Best Apocolyptic Zombie Fiction
Explore the best apocalyptic zombie fiction books! Dive into thrilling tales of survival, horror, and undead mayhem with our top picks for zombie apocalypse fans.
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The Zombie Survival Guide
by Max Brooks
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now. Fully illustrated and exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain. Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack 1. Organize before they rise! 2. They feel no fear, why should you? 3. Use your head: cut off theirs. 4. Blades donât need reloading. 5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair. 6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it. 7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike. 8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert! 9. No place is safe, only safer. 10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on. Donât be carefree and foolish with your most precious assetâlife. This book is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now without your even knowing it. The Zombie Survival Guide offers complete protection through trusted, proven tips for safeguarding yourself and your loved ones against the living dead. It is a book that can save your life.
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World War Z
by Max Brooks
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠âPrepare to be entranced by this addictively readable oral history of the great war between humans and zombies.ââEntertainment Weekly We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by that terrible time? We have (temporarily?) defeated the living dead, but at what cost? Told in the haunting and riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z is the only record of the pandemic. The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years. THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE âWill spook you for real.ââThe New York Times Book Review âPossesses more creativity and zip than entire crates of other new fiction titles. Think Mad Max meets The Hot Zone. . . . Itâs Apocalypse Now, pandemic-style. Creepy but fascinating.ââUSA Today âWill grab you as tightly as a dead manâs fist. A.ââEntertainment Weekly, EW Pick âProbably the most topical and literate scare since Orson Wellesâs War of the Worlds radio broadcast . . . This is action-packed social-political satire with a global view.ââDallas Morning News
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City of the Dead
by Brian Keene
Demon-possessed zombies besiege a small group of survivors in a Manhattan skyscraper.
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Monster Nation
by David Wellington
In the heart of America, in the world's most secure prison, something horrible is growing in the dark. A wave of cannibalism and fear is sweeping across the heartland, spreading carnage and infection in its wake. Captain Bannerman Clark of the National Guard has been tasked with an impossible mission: discover what is happening â and then stop it before it annihilates Los Angeles. In California, he discovers a woman trapped in a hospital overrun with violent madmen. She may hold the secret to the Epidemic but she has lost everything â even her name. David Wellington's first novel, Monster Island, explored a world overcome by horror and the few people strong enough to survive. Now he takes us back in time to where it all began â to the day the dead began to rise.
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Monster Island
by David Wellington
It's one month after a global disaster. Manhattan has become Monster Island after a plague has turned all its denizens into shambling, rotting animated corpses, except for a couple who have kept their intelligence and also acquired psychic powers. When a
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Monster Planet
by David Wellington
Set twelve years after the shambling zombie masses have overrun Manhattan, America, and the world, Monster Planet is the mind-blowing conclusion to what must be the scariest trilogy ever. Oceans of blood, scattered limbs, wanton violence, and general mayhem abound, along with revivified mummies, a Welsh sorcerer, and Wellington's signature brand of cool high-tech weaponry and sly humor â zombies, after all, are the ultimate consumers. What do the undead want, aside from fresh meat? Do the steadily diminishing number of humans who have somehow managed to survive over a decade of living hell stand a chance on a planet where they've been reduced to the status of prey? It all ends here, on Monster Planet.
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Roses of Blood on Barbwire Vines
by D. L. Snell
Zombies have devoured mankind. And the few survivors would be better off dead because a clan of vampires, bloodthirsty and vicious, have captured the remnants of humanity for livestock. In an apartment building barricaded with wrecked cars, concrete rubble, and snarls of barbwire, the vampires breed lobotomized amputees. Ann, the secret blood slave of the maternity doctor, has evaded this fate, yet her sister Ellie has not. Though she longs to escape, Ann cannot abandon her sibling and unborn niece. But she may have to if she wants to survive. The living dead have found a weak spot in the barricade and are quickly invading the building. Shade, the vampire monarch, defends her kingdom, while Frost, Shade's general, plans to migrate to an island where they can breed and hunt humans. In their path stands a legion of corpses, just now evolving into something far more lethal, something with tentacles--and that's just the beginning.
