own daughter Elda—is a hugh golden griffin, and that none of the others has any money at all.

Wizard Corkoran's money-making scheme backfires, and when Elda and her new friends start working magic on their own, the schemes go wronger still. And when, at length, Elda ropes in her brothers Kit and Blade to send Corkoran to the moon . . . well . . . life at the Wizards' University spins magically and magnificently out of control.

This breathtakingly brilliant sequel to Dark Lord of Derkholm is all one would expect from this master of genre. (less)
Kindle Edition, 404 pages

"Year of Wonders" by Geraldine Brooks

"Year Zero" by Jeff Long

"The Years of Rice and Salt" by Kim Stanley Robinson

"You Will Call Me Drog" by Sue Dowing

"The Dead" by Charlie Higson

4.30  ·   rating details  ·  5,474 ratings  ·  513 reviews
THE DEAD begins one year "before" the action in THE ENEMY, just after the Disaster. A terrible disease has struck everyone sixteen and over, leaving them either dead or a decomposing, flesh-eating creature. The action starts in a boarding school just outside London, where all the teachers have turned into sickos. A few kids survive and travel by bus into the city. The bus driver, an adult named Greg, seems to be unaffected by the disease. Then he begins to show the dreaded signs: outer blisters and inner madness. The kids escape Greg and end up at the Imperial War Museum. A huge fire in South London drives them all to the Thames, and eventually over the river to the Tower of London. It is there they will meet up with the kids in THE ENEMY in Book 3, THE FEAR.
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Paperback, 449 pages

"Ysabel" by Guy Gabriel Kay

"Z2134" by Sean Platter & David Wright

3.41  ·   rating details  ·  911 ratings  ·  126 reviews
One hundred years after the zombie apocalypse, those lucky enough to survive now exist in scattered cities, under the merciless rule of the City Watch. A simple tenet overshadows all aspects of daily life: obey or die. When Jonah Lovecraft is framed for murder, his status as a Watcher doesn't spare him from the ultimate punishment: being cast into the Barrens and forced to battle zombies and other criminal contestants in the Darwin Games.

As he fights for every heartbeat, his daughter, Ana, embarks on her own desperate quest to uncover the truth about her father. Yet neither expects their efforts to reveal grim secrets that could tear apart the fabric of society - if either lives long enough to expose the truth.

"Z For Zachariah" by Robert C. O'Brien

"Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers

4.09  ·   rating details  ·  46,300 ratings  ·  6,132 reviews
When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four, chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the days after the storm, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. A week later, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared. Eggers’s riveting nonfiction book, three years in the making, explores Zeitoun’s roots in Syria, his marriage to Kathy — an American who converted to Islam — and their children, and the surreal atmosphere (in New Orleans and the United States generally) in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun was possible. Like What Is the What, Zeitoun was written in close collaboration with its subjects and involved vast research — in this case, in the United States, Spain, and Syria. (less)
Hardcover, 342 pages

"Zero Echo Shadow Prime" by Peter Samet

4.61
CONSCIOUSNESS IS IN THE CODE.

The year is 2045. 18-year-old Charlie Nobunaga creates the world’s first sentient A.I. and becomes an overnight sensation. But amid the red carpet galas and TV interviews, Charlie is diagnosed with cancer, and her promising future grinds to a halt.

Enter Jude Adler, a tech mogul with dreams of changing history. She presents Charlie with an opportunity that’s at once insane and irresistible: a second chance at life inside a new robotic body. But as Charlie soon discovers, Jude’s motivations are far from pure.

Charlie’s brain is scanned, and four distinct copies of her emerge: PRIME, a robot with superhuman strength and the ability to freeze time; SHADOW, a holographic assistant, trapped inside the mind of a desperate widower; ECHO, a mysterious, four-armed woman with an insatiable desire to kill; and ZERO, the original human, who's coerced to betray her “sisters” by a Luddite terrorist organization.

ZERO, ECHO, SHADOW, and PRIME wake up under different forms of imprisonment—scared and confused—where they must each face a unique trial. But their stories soon intersect in surprising ways as they retaliate against the people determined to destroy them.

