Last chance, Gregg Hurwitz

In Creek’s Cause, the fight for humanity’s survival continues. Everyone over the age of eighteen has been turning into ferocious, zombie-like beings– and the spores that cause the transformation are not of this Earth. Now a new breed of predatory creature has been spawned, devouring everything in its path. Chance and Patrick Rain and their friend Alexandra may become humanity’s only hope for salvation. (Publisher summary)

First lines:I wake up in the perfect darkness of Uncle Jim and Aunt Sue-Anne’s ranch house, and there’s a split second where everything is fine. I’m six years old and life is good. And then I remember.
My parents are dead.

The knowing, Sharon Cameron

The underground city of New Canaan is safe from the Forgetting which afflicts Canaan above ground, but in her rigidly controlled and repressive city eighteen-year-old Samara, one of the Knowing, is plagued by her memory of the horrors she has seen, and determined to seek answers in the cursed city above–where she will find Beckett Rodriguez and his parents, on a mission from Earth to study the lost colony. (Publisher summary)

First lines:I am one of the Knowing.
I was three years old the day my memories came. I had my arms stretched out, my brother, Adam, flying me up and around and over his head like the bluedads that dart through the linen fields. I was laughing. And suddenly there were voices in the rush of air. Images. Swirling color. And so much feeling.

Exile, Sophie Breeze

Hybrids, outcasts, of their own world. Five children, Josh, Bailey, Ella, Eric and Blaire, live on planet Mellania. They each have one human parent and one Mellanian. Their partial alien DNA means they possess unique powers, making them both an asset and a threat to the Mellanian government. Captain Melsom, Mellania’s ruler, works beside Lucia, a malicious demon, to eliminate the young hybrids.The operation involves transferring the children to Earth where they will be immediately killed. Lucia is to be transported with them to oversee their termination. Upon arrival, things don’t work out quite as expected.The children have to draw on their powers to survive now, all the time trying to find Lucia before she can wreak her own chaos upon Earth.But just who is controlling the situation and for what reason suddenly becomes very clouded. Even those closest to them begin to drift apart, and it becomes increasingly clear that nothing is what it seems. (Publisher summary)

First lines: The Mellanian sky stretched across the whole planet in one seamless blanket of turquoise silk. It was a night one might take the time to stop and admire, but Sergeant Grion had far more pressing matters to attend to.

The last days of Archie Maxwell, Annabel Pitcher

Dads leave home all the time. It’s not that unusual, really. Leon’s dad ran off with another woman. So did Mo’s. But Archie’s? Well, that’s a different story – a story that Archie must keep secret at all cost. Archie knows he should accept Dad for who he is, so he hides his turmoil until he can stand it no longer. With nowhere else to turn, he finds himself at the railway track. The track has been calling to him, promising escape, release. The only problem is, it’s been calling to someone else too … (Publisher summary)

First lines: “So, that’s what we’ve decided. It’s for the best,” Dad said, after two or ten minutes of talking, Archie couldn’t tell. Time was standing still, or going fast, or doing both. That wasn’t possible, but Dad’s words hadn’t seemed possible that morning, and yet here they were, discussing divorce over Mum’s homemade chicken stew.

We see everything, William Sutcliffe

Lex lives on The Strip — the overcrowded, closed-off, bombed-out shell of London. He’s used to the watchful enemy drones that buzz in the air above him. Alan’s talent as a gamer has landed him the job of his dreams. At a military base in a secret location, he is about to start work as a drone pilot. These two young men will never meet, but their lives are destined to collide. Because Alan has just been assigned a high-profile target. Alan knows him only as #K622. But Lex calls him Dad. (Publisher summary)

First lines: I don’t know if I can go through with it.
Pressed against a shrapnel-pitted wall, I stare out over the expanse of collapsed brick, crumpled tarmac, crushed concrete and twisted steel at the blackberry bush I spotted yesterday, a short distance into the exclusion zone.