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The Undead
by D. L. Snell
"The Undead" is a stunning collection of 23 tales of the living dead by zombie fan favorites and up-and-coming authors. "The Undead" includes classic tales of survival in a world populated by the living dead as well as an array of unique takes on the zombie genre: zombies as reality entertainment, glimpses from inside the "life" of the undead, intergalactic war with humanity's own dead turned against us, and everything in between. "The Undead" will leave zombie fans hungry for more!
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Twilight of the Dead
by Travis Adkins
Courtney Colvin was nearing the end of her teenage years when the undead apocalypse began. She survived, forsaking her youth and innocence, and five years later she continues to exist--albeit lonely--in the fortified town of Eastpointe. Nightmares and the unwelcome advances of Leon Wolfe are the worst things she's dealing with now in her otherwise mundane life. But when a newcomer arrives in town and claims to know the location of the antidote to the zombie plague, it sends Eastpointe into an uproar. To retrieve this cure, she and a group of other survivors must venture outside the relative safety of the compound's walls and into a world ruled and dominated by the flesh-eating undead. Twilight of the Dead puts a new spin on the zombie genre, yet remains true to the classic rules that have already been set forth. A sure-fire reading pleasure for anyone who loves character-driven horror. This Special Edition contains an Introduction by David Moody and three bonus short stories detailing important moments in the lives of other survivors.
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Dying to Live
by Kim Paffenroth
Jonah Caine, a lone survivor in a zombie-infested world, struggles to understand the apocalypse in which he lives. Unable to find a moral or sane reason for the horror that surrounds him, he is overwhelmed by violence and insignificance. After wandering for months, Jonah's lonely existence dramatically changes when he discovers a group of survivors. Living in a museum-turned-compound, they are led jointly by Jack, an ever-practical and efficient military man, and Milton, a mysterious, quizzical prophet who holds a strange power over the dead. Both leaders share Jonah's anguish over the brutality of their world, as well as his hope for its beauty. Together with others, they build a community that reestablishes an island of order and humanity surrounded by relentless ghouls. But this newfound peace is short-lived, as Jonah and his band of refugees clash with another group of survivors who remind them that the undead are not the only-nor the most grotesque-horrors they must face.
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Down the Road
by Bowie Ibarra
The walking dead. A global crisis. The remnants of America. Around the globe, the dead are rising to devour the living. Hospitals are overrun, and martial law has been declared. The streets are in chaos. Society is disintegrating. In a small south Texas town, the mayor has rallied his citizens against the living dead and secured their borders. Isolated in the countryside, the community holds their own. But when two strangers from San Antonio stumble into town, they bring news of a global peacekeeping force sweeping toward the city. Led by a ruthless commander, the force is determined to secure the republic of Texas on its own terms, and establish a new, harsh government for the plague-ravaged nation. Will the independently fortified Texas town hold out against the flesh-eating zombies and the tyrannical foreign army traveling down the road?
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Autumn
by David Moody
In less than twenty-four hours a vicious and virulent disease destroys virtually all of the population. Billions are killed. Thousands die every second. There are no symptoms and no warnings. Within moments of infection each victim suffers a violent and agonizing death. Only a handful of survivors remain. By the end of the first day those survivors wish they were dead. Then the disease strikes again, and all hell breaks loose... The classic free underground novel finally bursts into the mainstream. Cold, dark, relentless and uncomfortably plausible. A Night of the Living Dead for the 21st Century. "the perfect zombie story" "nothing written in the genre has grabbed me in the same way as AUTUMN" "an equal to Romero's Night of the Living Dead"
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Autumn
by David Moody
Everything that means anything to you is taken away in seconds. No warning. No explanation. Nothing. AUTUMN: THE CITY is the first sequel to the acclaimed horror novel AUTUMN (now available as a free download from www.theinfected.co.uk). A virulent disease rips across the face of the planet, killing billions of people in less than twenty-four hours. A small group of survivors cower in fear in the desolate remains of a silent city. As the full extent of the devastation caused by the disease is revealed the desperate people fight to keep thousands upon thousands of plague victims at bay and to continue to survive from day to day. They fight to stay alive. The unexpected appearance of a company of soldiers again threatens the survivor's fragile existence. Do they trust this sudden military presence? Will the military bring them hope and answers, or just more fear, pain and destruction? Far more than an ordinary sequel, AUTUMN: THE CITY expands on the nightmare of the first novel and takes the reader closer to discovering what caused the death of billions of people on a single inauspicious September day.
