Having trouble finding a book for this category? Here are some of our recommendations.
The road
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Year: 2006
ISBN: 9780307387899
Abstract: In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son make their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the last remnants of their own humanity.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library. Audiobook always available on hoopla.
Also works for: Made into movie, Black cover
Year one
Author: Nora Roberts
Year: 2017
ISBN: 9781250122957
Abstract: It began on New Year's Eve. The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed -- and more than half of the world's population was decimated. Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magic rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river -- or in the ones you know and love the most.
The dog stars
Author: Peter Heller
Year: 2012
ISBN: 9780307959942
Abstract: Surviving a pandemic disease that has killed everyone he knows, a pilot establishes a shelter in an abandoned airport hangar before hearing a random radio transmission that compels him to risk his life to seek out other survivors.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Also works for: Has stars on the cover or in the title
Severance
Author: Ling Ma
Year: 2018
ISBN: 9780374261597
Abstract: Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers? A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.
Audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Also works for: One-word title
Y, the Last Man : Book One
Author: Brian K. Vaughan, writer ; Pia Guerra, penciller ; José Marzán, Jr., inker
Year: 2014
ISBN: 9781401219215
Abstract: In 2002, the world changes forever. Every man, every boy, every mammal with a Y chromosome everywhere on Earth suddenly collapses and dies. With the loss of more than half the planet's population, the gears of society grind to a halt, and a world of women are left to pick up the pieces and try to keep civilization from collapsing entirely.
Ebook always available on hoopla.
Also works for: Graphic novel, Made into/from a TV series
Parable of the sower
Author: Octavia E. Butler ; foreword by LeVar Burton
Year: 2023
ISBN: 9781538732182
Abstract: "The collector's edition of the acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror by the visionary Octavia Butler, now with a new introduction by LeVar Burton. When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny." -- Amazon.com.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library. Audiobook always available on hoopla.
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Author: Margaret Atwood
Year: 2003
ISBN: 9780385503853
Abstract: A novel of the future explores a world that has been devastated by ecological and scientific disasters.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library. Audiobook always available on hoopla.
Zone one : a novel
Author: Colson Whitehead
Year: 2011
ISBN: 9780385528078
Abstract: Mark Spitz and his squad of three "sweepers" move through Zone One of lower Manhattan, a walled-off enclave scheduled for resettlement in the aftermath of a zombie plague. The great masses of the undead have been violently dispatched by a Marine detachment. It falls to Spitz and his fellows to take care of the handful that remain, as well as a second-tier of the infected known as "stragglers": zombies who have bypassed the cannibalistic urges of their more lethal fellows in favor of a hollow-eyed, eerily nostalgic repetition of some mundane act.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Station eleven : a novel
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Year: 2015
ISBN: 9780804172448
Abstract: One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production. Jeevan Chaudhary, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside as life disintegrates outside. This 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.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Also works for: Made into/from a TV series
Wanderers : a novel
Author: Chuck Wendig
Year: 2019
ISBN: 9780399182105
Abstract: A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world's last hope. In the tradition of The Stand and Station Eleven comes a gripping saga that weaves an epic tapestry of humanity into an astonishing tale of survival. Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and are sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other "shepherds" who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead. For on their journey, they will discover an America convulsed with terror and violence, where this apocalyptic epidemic proves less dangerous than the fear of it. As the rest of society collapses all around them--and an ultraviolent militia threatens to exterminate them--the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart--or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.-- Publisher's description.
Audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Dies the Fire
Year: 2005
ISBN: 9780451460417
Abstract: An electrical storm over the island of Nantucket causes all electrical devices in the United States to cease function. But even as some people band together to help one another, others are building armies for conquest.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library. Audiobook always available on hoopla.
Feed
Author: Mira Grant
Year: 2010
ISBN: 9780316081054
Abstract: "The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we had created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. Now, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives--the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will [come] out, even if it kills them."--P. [4] of cover.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library. Ebook and audiobook always available on hoopla.