The Afterblight Chronicles

Series · 12

books · 2002-2012

By Al Ewing, Paul Kane, Scott K. Andrews, and more

Books in series

The Culled

2006

The world has been devastated by an epidemic. Although there are pockets of an attempted continuation of civilisation, the truth is that the world has gone to hell in a handcart. The reason for this is a disease that has wiped out most of the world's population. It kills almost all those who are not of the blood group 'O neg'. Those people who survive are untouched. Everyone else dies. Infrastructures have collapsed. Mobs run rampant. The only kind of law that exists is that imposed by the people with the biggest guns. In this devastated and chaotic world who can bring hope and order? The Blight arose from nowhere. It swept across the bickering nations like the End of Times. As the numbers thinned and societies crumbled, the survivors picked their way between silent streets and looked out on the squalid new order. Hotheaded religion and territorial savagery rule the cities now. Somewhere, amidst the chaos, a damaged man receives a signal, and with it the tiniest flicker of hope. This is the chance to rediscover the humanity he lost, long ago, in the blood and filth and horror of the Cull. He mustcross the Atlantic, defeat warrior gangs in New York and seek out the location of his missing love.

Kill or Cure

2007

Jasmine is part of a team of scientists who have discovered a cure to the deadly virus that has destroyed most of the world's population. However, it has a devestating side-effect, driving the recipient into a schizophrenic state. Now Jasmine must keep it together while trying to escape the clutches of the pirate rulers of the New Caribbean.

School's Out

2007

It's never easy being fifteen, but when your teachers are killing each other, the prefect who loves to bully you is experimenting with crucifixion, and the rival gang from across town have decided that ritualistic cannibalism is the way to go, spots and body-odour don't seem like such big problems after all. These are the final days of St Marks School For Boys, and the punishment for disobedience is death!

#3, 6, 9

School's Out Forever

2002

“After the world died we all sort of drifted back to school. After all, where else was there for us to go?” Lee Keegan’s fifteen. If most of the population of the world hadn’t just died choking on their own blood, he might be worrying about acne, body odour and girls. As it is, he and the young Matron of his boarding school, Jane Crowther, have to try and protect their charges from cannibalistic gangs, religious fanatics, a bullying prefect experimenting with crucifixion and even the surviving might of the US Army. Welcome to St. Mark’s School for Boys and Girls... This is an omnibus containing the whole of the "School's Out" trilogy: "School's Out" "Operation Motherland" "Children's Crusade"

Dawn Over Doomsday

2008

The world has been devastated by an epidemic. Although there are pockets of an attempted continuation of civilisation, the truth is that the world has gone to hell in a handcart. The reason for this is a disease that has wiped out most of the world's population. It kills almost all those who are not of the blood group 'O neg'. Those people who survive are untouched. Everyone else dies. Infrastructures have collapsed. Mobs run rampant. The only kind of law that exists is that imposed by the people with the biggest guns. In this devastated and chaotic world who can bring hope and order? As America lies bleeding, Native American Chief Hiamovi seeks to unite his people into a single nation capable of reclaiming the US from the white man. His growing army is on a collision course with cult leader Samuel Colt, who intends to put the country back in the iron grip of the once mighty Neo Clergy. The two men are set for a showdown at Little Bighorn, once site of Cluster's legendary last stand, now a twisted nuclear landscape. Fourth book in the action-packed post apocalypse fiction.

Arrowhead

2008

Operation Motherland

2009

Lee Kegan travels to Iraq on the trail of his missing father, only to find himself caught between desperate rebels and a general who wants to strap him into an electric chair. In England, Jane Crowther, one time matron matron of St. Mark's School for Boys, attracts the wrong kind of attention and has to fight to protect her new school from unlikely enemies. And in a bunker underneath Washington, a madman issues orders that will tip two devastated countries into total war. This is the first year of St. Mark's School for Boys and Girls - will there be a second?

Death Got No Mercy

2010

Cade wasn't a complicated man. He didn't care about people. But one of the people he did care about was in trouble and he had to help. Cade travels to a post-apocalypse San Francisco - peopled with maniacs and cannibals - to find help for his companion. There he must use nothing but his two fists and a hunting knife to find the one thing that may save his friend.

Broken Arrow

2010

A year has passed since the Hooded Man took back Nottingham Castle from the crazed Sheriff, De Falaise. The citizens of Nottingham have settled back into an uneasy peace, but a new threat is emerging. From Russia a covetous and psychotic general eyes the treasures of Britain. In Yorkshire a dangerous Satanic cult emerges and from Europe comes an old, familiar foe. The Hooded Man must fight for his people once more!