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Autumn
by David Moody
David Moody brings the AUTUMN trilogy to a stunning and brutal conclusion. The survivors from AUTUMN: THE CITY are imprisoned in an underground base, trapped between the door to the outside world and the sealed entrance to the airtight cocoon where hundreds of soldiers sit and wait. The crowd of bodies on the surface continues to grow in size, drawn there by the heat, light and noise occasionally produced by the people buried underground beneath their rotting feet. The sheer mass of shuffling figures and decaying flesh above them begins to cause problems for the military with vents and exhaust shafts becoming blocked and useless. Soldiers are sent above ground to begin clearing the bodies away. Encouraged by a relatively successful first strike which is met with little resistance from the corpses, the officers order their troops to the surface again, this time to destroy them all. Trapped in the middle of a long and bloody battle between the military and the dead, the survivors' safety is compromised and they are forced to flee the base. Exposed and vulnerable once again, the group run for their lives without aim or direction. All hope is gone, but in the rotting shadows of the past they find the key to what remains of their future...
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Autumn
by David Moody
The human race is finished. Mankind is all but dead and only a handful of frightened individuals remain. Experience the end of the world from thirty-five different perspectives. These people have survived through chance, not skill, and they are a desperate bunch; cheating lovers, work-shy civil servants, permanently drunk publicans, teenage rebels, obsessive accountants, failed husbands, first-time cross-dressers, disrobed priests and more. Part-companion, part-guide book and part-sequel, AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION follows the individual stories of these desperate survivors through the early days of the nightmare and beyond. The final book in the AUTUMN series. Download the original AUTUMN novel free from www.theinfected.co.uk
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Plague of the Dead
by Z. A. Recht
The end begins with a viral outbreak unlike anything mankind as ever encountered before. The infected are subject to delirium, fever, a dramatic increase in violent behavior, and a one-hundred percent mortality rate? Death. But it doesn't end there. The victims return from death to walk the earth. When a massive military operation fails to contain the plague of the living dead it escalates into a global pandemic. In one fell swoop, the necessities of life become much more basic. Gone are petty everyday concerns. Gone are the amenities of civilized life. Yet a single law of nature remains: Live, or die. Kill, or be killed. On one side of the world, a battle-hardened General surveys the remnants of his command: a young medic, a veteran photographer, a brash Private, and dozens of refugees, all are his responsibility--all thousands of miles from home. Back in the United States, an Army Colonel discovers the darker side of Morningstar virus and begins to collaborate with a well-known journalist to leak the information out to the public... The Morningstar Saga has begun.
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Every Sigh, the End
by Jason S. Hornsby
ItÂżs New YearÂżs Eve of 1999, and while Millennium celebrations are planned and the clock ticks downward amid rising fears and misgivings, professional nobody Ross Orringer is coming to grips with the fact that, at some point, his life has become stagnant. He is twenty-six years old and attends the same meaningless college parties, peddles the same sleazy horror movies with his best friend Preston, lives in the shadow of his younger sisterÂżs constant achievements, and continues to date the same two-timing girlfriend while engaging in an affair of his own with one of her closest friends. And to make matters worse, Ross is being photographed and monitored everywhere he goes, and receives chilling glances from every stranger he encounters. The paranoia mounts when RossÂżs closest friends and family begin acting more and more suspiciously as the New YearÂżand PrestonÂżs New YearÂżs partyÂżapproaches. In the last minutes before the clock strikes twelve, Ross realizes that the end of the world may be more ominous than anyone could have imagined, because the streets have been closed, the crews have set up their cameras and equipment, the gray makeup has been applied, and decisions have been made. In the next millennium, time will lose all meaning, reality television will take an all too terrifying turn, and the living dead will roam the streets in search of Ross and everyone that is important to him.
