It’s the End of the World
Apocalyptic horror fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Here are just a few . . .
(This list is alphabetical by title.)
 Black Dawn  |
Black DawnAuthor: Stern, D. A. |
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A chillingly dark and epic tale of good and evil in the tradition of Stephen King’s The Stand. |
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 Blood Crazy  |
Blood CrazyAuthor: Clark, Simon |
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Saturday is a normal day. People go shopping. To the movies. Everything is just as it should be. But not for long. By Sunday, civilization is in ruins. Adults have become murderously insane. One by one they become infected with a crazed, uncontrollable urge to slaughter the young — even their own children. Especially their own children. Will this be the way the world ends, in waves of madness and carnage? What will be left of our world as we know it? And who, if anyone, will survive? Terror follows terror in this apocalyptic nightmare vision by one of the most powerful talents in modern horror fiction. Prepare yourself for mankind’s final days of fear. |
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 Bone Music  |
Bone MusicAuthor: Rodgers, Alan |
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Nominated for the 2003 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel A little over sixty years ago, Robert Johnson died of poison in a little town up off the bluff in Arkansas. In an hour, a little girl named Lisa will die of cancer. Such different deaths — but linked, horribly and inevitably, by the crime Robert Johnson committed in the hour that he died. That Crime was Judgment Day: Robert Johnson sang Judgment Day, the song to end the world, as he lay dying in that shack up off the Mississippi River bluff — and nothing anywhere in the world has been right since. |
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 The Conqueror Worms  |
The Conqueror WormsAuthor: Keene, Brian |
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From the Editors of Barnes and Noble: The Bible verse Job 14:19 — “. . . the things which grow out of the dust of the earth and destroyest the hope of mankind” — is a fitting theme for The Conqueror Worms. After most of the world’s landmass is covered by floodwaters, previously unseen subterranean creatures (enormous squid, giant worms, etc.) rise up to wreak havoc on civilization and feast on succulent human flesh. As the land is slowly taken back by ever-increasing water levels, the last remnants of humankind — like nicotine-addicted WWII veteran Teddy Garnett, Baltimore video store clerk Kevin Jensen, and crazed West Virginia redneck Earl Harper — must find a way to survive the mounting pitfalls: starvation, sickness, insanity, nomadic gangs of killers, and a strange mold (called the White Fuzz) that is steadily covering every living thing. Incredibly fast paced, emotionally charged, and gruesomely entertaining — who doesn’t love giant, slime-covered worms trashing cities? — The Conqueror Worms can be faulted only for not fully exploring the cause of the 40-day rainstorm. Was it the greenhouse effect, some secret government weather project gone horribly wrong, black magic, divine retribution? Regardless, fans of postapocalyptic thrillers will enjoy this one — gloriously horrific! |
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 The Day of the Triffids  |
The Day of the TriffidsAuthor: Wyndham, John |
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Bill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere twenty-four hours before is gone forever. But to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the Triffids, strange plants that years before began appearing all over the world. The Triffids can grow to over seven feet tall, pull their roots from the ground to walk, and kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers. With society in shambles, they are now posed to prey on humankind. Wyndham chillingly anticipates bio-warfare and mass destruction, fifty years before their realization, in this prescient account of Cold War paranoia. |
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 Dead Heat  |
Dead HeatAuthor: Stone jr., Del |
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Nominated for the 1996 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel Winner of the 1996 IHG Award winner Recognizing Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel. From the Editors of Amazon.com: Imagine the American Southwest in the aftermath of biological apocalypse. The dead have arisen, ravenous for flesh, and the landscape is so blasted and fierce that only a few pockets of human survivors remain. A loner named Hitch rides a Harley and swings a meat hook on a chain. He is a zombie, but he can think. And he can order other zombies to do his bidding. Dead Heat packs a unique hero, over-the-top action, wicked humor, and cosmic science-fiction horror into a killer combination that won the 1996 International Horror Critics Guild Award for best first novel. Not only is Dead Heat probably the best zombie-biker novel ever written, it’s better than you’d think a zombie-biker novel could be. |
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 Demons  |
DemonsAuthor: Shirley, John |
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From the Editors of Amazon.com: Themes of wakefulness and sleep — the struggle for self-awareness against the deliberate denial of what’s happening around us — form the counterpoint for the terrifying and often brutal events of the story. This is a fast-paced, finely told horror tale combined with a pointed examination of the ways in which people so often conspire in their own destruction. |
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 From Inside  |
From InsideAuthor: Bergin, John |
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An apocalyptic tale of a young pregnant woman who wakes up in a world of nightmares within nightmares. She finds herself on a long train that is slowly transcribing its way across landscapes of desolation and despair. Rivers of blood, collapsed structures, mountains of snow, and a plague of death threaten the train’s passengers. The young woman contends with these and various internal struggles such as hunger, the memories of her lost husband, and her biggest internal “threat,” the imminent birth of her baby. The complexities of her deep personal dilemma (is there anything left of the world for her baby to be born into?) and the dark surrealism of her world force her to make significant discoveries and decisions concerning her life and the life of her unborn child. |
