Showing results for "Dark" in Dystopian

For a decade, Darrow led a revolution against the corrupt color-coded Society. Now, outlawed by the very Republic he founded, he wages a rogue war on Mercury in hopes that he can still salvage the dream of Eo. Lysander au Lune, the heir in exile, has returned to the Core. Determined to bring peace back to mankind at the edge of his sword, he must overcome or unite the treacherous Gold families of the Core and face down Darrow over the skies of war-torn Mercury. But theirs are not the only fates hanging in the balance.

When an EMP wipes out power across the nation, the world descends into darkness. In a city teetering on the edge of collapse, Dr. Annabelle Wheeler struggles to survive in a psychiatric hospital overrun by its violent inmates.

Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now known as Texoma. A world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, especially by a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose. Battered by a run across the border to Mexico Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards to be their local guide and gunnie. For the wizards, Gunnie Rose has already acquired a fearsome reputation and they’re at a desperate crossroad, even if they won’t admit it.

Dr Cliff Miyashiro arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue his recently deceased daughter’s research, only to discover a virus, newly unearthed from melting permafrost. The plague unleashed reshapes life on earth for generations. Yet even while struggling to counter this destructive force, humanity stubbornly persists in myriad moving and ever inventive ways. From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead, this story follows a cast of intricately linked characters spanning hundreds of years as humanity endeavours to restore the delicate balance of the world.

Vitus Adamson is falling apart. As a pre-deceased private investigator, he takes the prescription Atroxipine hourly to keep his undead body upright and functioning. Whenever he is injured, he seeks Niko, a bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes and a way with corpses, to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients posing his most dangerous job yet appear at his door looking for their lost son.

Once, Xhea's wants were simple: enough to eat, safety in the underground, and the hit of bright payment to transform her gray-cast world into color. But in the aftermath of her rescue of the Radiant ghost Shai, she realizes the life she had known is gone forever. In the two months since her fall from the City, Xhea has hidden in skyscraper Edren, sheltered and attempting to heal. But soon even she must face the troubling truth that she might never walk again.

With the nation torn asunder by war, Ayden and Clara find themselves ensnared in a relentless cycle of adversity as they endeavor to escort their newfound allies to safety in Pennsylvania. The key to their survival lies in their capability to outsmart and outmaneuver unrelenting enemy forces while also forming alliances with unlikely partners as they desperately strive to find a sanctuary. Meanwhile, in the rugged expanses of Wyoming, Ayden’s girlfriend Mia faces her own harrowing trials.

When a powerful EMP blast knocks out power across the country, schoolteacher Molly, former Marine Colton, and the five students they’re supervising on a trip are trapped inside a prison. Surrounded by hardened criminals and with no safe exit, it doesn’t take long for a riot to throw everything into chaos. Meanwhile, Deb, Colton’s ex-wife, is lucky enough to fall in with a group of determined survivors. But her good fortune quickly turns into a nightmare when her people are captured by human traffickers, led by a vicious madman.

When a rich City man comes to her with a young woman's ghost tethered to his chest, Xhea has no idea that this ghost will change everything. The ghost, Shai, is a Radiant, a rare person who generates so much power that the Towers use it to fuel their magic, heedless of the pain such use causes. Shai's home Tower is desperate to get the ghost back and force her into a body, any body, so that it can regain its position, while the Tower's rivals seek the ghost to use her magic for their own ends.

Every weekend, in basements and car parks across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight Club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter and dark, anarchic genius. And it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on the world.

The Earth is dying. Humanity - over-breeding, over-consuming - is destroying the very planet they call home. Multinational corporations despoil the environment, market genetically modified crops to control the food supply, and use their wealth and influence and private armies to crush anything, and anyone, that gets in the way of their profits. Nothing human can stop them. But something unhuman might. Once they did not fear the sun. Once they could breathe the air and sleep where they chose.

29 Brand-New Sci-Fi Horror Stories. The future is now, and it's not what we were promised. The optimistic science fiction of old was wrong. Progress is not linear, technology creates as many problems as it solves, and the concept of a better tomorrow has become an abstraction that is in no way guaranteed. When looking at the future now, we no longer ask what is possible, we wonder how we'll cope. Contained within this anthology are 29 never-before-published works by supremely talented authors.

A reluctant hero. Dick aka Devil Dog's world changes drastically when the EMP takes out the power grid. A homeless Marine veteran living in the abandoned tunnels beneath Chicago, he's far better prepared than most people. Devil Dog becomes the reluctant savior of women and children from the worst of the gangs that now rule topside. Doing the right thing makes him new enemies, driving him ever deeper into the tunnels that keep his charges safe - until he runs across a young woman who might be his daughter.

The thin thread holding the civilized world together has been severed. Millions of citizens have been thrust into the unknown. As society falls into decay, John charges headlong into the escalating chaos to protect the only thing he holds dear: his family.

Angie Redlantern is the first to spot the boats - five abreast, with men in metal masks and spears standing proud. As the people of New Earth declare war on the people of Mainground, a dangerous era has dawned for Eden. After generations of division and disagreement, the two populations of Eden have finally broken their tentative peace, giving way to bloodshed and slaughter. Angie must flee with her family across the pitch black of Snowy Dark to the place where it all started.

Masks, the first novel in a mesmerizing new fantasy series, draws readers into a world in which cataclysmic events have left the Autarchy of Aygrima - the one land blessed with magical resources - cut off from its former trading partners across the waters, not knowing if any of those distant peoples still live. Yet under the rule of the Autarch, Aygrima survives. And thanks to the creation of the Masks and the vigilance of the Autarch’s Watchers, no one can threaten the security of the empire.

Three months after life as she knows it was decimated, Megan Wolford has only one goal: protect her daughter, Caitlin, at any cost. When a mysterious illness strikes Caitlin down, Megan is forced to forage for medical supplies at a remote lodge. The last thing she wants is help from her fellow survivors when so many in her life have let her down - but soon she'll find herself with no other option.

Tierney James lives in an isolated village where girls are banished at 16 to the northern forest to brave the wilderness - and each other - for a year. They must rid themselves of their dangerous magic before returning purified and ready to marry - if they're lucky. It is forbidden to speak of the grace year, but even so every girl knows that the coming year will change them - if they survive it.

In the post-Break world of superpowers, necromancy is the one gift nobody wants. But an invitation to the Free States' Academy of Superheroes means that same gift might be Damian Banach's ticket to a brighter future... if only he can avoid the madness ingrained in his powers. There has never been a Crow Cape, but Damian isn't the sort to give up. He'll take control of his destiny or die trying... and he just might bring the post-Break world to its knees along the way.

Society is broken, lying in the rubble of a global economic crash. Unemployment, suspicion and terrorism are interwoven like threads in a tapestry. On a dark night in Edinburgh, an explosion rocks Jack's world to the core and he is soon enveloped into the shadowy fringes of the law as he seeks to discover the truth behind what happened. Confronting the culture of fear that has evolved in the country fraught with terrorism and rioting, Jack faces the brutality and prejudice of the new United Kingdom.