Tuesday 10: Ten Outstanding Zombie Novels

Hi Guys! It’s a new month. My favorite month. For the next four weeks the Tuesday 10 list is going to celebrate all things horror. Horror movies. Horror novels. All the things that go bump bumpity bump in the night.

This week I’m sharing what I consider to be ten outstanding zombie novels.

Less Than Human by Tim Meyer

Across the East Coast, the dead are rising. Cities are overrun with them, decaying corpses with an insatiable hunger for human meat…
When Ben Ackerman finds himself in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, he can only think about saving his son, Jake. Unfortunately for Ben, Jake lives with his mother, about two-hundred miles away. The morning it all goes down, Ben embarks on a journey to rescue his son from this grave new world. However, there are worse things than zombies patrolling the New Jersey border…

Meet the Barker Brothers. Three fun-loving country boys with a love for guns, fried chicken, and their mother. After running into Ben and his small band of travelers, the Barker Brothers offer their hospitality, a room and food for as long as they need. Only, there’s an undisclosed price to pay, and it might just cost Ben and his friends their lives…

Until the End of the World by Sarah Lyons Fleming

Cassie Forrest isn’t surprised to learn that the day she’s decided to get her life together is also the day the world ends. After all, she’s been on a self-imposed losing streak since her survivalist parents died: she’s stopped painting, broken off her engagement to Adrian and dated a real jerk. Rectifying her mistakes has to wait, however, because Cassie and her friends have just enough time to escape Brooklyn for her parents’ cabin before Bornavirus LX turns them into zombies, too.

This is difficult enough, but Cassie’s tag along ex-boyfriend and her friend’s bratty sister have a knack for making everything, even the apocalypse, more unpleasant. When the two attract a threat as deadly as the undead to their safe haven, Cassie’s forced to see how far she’ll go to protect those she loves. And it’s a lot farther than she’d anticipated. This, coupled with Adrian’s distant voice on Safe Zone Radio and, of course, the living dead, threaten to put Cassie right back into the funk she just dragged herself out of.

Survival’s great and all, especially when you have leather armor, good friends and home-brewed beer, but there’s something Cassie must do besides survive: tell Adrian she still loves him. And to do that, Cassie has to find faith that she’s stronger than she thinks, she’s still a crack shot and true love never dies.

Waking Up Dead by Emma Shortt

You know your life has hit rock bottom when you’re living off cooked rats and showering once every few months—if you’re lucky. But for Jackson Hart things are about to get a whole lot worse. When her best friend, Tye, disappears hunting for food, kick-ass Jackson’s ‘head south to safety’ plan looks like it’s dead before it’s even begun. But then she meets ex-mechanic Luke Granger, who takes her to his bunker, feeds her with non-rat based food, and offers her protection against the zombie hordes—not that she needs it. She knows how to use a machete and isn’t afraid to.

Jackson might have been tempted to stay in the city with her rescuer. Food, shampoo and the possibility of finally getting laid, what more could she ask for? But the flesh eaters are getting smarter and when the bunker is compromised, Jackson and Luke have no choice but to make the journey south.

Luke and Jackson team up to find other humans in a road-trip romance for the ages. Travelling for thousands of miles with zombies shadowing their every move they must utilize every resource at their disposal…and then some. On the way, they discover that even if flesh eating zombies are knocking down their door, there’s always time for sex and maybe even for love.

Mort by Joseph Duncan

A genetically engineered bacteriophage mutates into a worldwide zombie plague, infecting people by the billions. Amid the chaos, weary survivors struggle to find a place of refuge, battling not just the revivified dead but their own demented fellow survivors. Meanwhile, stalking the inheritors of this blighted world is another mysterious group of creatures. Are they forces for good, as their angelic appearances seem to suggest, or just another predator, one that is far more insidious? Rodd Reduxxx is back with a new stand-alone novel, featuring ample doses of twisted humor, funny and unforgettable characters, and extreme horror. With 99% of the population turned into brain-eating zombies, the last warm-blooded human beings have suddenly become the most valuable food commodity on the planet.

Dead Tropics by Sue Edge

In the midst of a catastrophe the world has never seen before, one woman will stop at nothing to protect her family…. When miners release an ancient and deadly virus, Lori, a nurse, finds herself at ground zero of a deadly battle for survival. With time running out, can she find the strength to fight an ever-increasing enemy and save her family?

Double Dead by Chuck Wendig

Coburn’s been dead now for close to a century, but seeing as how he’s a vampire and all, it doesn’t much bother him. Or at least it didn’t, not until he awoke from a forced five-year slumber to discover that most of human civilization was now dead-but not dead like him, oh no.

See, Coburn likes blood. The rest of the walking dead, they like brains. He’s smart. Them, not so much. But they outnumber him by about a million to one. And the clotted blood of the walking dead cannot sustain him. Now he’s starving. And nocturnal. And more pissed-off than a bee-stung rattlesnake. The vampire not only has to find human survivors (with their sweet, sweet blood), but now he has to transition from predator to protector-after all, a man has to look after his food supply.

Rise Again by Ben Tripp

Forest Peak, California. Fourth of July. Sheriff Danielle Adelman, a troubled war veteran, thinks she has all the problems she can handle in this all-American town after her kid sister runs away from home. But when a disease-stricken horde of panicked refugees fleeing the fall of Los Angeles swarms her small mountain community, Danny realizes her problems have only just begun—starting with what might very well be the end of the world. Danny thought she had seen humanity at its worst in war-torn Iraq, but nothing could prepare her for the remorseless struggle to survive in a dying world being overrun by the reanimated dead and men turned monster. Obsessed with finding her missing sister against all odds, Danny’s epic and dangerous journey across the California desert will challenge her spirit . . . and bring her to the precipice of sanity itself. . . .

Day by Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne

START INTERCEPT_ Sporadic news reports indicate chaos and violence spreading through U.S. cities. An unknown evil is sweeping the planet. The dead are rising to claim the Earth as the new dominant species in the food chain. _INTERCEPT COMPLETE

Survivor, In your hands is the handwritten journal depicting one man’s struggle for survival. Trapped in the midst of global disaster, he must make decisions; choices that ultimately mean life, or the eternal curse to walk as one of them. Enter if you will into his world. -The world of the undead.

Lakewood Memorial by Robert R. Best

The small town of Lakewood has been overrun by the walking dead. In a single night, the world has descended into a madness of biting teeth and a sickness that kills but does not kill.
Caught at the center of it is Angie Land, young single mother and nurse’s aide at Lakewood Memorial Hospital. She and a handful
of others are lucky enough to survive the initial assault, but how long will they last?

And more importantly to Angie, how long will her kids – waiting at home – survive?

Plague Zone by David Wellington

Welcome to the Plague Zone…

PLAGUE ZONE is a serial novel by David Wellington. It was originally published online, starting with chapter one on April 23rd, 2007, also known as International Pixel-Stained Techno-Peasant Day (and the author’s birthday, for that matter). For five months chapters were posted every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

The book is now complete, and can be read in its entirety at this site. To get started, please go to Chapter One, and meet Tim Kempfer, the toughest librarian in post-apocalypse Seattle.