The dead walk. The world burns. And one man must escape the nightmare.

Mike McKnight had it all just a few years ago—a blockbuster movie career that put him on magazine covers worldwide, wealth beyond anything he’d imagined growing up, and the kind of fame that opened every door and granted every wish. Then came the conviction for a murder he genuinely doesn’t remember committing, a trial that became a media circus, and a sentence that locked him away in a maximum-security psychiatric facility where the drugs they pump into him daily make everything feel like swimming through thick fog. They tell him he’s dangerous, that he killed someone in a blackout rage. He can’t remember it, can’t access those missing hours no matter how hard he tries. So he stays drugged, forgotten, watching the world through reinforced windows while his career becomes a punchline and his life drains away one institutional meal at a time. 🎬

Then the world ends in ways nobody saw coming, not even the doomsday preppers or conspiracy theorists.

A lethal virus sweeps across the country with terrifying speed, reanimating the dead and turning them into relentless, flesh-eating monsters that shamble through streets still clogged with abandoned cars and bodies. The infection doesn’t discriminate—it takes everyone from senators to street vendors, from doctors to drug dealers, transforming them into creatures driven by one overwhelming instinct: feed. Trapped inside a psychiatric facility that’s rapidly collapsing into chaos as patients break free, staff members flee or die, and the infected begin pouring through breached doors, Mike seizes his chance to escape. But the world outside those walls turns out to be infinitely worse than anything he imagined during his drugged captivity. 🧟

With only a handful of survivors who don’t trust each other and barely trust themselves—a doctor who was treating him hours before, a security guard who enjoyed making his life hell, a patient who might be more dangerous than the zombies—Mike must navigate a nightmarish wasteland teeming with the undead. Every building could be a deathtrap, every survivor a potential threat, every moment a fight for survival against creatures that never tire, never stop, never give up the hunt. They head toward rumors of a safe zone, of military rescue, of anything that might offer sanctuary in a world gone completely insane. 🏚️

But as they fight their way through the ruins of civilization, Mike starts uncovering disturbing clues about the outbreak’s origins—and begins to suspect his own foggy memories and that mysterious murder might be connected to the apocalypse in ways that make him question everything about his conviction, his blackouts, and whether he’s actually the victim he believes himself to be. In this new world where the only rule is kill or be eaten, Mike must confront not just the monsters outside but the possibility that he might be one of the monsters who helped create this hell. 💉

What makes this essential: Bryan James delivers fast-paced zombie horror with a psychological twist, combining relentless action with genuine mystery as one man fights to survive the apocalypse while uncovering the dark truth about how it started and his own role in humanity’s fall.

A matchmaking aunt wants her nephew to find love under the mistletoe…

All doggy daycare owner Callie Andrews wants for Christmas is to win first prize in the annual window display competition this year—just once, after finishing second three years running. The contest is a huge event in Silver Falls, drawing tourists from neighboring towns and generating serious bragging rights along Main Street. More importantly, she’s determined to showcase her thriving business when her family visits her small town for the holidays. It’s finally time for her parents and three older brothers to realize the “baby” of the family isn’t just surviving on her own—she’s absolutely crushing it, thank you very much, and she doesn’t need their concerned phone calls or suggestions that she move back home. 🎄

The last thing Brandt Winslow wants to do is rehash the painful past he left behind in Silver Falls, but returning home for the holidays means confronting the reason he fled in the first place—memories, regrets, and a town full of people who remember exactly who he used to be before he reinvented himself in the city. His vacation plans, however, take an unexpected and unwelcome turn when his well-meaning aunt decides his single status needs immediate intervention. Before he can protest, he finds himself caught up in her misguided matchmaking efforts, paired with the spirited local business owner who clearly wants nothing to do with his aunt’s schemes any more than he does. ❄️

