Books published by publisher Permuted Press

As featured on Bloomberg.com! Everyone is equal. But no one is safe.In a ruined world, Manhattan is now New America, a walled-in society based on equality. But the perfect facade hides a dark truth. A timid math geek, sixteen-year-old Drayden watches his life crumble when his beloved mother is exiled. The mystery of her banishment leads him to a sinister secret: New America is in trouble, and every one of its citizens is in jeopardy. With time running out, he enters the Initiation. It’s a test within the empty subway tunnels—a perilous journey of puzzles and deadly physical trials. Winners join the ruling Bureau and move to its safe haven. But failure means death. Can Drayden conquer the Initiation, or is salvation out of his grasp?

In this omnibus edition of the first two books in Chris Babu’s hit dystopian series, young Drayden faces harrowing challenges—from the abandoned subway tunnels to the bacteria-plagued landscape—in his fight to uncover the truth about New America.The Initiation:In a ruined world, Manhattan is now New America, a walled-in society based on equality. But the perfect facade hides a dark truth. When his beloved mother is exiled, sixteen-year-old math geek Drayden enters the Initiation—a perilous journey of puzzles and physical trials within the empty tunnels—for a chance at joining the ruling Bureau and saving the people he loves. The Expedition:With New America’s situation dire, Drayden and the pledges venture into the unexplored world beyond the walls, seeking to contact another civilization in what remains of Boston. Dangers abound in the outside world, including Aeru, the deadly superbug that wiped out humanity, and a power struggle emerges within their ranks. Drayden has no choice but to survive the expedition so he can finally uncover the truth about who’s responsible for his mother’s exile, and, most importantly, if she’s still alive.

Ash Ridley just bonded to a baby phoenix—the most powerful beast in all of Cascadia—and he’s hungry, hyperactive, high-maintenance, and hiccups fireballs.Twelve-year-old Ash waves goodbye to her miserable life as a traveling circus stablehand when she and her feisty bird, Flynn, are whisked away to the Academy of Beasts and Magic: a school where wealthy children train unicorns, manticores, and scarf-wearing ice dragons. The downside to owning such a highly magical beast? Everyone wants him. When a mysterious sorcerer suggests the Academy may have dark intentions, Ash realizes her tiny bird might be the key to saving Cascadia…or destroying it.

The Taylor family thought they were prepared for everything… but they never could have expected their readiness would make them target #1.Steve Taylor did everything he could to protect his family from what he saw as a weakening dollar and looming economic collapse. But when disaster finally arrives, the Taylors find that they’re not prepared for the enemies that emerge within their own suburban subdivision. The neighbors and HOA are already sore at the Taylors, but as things go from bad to worse, Steve and Amber Taylor must do all they can to keep their family healthy, happy and safe. Realizing they can’t survive alone, they work to mend relationships. But there’s another community out there preying on the fringes of the subdivision. The real question is: Will help arrive before time runs out?

Decades after the zombie apocalypse, seventeen year old Garret Weir just wants to be a normal teenager. As if dealing with the zombies isn’t hard enough, his annoying twin brother refuses to leave him in peace. And it’s not like Garret can just go to his room and shut the door to get away. His brother Garth is a zombie and conjoined to the top of Garret’s spine. Good times.Forced from his hidden, mountain compound, Garret must learn who to trust and who to fear as he and Garth are thrust into a world more horrific than anything they could imagine. Fighting for their lives in a foreign landscape, the brothers head north to find their father who may have the answer to the deadly virus that caused the zombie apocalypse. Along their way they meet new friends, learn betrayal the hard way, fight for their mother’s life, run from deadly enemies, and discover that life may have seemed difficult before, but can always get a whole lot worse.A fast-paced, high-action novel that doesn’t pull any punches, Little Dead Man is a surprisingly sweet story of two brothers - one living, one undead - that struggle with a mother that is mentally unstable, a missing father that has kept too many secrets, and a lie their parents have always told - that they are the last survivors on Earth. When the truth of that lie is revealed, Garret and Garth quickly find out that having other survivors in the world isn’t exactly a good thing. In fact, it’s quite deadly.

Jimmy never thought he’d be spending the apocalypse farming in Nebraska and worrying about Hunter. But when the plague killed their parents, along with everyone over the age of seventeen, Jimmy suddenly became head of the household.Then the oldest kid in town turned eighteen and the plague chased him down. Now Jimmy has one more thing to worry about--and he’s running out of time.Hunter finds a little girl named Catherine under a cottonwood tree in the middle of nowhere. When Catherine magically heals Hunter’s broken arm, Jimmy hopes he will survive his eighteenth birthday if he can protect her from the horseman responsible for unleashing the plague.

