The world outside has grown toxic, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. The remnants of humanity live underground in a single silo. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they want: They are allowed to go outside.

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to Earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers - men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of 2021, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.

In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in 13 relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including “In The Tall Grass”, one of two stories cowritten with Stephen King, basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists beyond the airport.

Rice Moore is just beginning to think his troubles are behind him. He’s found a job protecting a remote forest preserve in Virginian Appalachia where his main responsibilities include tracking wildlife and refurbishing cabins. It’s hard work, and totally solitary - perfect to hide away from the Mexican drug cartels he betrayed back in Arizona. But when Rice finds the carcass of a bear killed on the grounds, the quiet solitude he’s so desperately sought is suddenly at risk.

In the not-too-distant future, during an unacknowledged mission inside the Syrian border, a government operative unwittingly triggers an incredible event that alters the course of society. A terrible weapon has been unleashed - a weapon that, left to run its course, will destroy the moral fabric of humanity.

In the shadow of Mount Hood, 16-year-old Tennant is checking rabbit traps with her eight-year-old sister Sophie when the girls are suddenly overcome by a strange vibration rising out of the forest, building in intensity until it sounds like a deafening crescendo of screams. From out of nowhere, their father sweeps them up and drops them through a trapdoor into a storm cellar. But the sound only gets worse....

Alec works in the Detroit Overseer-factories, building a mysterious alien device. When three strangers appear, he's provided an opportunity to escape after years of servitude. Cole, a Freeborn loner, encounters Lina after her village is destroyed by the alien Occupation. Together, they make the arduous journey to a fabled safe-zone, trying to stay one step ahead of the enemy drones on their trail. Dex is a Hunter, working for the Occupation to track down escaped factory slaves, or Roamers, at all costs. But his latest hunt uncovers a massive secret.

It starts with the dogs. They won’t stop barking. And then the earth shrugs - 8.9 on the Richter scale. It’s the world’s biggest earthquake since Lisbon in 1755, and it doesn’t hit California or Japan or Mexico, but New Madrid, Missouri, a sleepy town on the Mississippi River. Seismologists had predicted the scope of the disaster - but no one listened. For hundreds of miles around, dams burst, engulfing entire counties in tidal waves of mud and debris. Within minutes, there is nothing but chaos and ruin from St. Louis to Vicksburg, from Kansas City to Louisville.

The Alt Apocalypse is the ground-breaking, genre-bending series from Tom Abrahams. It explores survival under the most extreme circumstances, but with a twist (and no cliff-hangers). This series, which can be listened to in any order, features the same core characters in each complete story. But every book dunks them into a new, alternate apocalypse; a nuclear holocaust, an earthquake, a flood, a wildfire, a hurricane, a plague, and even zombies.

Dale Hanson takes us from a northern Minnesota boyhood to the incredible stresses of US special operations during the Vietnam War, the deadly world of MAC-V-SOG, the top-secret Special Forces project that conducted America’s secret war against the Communist forces on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Shrouded in mystery and equipped with exotic weaponry, SOG operators suffered casualty rates in excess of 100 percent for three successive years.

New York City has fallen to the zombie horde. The greatest city on Earth, once home to millions of Americans, is now firmly in the grasp of the dead. First Sergeant David Gartrell is cut off and alone in the city, miles away from the nearest military units which might be able to assist. Together with a frightened woman and her young son, Gartrell sets out to accomplish his final objective: Find a way to leave the city of the gathering dead, or perish at the hands - and teeth! - of the ravenous horde.

Daniel Clay fought across the galaxy as a corporate soldier. He left the violence behind for a life of science, raising a family far from the bloodshed of the Corporation. With his wife, Sarah, and son, Michael, he studied the alien Tyr for years, hidden among their complex societies. Their mission should have ended with the arrival of a replacement team. Instead, the Clays’ corporate overlords choose a death sentence: an invasion fleet to conquer the Tyr.

As a Soviet-style collapse unfolds in America, Grayson, equal parts philosopher and warrior but legitimately neither, makes a death-bed promise to watch over a couple with a child on the way. Driven by his own severe loss, he must make good on his promise and carry the psychic consequences as he races headlong into the fallout of our imploding civilization.

For Meredith Gale, ending her life seems like her only choice, and that choice is the reason she’s dangling by her fingertips from a bridge high above the freezing water of the San Francisco Bay. But someone or some thing has other plans for Meredith, and as her fingers slip from the cold steel of the bridge, a disembodied voice asks her a simple question: “Candidate 13: Do you wish to be saved?” Realizing her mistake too late, Meredith screams “Yes!” and instantly finds herself transported to a mysterious island, alongside hundreds of other Candidates like her.

Cloaked by the mists of dawn, Task Force 61 - carrying tanks, aircraft, and over 5000 Marines - steams toward Syria with deadly intent. Their mission: rescue 100 hostages from a terrorist stronghold - alive. With realism seldom seen in military fiction, The Med is a magnificent and timely epic that brings the human drama of armed conflict compellingly to life.

