Post-Apocalyptic Books
What happens when the world ends and only a handful of survivors remain?
This list of best post-apocalyptic books runs the gamut from classics by acclaimed authors to more recent works addressing contemporary problems.
1984 : the graphic novel
Nesti, Fido, 1971- author, artist
2021
One of the most influential books of the twentieth century gets the graphic treatment in this first-ever adaptation of George Orwell's 1984. Orwell's best-known work of unrelenting dystopian realism warns against totalitarianism. The story is told from the point of view of Winston Smith, a functionary of the Ministry of Truth whose work involved the "correction" of all records each time the "Big Brother" decided that the truth had changed.
Always coming home : a novel
Le Guin, Ursula K., 1929-2018, author, cartographer.
2023
"Midway through her career, Ursula K. Le Guin embarked on one of her most detailed, impressive literary projects, a novel that took more than five years to complete. Blending story and fable, poetry, artwork, and song, Always Coming Home is this legendary writer's fictional ethnography of the Kesh, a people of the far future living in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley. Having survived ecological catastrophe brought on by relentless industrialization, the Kesh are a peaceful people who reject governance and the constriction of genders, limit population growth to prevent overcrowding and preserve resources, and maintain a healthy community in which everyone works to contribute to its well-being. This richly imagined story unfolds through a series of narrated "translations" that illuminate individual lives, including a woman named Stone Telling, who travels beyond the Valley and comes to reside with another tribe, the patriarchal Condor people. With sharp poignancy, Le Guin explores the complexities of the Kesh's unified society and presents to us-in exquisite detail-their lives, histories, adventures, customs, language, and art. In addition to poems and folk tales, Le Guin created verse dramas, records of oral performances, recipes, and even an alphabet and glossary of the Kesh language. The novel is illustrated throughout with drawings by artist Margaret Chodos and includes a musical component-original recordings of Kesh songs that Le Guin collaborated on with composer Todd Barton-bringing this utterly original and compelling world to life"-- Provided by publisher.
The city we became
Jemisin, N. K., author
2020
Every great city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got six. But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs in the halls of power, threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.
Cloud atlas : a novel
Mitchell, David (David Stephen), author
2004
"Cloud Atlas" is a novel of cradled narratives. The first narrative turns out to be half a fallen-apart book found by the character in the second narrative, which turns out to be a video paused by a character in the third narrative, which turns out to be a manuscript being read by the man of letters, and on it goes.
Dread nation
Ireland, Justina, author
2018
When families go missing in Baltimore County, Jane McKeene, who is studying to become an Attendant, finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy that has her fighting for her life against powerful enemies.
Hell followed with us
White, Andrew Joseph, author
2022
"Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him--the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world's population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can't get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with. But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC's leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji's darkest secret: the cult's bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all. Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick's terms...until he discovers the ALC's mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own."--Amazon.
The Hunger Games
Collins, Suzanne, author
2018
In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.
Moon of the crusted snow
Rice, Waubgeshig, 1979-, author
2018
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow. The community leadearship loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again.
Oryx and Crake
Atwood, Margaret, 1939- author
2003
Atwood projects us into a conceivable future of our own world, an outlandish yet wholly believable place left devastated in the wake of ecological and scientific disaster and populated by characters who will continue to inhabit your dreams long after the book is closed.
Parable of the talents
Butler, Octavia E., author
2016
Parable of the Talents celebrates the classic Butlerian themes of alienation and transcendence, violence and spirituality, slavery and freedom, separation and community, to astonishing effect, in the shockingly familiar, broken world of 2032. Long awaited, Parable of the Talents is the continuation of the travails of Lauren Olamina, the heroine of 1994's Nebula-Prize finalist, bestselling Parable of the Sower. Parable of the Talents is told in the voice of Lauren Olamina's daughter--from whom she has been separated for most of the girl's life--with sections in the form of Lauren's journal. Against a background of a war-torn continent, and with a far-right religious crusader in the office of the U.S. presidency, this is a book about a society whose very fabric has been torn asunder, and where the basic physical and emotional needs of people seem almost impossible to meet.
The passage : a novel
Cronin, Justin
2010
A security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment that only six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte can stop.
The stand : a novel
King, Stephen, 1947- author
2012
A monumentally devastating plague leaves only a few survivors who, while experiencing dreams of a battle between good and evil, move toward an actual confrontation as they migrate to Boulder, Colorado.
Station eleven
Mandel, Emily St. John, 1979- author
2014
One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time-from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains-this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.