Jamie Duran 
The Golden Boy of the Apocalypse [EPUB ebook] 

The sun, humanity’s cradle, became its pyre. A solar flare of unimaginable force scorched the Earth, twisting life into monstrous new forms and leaving whispers of something… else in the ravaged air.  Eighteen-year-old Cole West, once the golden boy of his Appalachian town, watched his idyllic world crumble. But from the ashes of that lost future, something within him awakened: a sensitivity to the altered electromagnetic fields, a power echoing the earth’s ravaged heartbeat—a power he never asked for.
Now, Cole must protect his traumatized family in a world stalked by mutated predators and the Vultures, a fanatical cult led by the charismatic Silas Vane.  Silas preaches that the flare was a divine purge, and he sees Cole’s burgeoning power as a threat, a rival claim to divine mandate.  Caught in Silas’s obsessive gaze, Cole must navigate a landscape of fear and desperation, choosing between clinging to the ghost of his past or embracing the terrifying potential within.
Aided by Kristina Black, a brilliant but haunted tinkerer searching for atonement, and Scott Pitts, his childhood friend whose grief has forged him into a tactical prodigy, Cole forms a desperate resistance.  But leadership is a heavy burden, and every decision amplified by his newfound power ripples through their fragile community with devastating consequences.
Within the ruins of a forgotten research facility, a terrifying truth awaits: the flare was no accident. It was a failed experiment, one that awakened Cole’s abilities and hinted at a second, far more destructive flare waiting to be unleashed. And Silas, consumed by his warped vision, intends to trigger it, completing his twisted vision of divine cleansing.
Torn between the seductive whispers of his own power and the desperate need to protect his loved ones, Cole must confront the darkness within and choose his destiny.  Will he become the monster Silas fears, or the reluctant savior his broken world so desperately needs? The fate of what remains of humanity hangs in the balance, beneath a mutated sky pulsating with the promise of final annihilation.