A survivor of undead suburbia, mountain man Augustus “Gus” Berry is extremely careful when it comes to his actions and movements. He takes no chances and painstakingly weighs every decision—until he sets out for the hospital at the edge of town, hoping to discover a treasure trove of essential supplies. Soon, Gus will experience terror the likes of which he's never encountered before . . .

Louisiana, 2065. A lot has changed in the 43rd year of the Kurian Order. Possessed of an unnatural and legendary hunger, the bloodthirsty Reapers have come to Earth to establish a New Order built on the harvesting of enslaved human souls. They rule the planet. They thrive on the scent of fear. And if it is night, as sure as darkness, they will come.

On this pitiless world, the indomitable spirit of mankind still breathes in Lieutenant David Valentine.

Best-selling science fiction superstars Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle combine their talents with those of Steven Barnes in an extraordinary adventure of humankind’s first outpost in the farthest reaches of space. Light years from Earth, colonists land on a planet they name Avalon. It seems like a paradise—until native creatures savagely attack. It will take every bit of intelligence, courage, and military-style discipline to survive.

After his mission is suddenly terminated in Washington, D.C., British Intelligence agent Nick Stone decides to visit an old colleague, Kev Brown. But when Stone arrives at his friend's eerily quiet suburban home, he discovers a chilling scene of carnage. Every member of the Brown family has been brutally slaughtered except one: seven-year-old Kelly Brown. His instincts on red alert and adrenaline in overdrive, Stone grabs the girl and runs - with anonymous assassins in hot pursuit.

While studying wolverines on a wildlife sanctuary in Montana, biologist Alex Carter is run off the road and threatened by locals determined to force her off the land. Undeterred in her mission to help save this threatened species, Alex tracks wolverines on foot and by cameras positioned in remote regions of the preserve. But when she reviews the photos, she discovers disturbing images of an animal of a different kind: a severely injured man seemingly lost and wandering in the wilds.

In the not-too-distant future, during an unacknowledged mission inside the Syrian border, a government operative unwittingly triggers an incredible event that alters the course of society. A terrible weapon has been unleashed - a weapon that, left to run its course, will destroy the moral fabric of humanity.

The machines brought society to its knees. Now, the last remaining humans fight for survival - and to take back what's theirs. Junior, a robotics expert, tinkers quietly underground. With dozens of machine kills under his belt, he knows the enemy inside and out. Alpha0verride, a reclusive black hat hacker, uses the skills acquired over a life of shady activity to outwit the hyper-intelligent machines swarming in on her. Brick, a special forces operator and one of the few Pentagon survivors, fights his inner demons to embark on the most important mission of his life.

A breakthrough research project has detected an active gene present in all known psychopaths and developed a vaccine to make it completely dormant. Society has rejoiced the extinction of the sociopathic mind. There hasn’t been a serial killing in America in over 40 years. Sheriff MacArthur Gray resides in the future but lives in the past. His world views have chased him from a large metropolis to his home town, but there is no sanctuary to be found after he arrives. Because people are dying and only he can see the truth. A psychopath has somehow survived and is thriving.

Colin Laney is here looking for work. He is an intuitive fisher for patterns of information. But Laney knows how to sift for the dangerous bits. Which makes him useful - to certain people. Chia McKenzie is here on a rescue mission. Her idol is the singer Rez, of the band Lo,Rez. When the Seattle chapter of the Lo,Rez fan club decided that he might be in trouble in Tokyo, they sent Chia to check it out. Rei Toei is the idoru - the beautiful, entirely virtual media star adored by all Japan. Rez has declared that he will marry her. This is the rumor that has brought Chia to Tokyo.

Eric Steele is the best of the best - an Alpha - an elite clandestine operative assigned to a US intelligence unit known simply as the "Program". A superbly trained Special Forces soldier who served several tours fighting radical Islamic militants in Afghanistan, Steele now operates under the radar, using a deadly combination of espionage and brute strength to root out his enemies and neutralize them.

This set includes Crash Dive, What Comes Around, and White Death, three Alex Hawke novellas never available before on audio. In Crash Dive, Alex Hawke is on a highly covert mission to enter another nation’s airspace undetected and find a way to avert a global war. In What Comes Around, two CIA officers are found dead. Hawke discovers that the victims are connected through one man: Spider Payne, a rogue intelligence officer. In White Death, M16 suspects a bizarre conspiracy when two bankers are found dead, and vast sums are plundered from the Queen of England’s accounts.

What if the end times allowed people to see and build the world anew? This is the landscape that Kimi Eisele creates in her surprising and original debut novel. Evoking the spirit of such monumental love stories as Cold Mountain and the creative vision of novels like Station Eleven, The Lightest Object in the Universe tells the story of what happens after the global economy collapses and the electrical grid goes down.

Retired Army Ranger John Holliday has reluctantly settled into his teaching position at West Point, when young Israeli archaeologist Rafi Wanounou comes to him with desperate news. Holliday's niece - and Rafi's fiance - Peggy has been kidnapped while photographing the excavation of an ancient tomb in Egypt. Her captors are known as the Brotherhood of the Temple of Isis - murderous fanatics who worship a dead god. Holliday sets out with Rafi to find the only family he has left.