6 Survival Thrillers to Read if You Love Yellowjackets
If you haven’t seen Yellowjackets on Showtime, we recommend you check it out. Cannibalistic teenagers. Brutal terrain. Survival of the fittest. What’s not to love? Even Stephen King praised its writing. The show follows a group of girls whose plane crashes in the wilderness while they’re on their way to a national soccer tournament, leaving them stranded in the Ontario wilderness. As their hope for rescue slowly dims and winter eases in, their fight for survival becomes imperative. Yellowjackets is told from dual timelines, showing the girls’ past and present as they deal with the fallout. The characters are captivating and the storytelling is raw. We’re already anticipating a season two. In the meantime, here are some books to keep you busy in case you missed the show or, like us, are eagerly awaiting its return. Like Yellowjackets, these six survival thrillers place characters in stranded locations and force them to survive—or get left behind in the process.
After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom.
When they discover remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram.
But as soon as they set foot on the island, which is run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare.
When Heather and the kids are separated from Tom, they are forced to escape alone, seconds ahead of their pursuers.
Now it’s up to Heather to save herself and the kids, even though they don’t trust her, the harsh bushland is filled with danger, and the locals want her dead.
Heather has been underestimated her entire life, but she knows that only she can bring her family home again and become the mother the children desperately need, even if it means doing the unthinkable to keep them all alive.
Related: The Perfect Setting for Murder
Nine girls bound together
in beautiful, virtuous Havenwood,
a refuge from an unsafe world.
Then there are eight,
one of them gone—
departed with no warning.
Did this member of their pack
stray willingly,
or did something more sinister occur?
The girls seek answers
not knowing if they should be angry
or frightened
or perhaps,
they should be both.
No one at Hollywood High knows who’s behind We'll Never Tell—a viral YouTube channel where the anonymous creators trespass behind the scenes of LA's most intriguing locales. The team includes CASEY, quiet researcher and trivia champ; JACOB, voice narrator and video editor, who is secretly dating EDDIE, aspiring filmmaker; and ZOE, coder and breaking-and-entering extraordinaire.
Now senior year is winding down, and with their lives heading in different directions, the YouTubers vow to go out with a bang. Their last episode will be filmed at the infamous Valentini “murder house,” which has been left abandoned, bloodstained, and untouched since a shocking murder/suicide in 1972. When the teens break in, they capture epic footage. But someone trips an alarm, and it’s a mad dash to get out before the police arrive—at which point they realize only three of them escaped instead of four. Jacob is still inside, slain and bleeding out. Is his attack connected to the historic murder, or is one of their crew responsible?
A week of suspicions and cover-ups unfolds as Casey and her remaining friends try to stay alive long enough to solve murder mysteries past and present. If they do, their friendship may not survive. If they don't, the house will claim more victims.
Hundreds of pleasure-seekers stream aboard The Beautiful Dreamer cruise ship for five days of cut-price fun in the Caribbean sun. On the fourth day, disaster strikes: smoke roils out of the engine room, and the ship is stranded in the Gulf of Mexico. Soon supplies run low, a virus plagues the ship, and there are whispered rumors that the cabins on the lower decks are haunted by shadowy figures. Irritation escalates to panic, the crew loses control, factions form, and violent chaos erupts among the survivors.
When, at last, the ship is spotted drifting off the coast of Key West, the world’s press reports it empty. But the gloomy headlines may be covering up an even more disturbing reality.
Related: Why a Cruise Ship is the Perfect Setting for a Serial Killer Novel
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