Borrowed World

An ELECTRIFYING story of survival . . .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 became sporadic. Electrical power began to fail. Fuel was unavailable, stranding travelers wherever their vehicles ran dry.One of those stranded travelers, Jim Powell, and his group of coworkers were frantically trying to make their way home using the gear on their backs. 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 on each other with increasing brutality.In the second book in this series, ASHES OF THE UNSPEAKABLE, we find Jim and his group still working to get home. While just a few days have passed since the initial attacks, the country is quickly descending into a desperate, chaotic landscape where nothing comes easy. Conflict becomes unavoidable as a growing number of people realize there are no boundaries in a world without law.At home, Jim's family is forced into seclusion as the local jail discharges its starving inmates, leading to the arrival of a new and extremely violent presence in their valley. This new arrival is intent on driving families from their homes and taking their possessions. As Jim fights to reach them, his wife Ellen struggles to keep their family safe while neighbors begin to disappear, and homes burn to the ground each night.

"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 to find them in danger. Now he must face the painful decision as to whether his family might need greater numbers and a better location to survive the collapse.While Gary's homecoming is bittersweet, he 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, bound and at the mercy of a madman. 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 escapes, he'll kill her, too.

It's been around 9 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.

The supervillain of Book Six, Switched On, is staging a comeback and he's obsessed with revenge.He had no idea who the men were that attacked the power plant, but he lost a hand in that operation and he's not going to be satisfied until heads roll. He's all prepared to a launch a massive search for them until command makes it clear that his personal mission of vengeance is not a priority.Undeterred, Boss arrives at a covert method of engaging the entire population of southwest Virginia in his hunt for the insurgents. He scatters flyers from the air offering a reward of food and ammunition for the live capture of the man whose image was caught by a security camera.The rumor mill is working against Jim Powell. His name is whispered everywhere that people gather. Almost overnight, he and his friends find themselves under attack from desperate neighbors determined to collect the bounty on his head.

Two men. Two life-altering decisions. One epic journey.In this eighth installment in the bestselling Borrowed World series, Jim Powell is convinced that his presence in the valley is putting his friends and family in danger. Hoping to buy them some time, he increases the security at his home, then sets off on a trip to allow the situation in his community to cool off. As much as he hates the idea, he also intends to scout out a location to fall back to if his people get driven from their homes.Frustrated by the constant tension and violence, his best friend Lloyd joins him. Though Jim initially welcomes the company, Lloyd spends his day writing folk ballads about his friend's body count and bad decisions.

Author's Note: Between the last book in the series and this one, the characters have an encounter with the Mad Mick that takes place in Mad Mick 7 - ULTRAVIOLENT. While that encounter is summarized in the prologue to this book, you might want to read Mad Mick 7 if you want the full story.The fog of indecision has passed.The struggle with guilt is over and the path forward is clear.The Jim Powell who fought his way home in the days immediately after the disaster--who left a trail of blood and bodies across the state of Virginia--is back.For a year now, Jim Powell has wrestled with his personal demons. As he watched people around him suffer and die, he harbored a secret guilt. He'd once wished for an event like the one America was now experiencing, dreaming of the great reset that would purge the nation of those who'd gone soft and weak.

It was a hard-learned lesson but Jim Powell finally understood that isolating his group of friends and family was no longer the best idea. It was a strategy that had once kept them safe, but lately seemed to be doing exactly the opposite. Staying out of town and away from people had led to them missing critical intelligence -- that there were people in their community actively plotting against Jim.By having some of his people operate vendor booths at the burgeoning apocalyptic marketplace growing in town, they'd been able to learn who was conspiring against Jim. In true Jim Powell fashion, he'd taken them all out. Now understanding the value of having eyes and ears at the marketplace, Jim decides to act on an idea proposed by his friend Lloyd and open a roadhouse in a vacant building in town.For Lloyd, it would be a place to play music and sell liquor made from family recipes. For Jim, a bar in their community would serve several purposes. It would allow him to provide employment for the people in his group, breaking up the routine and giving them a sense of purpose. It would also allow them to run a trading post, bartering off items they didn't need for items that would be more useful, just as they'd done at the public market that summer. Finally, it would be a way for Jim Powell to keep a finger on the pulse of his community, cultivating intelligence assets and keeping tabs on everything happening around them.Even as Jim and his people work to open the roadhouse, they have no idea what's happening outside of their community. They know little about the war going on between political factions of their own government. They also have no idea that a great upheaval is about to take place that will change the course of the nation forever.