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History Is Dead
by Scott A. Johnson
Our team of crack historians has uncovered the truth you never learned in school: the living dead have walked among us since the dawn of time. In this collection of gruesome tales from throughout the ages, the ravenous undead shamble through bloody battlefields, plague-ridden cities, genteel country estates, and dusty frontier towns. They emerge from foggy cemeteries, frozen barrows, loamy bogs, cursed mines, and gore-spattered operating rooms to prey on the living. But these zombies don't just eat people. They help painters and writers save their faltering careers. They unwittingly push humankind on the quest for fire. They topple evil capitalists and their corporate empires. They fight crime. They fall in love. Join us on a journey into our zombie-filled past... Neither history nor the living dead have ever been this exciting!
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Day by Day Armageddon
by J. L. Bourne
An ongoing journal depicting one man's personal struggle for survival, dealing with the trials of an undead world unfolding around him. An unknown plague sweeps the planet. The dead rise to claim the Earth as the new dominant species. Trapped in the midst of a global tragedy, he must make decisions ... choices that ultimately mean life, or the eternal curse to walk as one of them.
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John Dies at the End
by David Wong
It's a drug that promises an out-of-body experience with each hit. On the street they call it Soy Sauce, and users drift across time and dimensions. But some who come back are no longer human. Suddenly a silent, otherworldly invasion is underway, and mankind needs a hero. What it gets instead is John and David, a pair of college dropouts who can barely hold down jobs. Can these two stop the oncoming horror in time to save humanity? No. No, they can't.
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The Undead
by Walter Greatshell
Satisfy your hunger for the living dead in the third installment of the popular Undead series, THE UNDEAD: FLESH FEAST. A new recruit must face the grotesque realities behind the zombie war. An ancient, tentacled horror commands the walking dead. A green mold creeps across an uncharted island, driving its mysterious inhabitants insane. A lone survivor of the zombie apocalypse wants only one thing... to be bitten. The Grim Reaper struggles to claim the souls of the deceased that won't stay dead. And in the featured novella, "The Legend of Black Betty," a small town in the Old West rots with a plague wreaked by an evil prostitute.
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The Undead
by D. L. Snell
Dig into the second installment of the popular UNDEAD series, THE UNDEAD: SKIN AND BONES. A fungus takes over an office building and all its occupants. An exiled boy flees across a wasteland, stalked by an executioner and an undead dragon. A squadron of troops confronts an army of corpses. A greedy producer creates a talk show about the living dead. A man hits an unlucky streak that starts with a zombie outbreak and only gets worse. And in the featured novella, "Skin and Bones," a necromancer exploits the dead to extract a twisted revenge. These stories and more from authors such as David Wellington, Vince Churchill, David Dunwoody, and D.L. Snell.
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The Undead
by John Sunseri
Four novellas present different versions of the classic zombie invasion: a mob hitman in Aruba must hide from zombies, his fellow mobsters, and creatures in the water; a man awakens in a zombie-swarmed alley with no memory of his past; three art students are terrified by the legacy of what lives beneath a New England cemetary; and a CIA agent discovers that zombies are being controlled by someone with a new bio-weapon up for bid on the black market.
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Rise and Walk
by Gregory Solis
The walking dead descend upon a paintball competition in the mountains. Two brave young women join forces with two thrill seekers in a terror filled struggle against the undead. Low on ammunition and supplies, the survivors use anything at hand to fight off the flesh hungry horde. As the party makes their escape they soon realize that there is nowhere to run when the dead Rise and WalkĂ¢ĂĂÂŚ
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Dead Sea
by Brian Keene
With zombies taking over the cities, a group of humans escapes the carnage by taking a small Coast Guard ship out to sea, but there's no getting awayâeven in the wide ocean.
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After Twilight
by Travis Adkins
At the start of the apocalypse, a small resort town on the coast of Rhode Island fortified itself to withstand the millions of flesh-eating zombies conquering the world. With its high walls and self-contained power plant, Eastpointe was a safe haven for the lucky few who managed to arrive. Trained specifically to outmaneuver the undead, Black Berets performed scavenging missions in outlying towns in order to stock Eastpointe with materials vital for long-term survival. But the town leaders took the Black Berets for granted, on a whim sending them out into the cannibalistic wilderness. Most did not survive. Now the most cunning, most brutal, most efficient Black Beret will return to Eastpointe after narrowly surviving the doomed mission and unleash his anger upon the town in one bloody night of retribution. After twilight, when the morning comes and the sun rises, will anyone be left alive?