Suspenseful and cerebral in equal measure, ZERO ECHO SHADOW PRIME is a kinetic thriller that finds the magic in technology and the wonder in human consciousness. (less)
Paperback, 410 pages

"Zom-B" by Darren Shan

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Zom-B (Zom-B #1)
by Darren Shan (Goodreads Author)
3.6 of 5 stars 3.60  ·   rating details  ·  3,611 ratings  ·  612 reviews
Zom-B is a radical new series about a zombie apocalypse, told in the first person by one of its victims. The series combines classic Shan action with a fiendishly twisting plot and hard-hitting and thought-provoking moral questions dealing with racism, abuse of power and more. This is challenging material, which will captivate existing Shan fans and bring in many new ones. As Darren says, "It's a big, sprawling, vicious tale...a grisly piece of escapism, and a barbed look at the world in which we live. Each book in the series is short, fast-paced and bloody. A high body-count is guaranteed!" (less)
Hardcover, 217 pages

"Zombie Games Origins" by Kristen Middleton

3.81 of 5 stars 3.81  ·   rating details  ·  1,086 ratings  ·  126 reviews
Seventeen year old Cassandra Wild thought living in the chaos of her mother’s home daycare and dealing with her developing feelings for Bryce, her new Martial Arts’ instructor, was a struggle, until the night her world turned upside down.

When an untested vaccine kills more than just a rampant flu virus, Cassie learns how to survive in a world where the dead walk, and the living…run! (less)
Paperback, 1st edition, 238 pages

"The Zombie Outbreak" by Daniel White

3.5 of 5 stars 3.50  ·   rating details  ·  26 ratings  ·  4 reviews
Terror strikes a government building when it suddenly becomes the target of an unthinkable attack. Zombies attack seemingly out of nowhere and the witnesses are ordered to leave at gunpoint. When Eric Bayne does as ordered, only to find that the zombie attack wasn’t a onetime occurrence, he is forced to face a terrible truth. The zombie apocalypse has truly come to pass.

Knowing that life will never be normal again, everyone has to make the choice to survive or give up.

Eric Bayne chooses to fight and survive at all costs. His journey to battle the odds takes him down a darker road than he ever imagined. Can he fight the inevitable and win or will he end up just another mindless creature? (less)
Kindle Edition, 44 pages

"Zombies vs. Unicorns" by Holly Black & Justine Larbalestier

It's a question as old as time itself: which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? In this anthology, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (unicorn and zombie, respectively), strong arguments are made for both sides in the form of short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths--for good and evil--of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies. Contributors include many bestselling teen authors, including Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, and Margo Lanagan. This anthology will have everyone asking: Team Zombie or Team Unicorn? (less)
Hardcover, 432 pages

"Zone One" by Colson Whitehead

In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead.

Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization under orders from the provisional govern­ment based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street—aka Zone One—but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety—the “malfunctioning” stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives.

Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams work­ing in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz’s desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present narrative, the novel unfolds over three surreal days, as it depicts the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible job of coming to grips with the fallen world.

And then things start to go wrong.

Both spine chilling and playfully cerebral, Zone One bril­liantly subverts the genre’s conventions and deconstructs the zombie myth for the twenty-first century. (less)
Hardcover, 259 pages

"Zorro" by Isabel Allende

A swashbuckling adventure story that reveals for the first time how Diego de la Vega became the masked man we all know so well. Born in southern California late in the eighteenth century, Diego de la Vega is a child of two worlds. His father is an aristocratic Spanish military man turned landowner; his mother, a Shoshone warrior. At the age of sixteen, Diego is sent to Spain, a country chafing under the corruption of Napoleonic rule. He soon joins La Justicia, a secret underground resistance movement devoted to helping the powerless and the poor. Between the New World and the Old, the persona of Zorro is formed, a great hero is born, and the legend begins. After many adventures -- duels at dawn, fierce battles with pirates at sea, and impossible rescues -- Diego de la Vega, a.k.a. Zorro, returns to America to reclaim the hacienda on which he was raised and to seek justice for all who cannot fight for it themselves. (less)

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Kindle edition

"Babylon Rising" by Tim Lahaye

Babylon Rising introduces a terrific new hero for our time. Michael Murphy is a scholar of Biblical prophecy, but not the sedate and tweedy kind. Murphy is a field archaeologist who defies danger to fearlessly hunt down and authenticate ancient artifacts from Biblical times. His latest discovery is his most amazing—but it will send him hurtling from a life of excavation and revelations to a confrontation with the forces of the greatest evil. For the latest secret uncovered by Michael Murphy accelerates the countdown to the time of the end for all mankind.