Books in The Borrowed World series

If society fell apart, could your family survive?Jim Powell thought he was ready but when ISIS operatives unleashed a coordinated attack on America’s infrastructure, he found himself in a terrifying predicament. Trapped hundreds of miles from his family, with thousands of stranded travelers and scarce law enforcement across the country, the miles between Jim and his family become a brutal gauntlet where the rules of a civilized society no longer apply.But Jim has years of planning under his belt. He’s spent most of life outdoors, studying survival, and obsessing about preparedness. He soon finds that training for societal collapse is very different from actually experiencing one. If Jim wants to make it back to his family, he'll need to find the strength and brutality to meet this new, harsh world head-on — even if it means rising to unimaginable levels of violence.

It's been around nine long months since the United States spiraled into chaos due to a cascading systems failure. The die-off everyone predicted has begun and after a hard winter nearly every other house sits empty with the owners dead or unaccounted for. Lately the power has flickered on and off a few times, raising hopes that power restoration is coming soon.But how do you put the genie back in the bottle? Violence is everywhere. Disease is rampant. Hundreds of thousands are dead. Insurance can never pay for the damage and loss that has occurred. The economy will take years to restore, if it can be restored at all.From the recesses of a fractured government comes a plan to restore order and rescue what remains of the population. The first step comes with restoring power. But what if having access to electricity came at such a price that many -- like Jim Powell, his friends, and his neighbors -- would rather face a future in the dark.

In The Borrowed World Series, America is brought to its knees by coordinated terror attacks against the infrastructure. After spending weeks walking across a violent and horrific landscape to reach his family, Jim Powell hoped they could weather this storm on their secluded Appalachian farm. They had prepared for this. They had armed for this. They could live without power and fuel. What happens, though, when the same qualities that drew Jim to his isolated valley begin to attract another armed group looking for a place to hide from the unrest of a starving nation? Franklin Horton’s Borrowed World Series has been a bestseller in the categories of Post-Apocalyptic and Dystopian Science Fiction. He has been interviewed extensively for podcasts and for print media on the topic of preparedness. The series is noted for its realistic portrayal of how average Americans might be affected by societal collapse.

In THE BORROWED WORLD, Franklin Horton showed us an America brought to its knees by a nationwide terror attack. The target? The American infrastructure.Cell phone connections were sporadic. Electrical power had failed. Mortar attacks on major fuel refineries had created a gas shortage, stranding travelers throughout the country. One of those stranded travelers, Jim Powell, and his group of coworkers were frantically trying to make their way home using just the gear on their backs and whatever other means they found at their disposal. It was a journey wracked with violent, deadly encounters and exhausting physical demands, pushing each of them to the brink of their abilities. Meanwhile, on the other side of Virginia, Jim's family was facing their own struggle as desperate neighbors began to turn against each other with increasing brutality.In the second installment in this series, ASHES OF THE UNSPEAKABLE, we find Jim and his group still struggling to reach home. While just a few days have passed since the attack, the group finds that their country is descending into a vicious, chaotic landscape. While they fight to close the distance between themselves and their loved ones, they cannot avoid the growing number of people who have realized that they can do whatever they want in a world where there are no longer any legal consequences for their actions. At home, Jim's family is forced into hiding after the local jail discharges its starving inmates, leading to the arrival of new, extremely violent presence in their community. The stranger begins a deadly campaign to drive families from their homes and take their possessions. Jim’s wife, Ellen, must struggle to keep her family safe, while each night a neighbor’s home is burned to the ground.

"An ELECTRIFYING story of survival . . . " In his bestselling novels, The Borrowed World and Ashes of the Unspeakable, Franklin Horton showed us a nation facing societal collapse from a coordinated ISIS attack on the American infrastructure. Most of the country is without power, communication, and fuel. As a result of the attack, a group of business travelers in Virginia found themselves among the millions stranded on the highways with no idea how they would be getting home. In this third installment, Legion of Despair, the country is teetering on the brink of anarchy. While one of the stranded travelers, Jim Powell, made it home and is working to establish a safe, sustainable enclave for his family, his co-workers Gary and Alice are not faring as well. After spending hundreds of painful miles dreaming of his reunion with his family, Gary arrives home only to find his family under attack. Now he must face the painful decision as to whether his family’s plan to bug-in is viable or whether they may need greater numbers and a better location to survive in this collapsing nation. While Gary’s homecoming is bittersweet, he has at least found his way into the arms of his family. His co-worker Alice has awakened on the cold, concrete floor of a basement in Bluefield, Virginia. She is bound and chained to a support column. She doesn’t know if she will ever see her son or husband again. All she knows for certain is that the man in front of her has already brutally killed her friend, Rebecca, and unless she finds a way out, he will kill her, too.