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Dying to Live
by Kim Paffenroth
"At the end of the world a handful of survivors banded together in a museum-turned-compound surrounded by the living dead. The community established rituals and rites of passage, customs to keep themselves sane, to help them integrate into their new existence. In a battle against a kingdom of savage prisoners, the survivors lost loved ones, they lost innocence, but still they coped and grew. They even found a strange peace with the undead. Twelve years later the community has reclaimed more of the city and has settled into a fairly secure life in their compound. Zoey is a girl coming of age in this undead world, learning new roles--new sacrifices. But even bigger surprises lay in wait, for some of the walking dead are beginning to remember who they are, who they've lost, and, even worse, what they've done. As the dead struggle to reclaim their lives, as the survivors combat an intruding force, the two groups accelerate toward a collision that could drastically alter both of their worlds"--Cover.
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The Rising
by Brian Keene
Thirty-two short stories based in the world of The Rising and its sequel, City of the Dead, reveal how the undead epidemic plays out across the globe. Nowhere is safe from the zombie invasion.
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Blood of the Dead
by A. P. Fuchs
One year ago, the world came to an end. First came the rain. Then came the screams. Then came the undead. The Haven became the only place in the city free of the walking dead. A place of community. A place to be safe. Now, things have changed. The zombies are coming to the Haven, seeking out the remaining survivors of the human race. Joe Bailey prowls the Haven's streets, taking them back from the undead, each kill one step closer to reclaiming a life once stolen from him. Billie Friday and Des Nottingham soon have Joe to thank for their lives. As the dead push into the Haven, the trio is forced into the one place where folks fear to tread: the heart of the city, a place overrun with flesh-eating zombies. They soon discover they are not the only humans there. After meeting an old man with a peculiar past, Joe and the others must make one last stand against the undead or unwillingly meet the same fate. A desperate escape leads them to a place thought impossible to exist and to a discovery that will shake the future. Welcome to the end of all things.
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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Jane Austen
The New York Times best seller is now a major motion picture starring Lily James and Sam Riley, with Matt Smith, Charles Dance, and Lena Headey. Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is an audacious retelling of English literatureâs most enduring novel. This expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem begins when a mysterious plague falls upon the quiet English village of Merytonâand the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but sheâs soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young loversâand even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. Itâs the perfect read for literature lovers, zombie fans, and anyone who loves a reanimated Austen.
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The Living Dead
by John Joseph Adams
Ideal for fans of iZombie, Colin Morgan, The Walking Dead, iZombie comics, Resident Evil anthology, Evil Dead anthology, and the Joe Hill graphic novel collection A compilation of the best zombie literature of the past 30 years Highlights works by todayâs most well-known and respected authors of speculative fiction, horror, and fantasy Zombies have invaded popular culture, from White Zombie to Dawn of the Dead and from Resident Evil to World War Z. They have become the monsters that best express the anxieties and fears of the modern west. This collection gathers together zombie works by Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, George R. R. Martin, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Poppy Z. Brite, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Joe R. Lansdale. These brilliant minds, and The Living Dead, cover the many types of zombie fiction. Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
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Breathers
by S.G. Browne
For fans of Max Brooksâs The Zombie Survival Guide and zombie aficionados everywhere, a hilarious debut novel about life (and love) after death. Meet Andy Warner, a recently deceased everyman and newly minted zombie. Resented by his parents, abandoned by his friends, and reviled by a society that no longer considers him human, Andy is having a bit of trouble adjusting to his new existence. But all that changes when he goes to an Undead Anonymous meeting and finds kindred souls in Rita, an impossibly sexy recent suicide with a taste for the formaldehyde in cosmetic products, and Jerry, a twenty-one-year-old car-crash victim with an exposed brain and a penchant for Renaissance pornography. When the group meets a rogue zombie who teaches them the joys of human flesh, things start to get messy, and Andy embarks on a journey of self-discovery that will take him from his casket to the SPCA to a media-driven class-action lawsuit on behalf of the rights of zombies everywhere. Darkly funny, surprisingly touching, and gory enough to satisfy even the most discerning reader, Breathers is a romantic zombie comedy (rom-zom-com, for short) that will leave you laughing, squirming, and clamoring for more.