The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey (2014) Orbit

A post-apocalyptic science fiction story with a well-thought-out explanation of a cause for the zombie-like devastation of the world.  In Carey’s explanation, a spore spreads through the human race that started in the Amazon on the floor, attacking ants, who try to rub it off, but when infected will climb the nearest tree, attach themselves to a leaf and when the filaments of the maturing spore finish devouring their host, explode and spread their spores further along the floor of the rain forest.  In the humans, it travels the nervous system to the brain, replacing the intelligence of the host but controlling the motor functions.  A bite will infect their target.  But what the scientists discovered is that there appear to be children running around without being attacked but are obviously infected.  They capture some of these, take them to an airbase and then educate them. 

This is the story of how one of the little girls, Melanie, learns how the human race will continue.

Every child in the captured group, lives in a cell by themselves.  An alarm rings in the morning and they get dressed and sit in a wheelchair.  The door opens and two soldiers enter, one with a gun aimed at the child.  The other soldier ties the child into the chair and then wheels them into a classroom.  There, the teachers rotate each day, teaching different subjects.  One day, the base is attacked by Hungries (the zombies) herded by the Junkers (people who are not infected but did not evacuate to the uninfected areas) and the base falls.  Melanie, her favorite teacher, a scientist who was about to extract Melanie’s brain to inspect under the microscope, the Sergeant in charge of the military at the base, and a private escape.  But their way from there is not easy. 

The Junkers pursue them.  They try to hide but find themselves surrounded by the Hungries.  Melanie finds the Hungries do not see her.  They discover an abandoned mobile research vehicle and make their way inside, but it is inoperable.  The Sergeant works on restoring power and Melanie does recon, where she discovers a group of children, but they are operating as a savage tribe looking for protein (people) to eat.  The private becomes their first victim.  The scientist traps one of the kids and starts examining their brain tissue under the electron microscope and leaves the others behind who were looking for the private.  When she comes across a wall of the fungus, she stops and finalizes notes about the difference in the second generation of infected hungries, the kids, and realizes that all is lost.  Melanie tricks her into opening the door and then listens to her as the scientist, knowing she is infected and dying, explains what she has found in the kids.

Make Me by Lee Child (2015) Delacorte Press

In which Reacher steps off the train in Mother’s Rest, a town in the middle of nowhere, just to find out why it has that name.  He expects to find a museum or a visitor’s center or even a chamber of commerce with a history of the town.  What he finds instead, is a town of suspicious people and a woman who is looking for her partner who called her for backup.  Because of the aggressive behavior of the townspeople, Reacher decides to help her.  And of course, become her lover.  The main problem for the bad guys is that Reacher is better than them at the confrontation level.

LaBrava by Elmore Leonard (1983) Arbor House

An ex-Secret Service agent turned photographer lives in a building where the man who owns it, Maurice. is in his eighties and knows an ex-movie star.

LaBrava runs into the woman at a rehab check-in after she was arrested for throwing a beer bottle at a police officer.  Another man comes to see her, to ‘take her home’ and presents a security company badge trying to impersonate a police officer.  LaBrava puts him down until Maurice can get the star into his car and they leave.

The impersonator continues to come around and bother her, so Maurice gets her to come to his building and use one of the empty rooms.  LaBrava remembers her in movies he saw when he was 12.

But, of course, there is more to the story.  There is a murder plot to bilk her for $600G, which she does not have, but which Maurice will lend her so she can stay safe.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner (2009) Delacorte Press

This starts with a teenager, our hero, trapped in a moving box that he finally discovers is an elevator and he is deposited in a world with other teenage boys who run the maze each day, trying to solve it so they can escape.  A girl appears a week later, not the usual month and she’s the first girl to arrive and has a message that the end is coming.  Once the hero figures-out how to escape only 40% go with him.  And in the end, we discover that everything is a lie and that was only experiment A – now on to B.

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (2018) Knopf 

A post World War II story, covering the life of an English boy whose parents went to other parts of the world and left their teenage children in the care of strangers.  Even the leave-taking was a lie, the father leaving for Singapore, the mother staying until the children’s year in boarding schools could start.  Almost at once, the Moth, whom she left in charge, starts caring for them more like a father than a renter who agreed to watch over them when home.  Then they discover their mother’s traveling trunk in the basement and know she did not leave to meet-up with their father.  The Moth has a lot of friends over to their house in London and they get to know them by playing hooky and running around with the Darter, one of the friends, and getting jobs to earn money.  The boy even has an affair with a coworker, Agnes, from the restaurant where he works.  Halfway through the book, they are kidnapped, and the Moth is killed and their mother suddenly appears with the friends and sweeps the children off to her own ancestral home.  But even boarding them in far-away places fails to solve any problems and the son returns to live with her, learning nothing about when she was away and the daughter insisting on a school too far away for visiting.  Once the boy graduates college, he is recruited to work for the government, going through files to make sure nothing is left that would be incriminating to England.  There, he discovers traces of his mother as a spy for the government with enemies searching for her or her children.  The Moth, the Darter, others were watching over the children to keep them safe from foreign vengeance.  Finally, he finds the address of the Darter and visits the man, to discover he has married and has a 13 year old daughter.  On his way out, he sees a family photo, with the Darter and Agnes and a small girl and realizes that his kidnapping happened just over 13 years ago.  But he leaves the Darter in peace.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (2008) Macmillan

The story runs from the days of Henry the first to Henry the second and the martyrdom of Thomas Beckett.  It follows the life of two little boys, whose father and mother are killed by soldiers in front of them and rescued by an Abbot, who raises them.  Through their lives as a Prior of a Monastery and a Priest in the service of royalty (a little bit of John Jakes here).  A stone mason, who aspires to build a cathedral becomes the other force to move the story, demonstrating the lofty goals of people who wish the period after Henry I did not devolve into civil war between Stephen (Henry’s nephew) and the Empress Maud (Henry’s daughter) known as the Anarchy.  Follett does an excellent job on the history, getting the players and events correct.  The pivotal event for the story involves a plot to interrupt the succession in hopes for a weak king, the barons conspired to kill his son, William II, at sea.  However, there was a survivor, which they imprisoned to keep him quiet, in fear that he knew enough to bring them to justice.  In Follett’s story, this man is visited in his cell by a woman who lives in the nearby forest.  She is pregnant when they decide to kill him by hanging under a false charge.  A local knight’s son is a ruffian whose family successfully accuses the local Earl of being against King Stephen