Children's Crusade

2010

"I celebrated my sixteenth birthday by crashing a plane, fighting for my life and facing execution. Again." Lee Keegan travels to Iraq on the trail of his missing father, only to find himself caught between desperate rebels and a general who wants to strap him into an electric chair. In England, Jane Crowther, one time matron of St Mark?s School for Boys, attracts the wrong kind of attention and has to fight to protect her new school from unlikely enemies. And in a bunker underneath Washington, a madman issues orders that will tip two devastated countries into total war. This is the first year of St Mark?s School for Boys and Girls. It will be a miracle if it sees a second!

#10

Arrowland

2010

-Enemies on All Sides!- Robert, the Hooded Man, leads the Rangers, who keep the peace in the ravaged wasteland of Britain, foiling the ambitions of the warlords and petty tyrants who would take the country for themselves. Even the spirits of his beloved Sherwood Forest aid him, sending him dreams to guide his path. But now Robert's dreams are threatening and strange - a dragon rising over Wales, a spider crouching over Edinburgh - and new foes are rising against him in his own homeland. Overseas, the Russian Tsar is readying himself for a second confrontation with Britain's protector, even as an army is converging at the Reichstag in Berlin. A confrontation is coming that may decide the future of the nation...

#11

Blood Ocean

2012

Kavika Kamalani is a Pali Boy, a post-plague heir to an ancient Hawai'ian warrior tradition that believes in overcoming death by embracing one's fears and living large. His life on the Nomi No Toshi, the floating city, is turned upside down when one of his friends dies, harvested for his blood, and he sets out to find the killer. Kidnapped himself and subjected to a terrifying transformation, Kavika must embrace the ultimate fear - death itself - if he, his loved ones, and the Pali Boys themselves are to survive.

Authors

Paul Kane has been writing professionally for almost fifteen years. His genre journalism has appeared in such magazines as Fangoria, SFX and Rue Morgue, and his non-fiction books are the critically acclaimed The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and Voices in the Dark. His award-winning short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic (as well as being broadcast on BBC Radio 2), and has been collected in Alone (In the Dark), Touching the Flame, FunnyBones, Peripheral Visions, Shadow Writer, The Butterfly Man and Other Stories, The Spaces Between and GHOSTS. His novella Signs of Life reached the shortlist of the British Fantasy Awards 2006, The Lazarus Condition was introduced by Mick Garris - creator of Masters of Horror - RED featured artwork from Dave (The Graveyard Book) McKean and Pain Cages was introduced by Stephen Volk (The Awakening). As Special Publications Editor of the British Fantasy Society he worked with authors like Brian Aldiss, Ramsey Campbell, Muriel Gray and Robert Silverberg, he is the co-editor of Hellbound Hearts for Pocket Books (Simon and Schuster), an anthology of original stories inspired by Clive Barker's mythos - featuring contributions from the likes of Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola, Kelley Armstrong and Richard Christian Matheson - The Mammoth Book of Body Horror (Constable & Robinson) - featuring Stephen King, James Herbert and Robert Bloch - and the Poe-inspired Beyond Rue Morgue (for Titan). In 2008 his zombie story 'Dead Time' was turned into an episode of the Lionsgate/NBC TV series Fear Itself, adapted by Steve Niles (30 Days of Night) and directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (SAW II-IV). He also scripted The Opportunity which premiered at Cannes in 2009, The Weeping Woman - starring Fright Night's Stephen Jeffreys - and Wind Chimes (directed by Brad '7th Dimension' Watson. He is the author of the novels Of Darkness and Light, The Gemini Factor and the bestselling Arrowhead trilogy (Arrowhead, Broken Arrow and Arrowland), a post-apocalyptic reworking of the Robin Hood mythology gathered together as the sell-out Hooded Man omnibus. His latest novels are Lunar (which is set to be turned into a feature film) and the short Y.A. book The Rainbow Man (as P.B. Kane). He currently lives in Derbyshire, UK, with his wife - the author Marie O'Regan - his family, and a black cat called Mina. You can find out more at his website www.shadow-writer.co.uk which has featured Guest Writers such as Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris, Dean Koontz, John Connolly and Guillermo del Toro.

Scott K. Andrews

Author · 8 books

Scott K. Andrews has written episode guides, magazine articles, film and book reviews, comics, computer games, audio plays for Big Finish, far too many blogs, some poems you will never read, and a whole bunch of novels. He's online at www.scottkandrews.com.

British author, editor and tv storyliner. Educated at Clare College, Cambridge. She has written books for Virgin's Doctor Who line, Abbadon books and Black Flame. She also writes for Doctor Who Magazine and SFX.