OUR ALL-TIME FAVORITE APOCALYPTIC NOVELS

PDI Bookclub: 13 of our All-Time Favorite Apocalyptic Reads…

 

This blog post offers a listing of 13 works, in no particular order or ranking. Pulled from a variety of time periods and settings, their overall popularity attests to the assertion that each is worthy of being read by anyone who’s looking for an attention-arresting apocalyptic read.

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…AMAZON LINK…

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, two women seek to preserve the small treasury of books for future generations…

 

In the 21st Century, civilization is crumbling under the burden of overpopulation, economic chaos, petty wars, a horrific pandemic, and finally, a nuclear war that inevitably results in a deadly nuclear winter. On the Oregon Coast, two women, writer Mary Hope and painter Rachel Morrow, scratch out a minimal existence as farmers. In what little time is available to them, they embark on the project that they hope will offer the gift of knowledge to future generations of survivors―the preservation of the books: those available from their own collections and any they find at nearby abandoned houses.

For years, Mary and Rachel are satisfied to labor at this task in their solitude, but a day comes when they encounter a young man who comes from a group of survivors on the southern coast. They call their community the Ark. An incredibly hopeful meeting, it might seem, until Rachel and Mary realize that the Arkites believe in only one book―the Judeo-Christian bible―and regard all other books as blasphemous…

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.


…AMAZON LINK…

A post-apocalyptic retelling of the epic journey of Lewis and Clark

 

A super flu and nuclear fallout have made a husk of the world we know. A few humans carry on, living in outposts such as the Sanctuary-the remains of St. Louis-a shielded community that owes its survival to its militant defense and fear-mongering leaders. Then a rider comes from the wasteland beyond its walls. She reports on the outside world: west of the Cascades, rain falls, crops grow, civilization thrives. But there is danger too: the rising power of an army that pillages and enslaves every community they happen upon.

Against the wishes of the Sanctuary, a small group sets out in secrecy. Led by Lewis Meriwether and Mina Clark, they hope to expand their infant nation, and to reunite the States. But the Sanctuary will not allow them to escape without a fight…

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.


…AMAZON LINK…

Regarded as the single most-important influence in the development of the zombie-vampire genre...

 

Originally published in 1954, Richard Matheson’s masterpiece, I AM LEGEND, gave rise to the concept of a worldwide apocalypse due to disease and the soulless beings who would be its masters. It is viewed by many as the inspiration behind such classics as Night of the Living Dead.

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth…but he is not alone. Every other man, woman, and child on Earth has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville’s blood. By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn. How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.


…AMAZON LINK…

“The first satisfying end-of-the-world novel in years…” – The Cleveland Plain-Dealer

 

The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization.

But for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival—a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known…

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.


…AMAZON LINK…

From the bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale comes an apocalyptic trilogy…

 

Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.

 


…AMAZON LINK…

A Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roam the outposts of the Great Lakes

 

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.

 


…AMAZON LINK…

An original screenplay and major television event set in Maine’s remote Little Tall Island…

 

They’re calling it the Storm of the Century, and it’s coming hard. The residents of Little Tall Island have seen their share of nasty Maine Nor’easters, but this one is different. Not only is it packing hurricane-force winds and up to five feet of snow, it’s bringing something worse. Something even the islanders have never seen before. Something no one wants to see.

Just as the first flakes begin to fall, Martha Clarendon, one of Little Tall Island’s oldest residents, suffers an unspeakably violent death. While her blood dries, Andre Linoge, the man responsible sits calmly in Martha’s easy chair holding his cane topped with a silver wolf’s head…waiting…

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.

 



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Book Club, giving them the opportunity to contribute book
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…AMAZON LINK…

What would you give up to remember?

 

Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories. Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too…

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

Thanks to Susan Bernhard, author of WINTER LOON, for this book suggestion.
This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.


…AMAZON LINK…

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

 

In a wasteland born of rage and fear, populated by monstrous creatures and marauding armies, Earth’s last survivors have been drawn into a final battle between good and evil that will decide the fate of humanity. There’s Sister, who discovers a strange and transformative glass artifact in the destroyed Manhattan streets… Joshua Hutchins, the pro wrestler who takes refuge from the nuclear fallout at a Nebraska gas station… and Swan, a young girl possessing special powers, who travels alongside Josh to a Missouri town where healing and recovery can begin with her gifts. But the ancient force behind earth’s devastation is scouring the walking wounded for recruits for its relentless army… beginning with Swan herself…

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.


…AMAZON LINK…

A National Bestseller and winner of the Pulitzer Prize…

 

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation…

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.


…AMAZON LINK…

Book 1 of 3 in this highly-acclaimed series…

 

A sci-fi thriller that will forever change the way you look at Earth’s place in the solar system—and humanity’s future… In the near future, a new ice age has begun and humanity stands on the brink of extinction. Desperate for answers, scientists send probes into the solar system to take readings. Near Mars, a probe spots a mysterious object drifting toward the Sun. Is it the cause of the ice age? Or could it be our only hope of survival?

With time running out, NASA launches an international mission to make contact with the object. But it isn’t what anyone thought. In the dark of space, alone, the team makes a shocking discovery that will change the course of human history—and possibly end it…

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.


…AMAZON LINK…

The oral history of the great war between humans and zombies

 

We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by that terrible time? We have (temporarily?) defeated the living dead, but at what cost? Told in the haunting and riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z is the only record of the pandemic.

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years…

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.


…AMAZON LINK…

An epic of hope and horror, chaos and magic, and a journey that will unite a desperate group of people…

 

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.

As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City…

 

SEE FULL BOOK SUMMARY & REVIEWS ON AMAZON…

 

This book was included as a part of our CLASSIC READS Blog Series.
CLICK HERE to see all of the Blog Entries in the CLASSIC READS Series.

 


  • Please Note: Our reading lists are comprised of traditionally published works. There are many independently published authors who produce quality work, but there are an even larger number who produce work that could be of much higher quality with greater attention to editing and overall production value. Since we cannot vet them all, we have chosen to restrict the PDI Book Club lists to traditionally published work.
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