2015 Nominee for the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel!Wyattsville, Oregon –The Most Haunted Place In America.For fourteen year old Cotton Tennison, the Wyattsville ghosts are not the horrors he fears. The living are far more scary. As the town outcast, Cotton suffers the abuse of his drunk father and the torment of the local bullies - a group known as the Red Meat Boys. His only refuge is The Wyatt House, an abandoned house at the end of his street, a house filled with ghosts and specters that the town would prefer didn’t exist. When several teenagers are brutally murdered, the town council decides to turn the Wyatt House over to a family of ghost hunters with questionable intentions. Here begins Cotton’s struggle to find a way to save the house, his ghostly friends, and the entire town before an evil force destroys them all.Intentional Haunting is a Teen horror novel that mixes the tender macabre of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, the suspense of Stephen King’s The Shining, and the dark humor of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. It is the personal story of a young man surviving the abuse of a town that has abandoned him, a young man that will be faced with a choice when the fate of Wyattsville rests in his hands. Will he be able to look beyond his resentment to save the town that has caused him such pain or will he walk away, just as the town walked away from him?

Lori Blaine is not your average seventeen-year-old high school student. Cool and iconoclastic in her dread-locks and natty thrift shop garb, with an IQ that’s off the charts, she is the ersatz leader of a pack of Goth kids that circle around her in the halls of Valesburg Central like a school of pilot fish. Lori speaks softly, but when she does speak, people have a tendency to listen. But Lori Blaine has one problem: The door.Lori’s dreams are haunted by this strange, recurring symbol. The door is always there on the periphery… beckoning to her, daring her to see what might be waiting for her on the other side. Finally, at the urging of an overzealous school psychologist, Lori Blaine decides to face her fears. The next night, she goes through the dream door… and immediately plunges into a shattered looking glass world in which nothing is as it seems and evil awaits around every corner.But when Lori fights back, all hell breaks loose.Created by the New York Times bestselling author of THE WALKING DEAD: DESCENT…. LUCID is a mind-bender of a contemporary supernatural thriller for Young Adults.

Grasshoppers have invaded Independents, and the crops are under attack. Hunter seeks out help from the kids in Cozad, but finds them served up like cold cuts at a deli to the emaciated horseman of the apocalypse known as Famine.After Hunter meets the eye-appealing Barbara, who prefers to be called Barbie, he has to constantly remind her that he has a girlfriend. Sometimes he reminds himself. The distraction is only temporary as he risks his life to protect the children from Famine’s hunger.With Barbie fighting at his side to free the Cozad kids, Hunter discovers he is immune to physical harm, even though the pain from his brother’s death remains heavy on his shoulders. He knows everything will be all right if he holds himself together long enough to make it back home to Molly, unless Famine and his swarm of insects arrive there ahead of him.

Living in the apocalypse is tough. Made even tougher after Plague killed all the adults and Famine decimated the crops.Now there is fire everywhere throughout the Nebraska countryside. War is coming and she rides a foul-tempered horse, setting fires to the farmhouses beyond the outskirts of Independents. Tension mounts and fights break out among friends as the kids prepare for the next horseman of the apocalypse. Everyone is scared, and their fear is what War craves most of all.Scout, the spiritual leader in town, is too wrapped up with personal issues to tend to his flock. He misses Raven. She was a part of home, his real home back in the Lou. They’re both memories, but he still loves her. When springtime arrives, Scout rides out into the Big Bad to search for his lost girlfriend and discovers that she is more lost to him than ever before. He must now decide what he desires most as everything burns around him.

Shortly after teenage newcomer Casey Wilde arrives in the haunted town of Whistlebrass, Vermont, his little sister disappears. Finding her won’t be easy–Casey is up against a suave sociopath, a legion of living shadows, and a reptilian humanoid capable of stealing his life force and crushing him into dust. Who can Casey ask for help when no sane adult will believe his story?

Death stalks the kids of Independents as the Beast rises.Plague, famine and war have taken their toll on the kids living in Independents. Now the survivors of the apocalypse await the final horseman.Death is coming and no one is safe. After a reckless decision leaves Hunter at Death’s mercy, Molly must armor herself with faith if she hopes to rescue Hunter and protect Independents from the rising of the Beast.