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 Hell on Earth  |
Hell on EarthAuthor: Reaves, Michael |
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From the Editors of Barnes and Noble: |
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 The Nature of Balance  |
The Nature of BalanceAuthor: Lebbon, Tim |
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One morning the world does not wake up. Millions lie dead in their beds, victims of their own dreams of falling. There are survivors . . . but the world they emerge into is changing rapidly. Humanity is no longer the dominant species. Now, Nature has the upper hand. |
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 The Revelation 
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The RevelationAuthor: Little, Bentley |
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Winner of the 1990 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel Strange things are happening in the small town of Randall, Arizona. And as darkness falls, an itinerant preacher has arrived to spread a gospel of cataclysmic fury . . . And stranger things are yet to come. . . . |
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 Sacrifice of the Soul  |
Sacrifice of the Soul (Curse of the Spawn #1)Author: McElroy, Alan |
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Ohio Connection: Alan McElroy was born and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio In a futuristic world in the throes of apocalypse, a world without hope, the soulless Anti-Pope aligns with other minions of evil as they stand at the threshold of victory. The curse of the Spawn has touched another soul and a new soldier from Hell is chosen. Fueled by rage, ravaged by guilt, hate and merciless inner demons, Daniel Llanso stands alone against the dark and indomitable forces. As they wage a horrific battle in a dread-fueled world overrun by the Powers of Darkness, scores of scarred refugees search for fragments of faith and hope. Witness the horrors that Daniel Llanso’s death sets in motion for his survivors. Will the Spawn he was reborn to be succumb to his role as Hell’s general and rule accordingly? Or will he fight to undo his past for the future of his family in this perilous, apocalyptic world? |
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 Species  |
Species (Chronicles of the Apocalypse #1)Author: McBride, Michael |
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The end came on a Friday night. In its final hour, humanity had no chance to raise an angry fist to the sky and rage against its fate. The human species perished with all of the fanfare and hurrah of unwitting cattle led to slaughter. Yet few died quickly and painlessly. Tortured, anguished looks were affixed to the faces of the dead which littered the streets like autumn leaves — features stained with coagulated blood and claw marks drawn in bleeding lacerations across their throats. Their vacant eyes searched the heavens for help, for answers, for salvation, only to find they were alone. Those who survived were the chosen, the damned: saved by their genetics. It was a random mutation that would have killed them had life been permitted to continue unimpeded, and it was that same malady that enabled seven strangers to survive them. The survivors thought they had been saved. They thought it was over. And then they reanimated the dead . . . |
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 The Stand  |
The Stand: Complete and UncutAuthor: King, Stephen |
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From the Editors of Barnes and Noble: And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides — or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail — and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man. |
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 Stranger  |
StrangerAuthor: Clark, Simon |
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The town of Sullivan is protected by a world destroying plague by its isolation on a peninsula and the instinctive ability of Greg Valdiva to detect any new comer who has the plague even if the symptoms aren’t apparent. However, when he and his friend Ben are forced to flee Sullivan, they begin an odyssey that slowly reveals the horrific truth about the plague, the mindless humans called hornets and possibly about Greg himself. |
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 Swan Song  |
Swan SongAuthor: McCammon, Robert R. |
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Winner of the 1987 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel (tie) This book was featured in an essay in Horror: 100 Best Books. An ancient evil roams the desolate landscape of an America ravaged by nuclear war. He is the Man with the Scarlet Eye, a malevolent force that feeds on the dark desires of the countless followers he has gathered into his service. His only desire is to find a special child named Swan — and destroy her. But those who would protect the girl are determined to fight for what is left of the world — and their souls. In a wasteland born of rage, populated by monstrous creatures and marauding armies, the last survivors on earth have been drawn into the final battle between good and evil that will decide the fate of humanity. . . . |
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Summary:
Title List:
1. Black Dawn by D. A. Stern
2. Blood Crazy by Simon Clark
3. Bone Music by Alan Rodgers
4. The Conqueror Worms by Brian Keene
5. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
6. Dead Heat by Del Stone
7. Demons by John Shirley
8. From Inside by John Bergin
9. Hell on Earth by Michael Reaves
10. The Nature of Balance by Tim Lebbon
11. The Revelation by Bentley Little
12. Sacrifice of the Soul by Alan McElroy
13. Species by Michael McBride
14. The Stand: Complete and Uncut by Stephen King
15. Stranger by Simon Clark
16. Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
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