Despite their mutual reluctance at being shoved together like teenagers at a school dance, Callie and Brandt discover the holidays are full of surprises when you’re stuck decorating windows together, navigating Silver Falls’ quirky traditions, and accidentally having actual fun despite your best efforts to remain annoyed. There’s something about stringing lights in freezing weather, debating the merits of fake snow versus real pine boughs, and stealing hot chocolate breaks that starts breaking down the walls they’ve both built. The chemistry they’re trying to ignore becomes impossible to deny somewhere between the tree lighting ceremony and the gingerbread house competition. 🎁

But is the magic of Christmas strong enough to keep this couple together through the new year, or will Brandt head back to his city life and Callie stay rooted in Silver Falls, both pretending those stolen kisses under the mistletoe didn’t mean anything real? When the holiday decorations come down and real life resumes, they’ll have to decide whether what they found in each other was just seasonal enchantment or something worth fighting for beyond the twinkling lights and sugar cookies. ⭐

Why I’m including this: Melissa McClone kicks off the Silver Falls series with a heartwarming holiday romance that delivers small-town charm, competitive window decorating, and the kind of sweet, steamy connection that makes you believe in Christmas magic and second chances at love.

First a slave, then a conscript, she’s always been at the mercy of monsters. When she’s offered a chance to unsheathe her claws, will death spill out?

Sal Luxx is desperate to prove her kind are more than the beasts humans claim they are—more than animals to be owned, beaten, and discarded when they’re no longer useful. Born a second-class citizen in a world brutally ruled by humans who see iliri as little better than talking dogs, the hardheaded pure-bred iliri has had subservience literally beaten into her veins from childhood. Every instinct screams at her to fight back, but survival means swallowing rage, keeping her head down, and pretending their insults don’t cut straight to her soul. Her waning hope for any kind of freedom surges unexpectedly when she’s given a rare pass to the trials for an elite military unit—a chance to prove herself as a soldier rather than a slave, to finally unleash the predator she’s been forced to cage her entire life. ⚔️

After years of suppressing every natural instinct to survive in human society, Sal’s interaction with her new brothers-in-arms in the unit triggers strange mental powers she never knew she possessed—abilities the humans who owned her deliberately kept her ignorant about, probably terrified of what she’d become if she knew her true capabilities. The knowledge that her abusers systematically stripped her kind of their heritage, their language, their very identity, drives a growing rage that threatens to consume everything she’s worked for. Yet even as she struggles to smother her rising berserker instincts in a military structure that demands control and discipline, she’s undermined by another force entirely: the irresistible biological urge to claim a mate, an instinct that makes her vulnerable in ways that have nothing to do with combat. 🐺

Her new unit isn’t what she expected—instead of the human-dominated hierarchy she’s always known, she finds herself among other iliri, soldiers who’ve earned their places through skill and blood rather than birthright. They see something in her she’s never been allowed to see in herself: potential, strength, the makings of a warrior rather than a victim. But the more she comes into her own power, the more dangerous she becomes—not just to the enemies they face, but to the fragile peace that keeps iliri from being slaughtered wholesale. The humans in command watch her with increasing suspicion, waiting for her to prove every stereotype about her kind, to become the monster they’ve always insisted she is beneath the thin veneer of training and loyalty. 🔥

Will Sal’s untamable nature spawn the rebellion her people desperately need, giving the oppressed iliri a champion who refuses to be broken? Or will her inability to fully submit to military discipline, combined with primal urges she can’t completely control, trigger a massacre that sets back her entire species and proves the humans right about everything they’ve claimed about iliri savagery? In a world that’s given her nothing but pain, Sal must decide whether survival means continuing to play by rules designed to keep her kind subjugated, or whether it’s finally time to show the humans exactly what happens when you push a predator too far. 🌙

What drew me in: A.H. Hadley launches an addictive science-fantasy series featuring a fierce, flawed heroine fighting systematic oppression while discovering her true power, perfect for readers who crave found family, forbidden romance, and protagonists who refuse to stay caged.