Books for the End of the World

If the world is ending, I just hope there’s a delightful little wide-eyed robot that likes watching old movies and has a cockroach best friend to keep us company and give humanity some hope for life after the apocalypse. But just in case, it might also help to read up on some awesome, and at times eerie, novels that face the end of the world. Whether preparing for an imminent catastrophic event, or trying to survive in a strange new place after life as we know it has ended, this set of novels explores the many possibilities of post-apocalyptic life.

The Great Big One

by J. C. Geiger

With natural disasters and nuclear war threatening their small town, two twin brothers find themselves enraptured by mysterious music that could change the course of their lives.

Everyone in Clade City knows their days are numbered. The Great Cascadia Earthquake will destroy their hometown and reshape the entire West Coast—if they survive long enough to see it. Nuclear war is increasingly likely. Wildfires. Or another pandemic. To Griff, the daily forecast feels partly cloudy with a chance of apocalyptic horsemen.

Griff’s brother, Leo, and the Lost Coast Preppers claim to be ready. They’ve got a radio station. Luminous underwater monitors. A sweet bunker, and an unsettling plan for “disaster-ready rodents.” But Griff’s more concerned about what he can do before the end times. He’d like to play in a band, for one. Hopefully with Charity Simms. Her singing could make the whole world stop.

When Griff, Leo, and Charity stumble upon a mysterious late-night broadcast, one song changes everything. It’s the best band they’ve ever heard—on a radio signal even the Preppers can’t trace. They vow to find the music, but aren’t prepared for where their search will take them. Or for what they’ll risk, when survival means finding the one thing you cannot live without.

Agnes at the End of the World

by Kelly McWilliams

The Handmaid's Tale meets Wilder Girls in this genre-defying novel about a girl who escapes a terrifying cult only to discover that the world Outside has succumbed to a viral apocalypse.

Agnes loves her home of Red Creek—its quiet, sunny mornings, its dusty roads, and its God. There, she cares tirelessly for her younger siblings and follows the town's strict laws. What she doesn't know is that Red Creek is a cult, controlled by a madman who calls himself a prophet.

Then Agnes meets Danny, an Outsider boy, and begins to question what is and isn't a sin. Her younger brother, Ezekiel, will die without the insulin she barters for once a month, even though medicine is considered outlawed. Is she a sinner for saving him? Is her sister, Beth, a sinner for dreaming of the world beyond Red Creek?

As the Prophet grows more dangerous, Agnes realizes she must escape with Ezekiel and leave everyone else, including Beth, behind. But it isn't safe Outside, either: A viral pandemic is burning through the population at a terrifying rate. As Agnes ventures forth, a mysterious connection grows between her and the Virus. But in a world where faith, miracles, and cruelty have long been indistinguishable, will Agnes be able to choose between saving her family and saving the world?

Ship Breaker

by Paolo Bacigalupi

This thrilling bestseller and National Book Award Finalist is a gritty, high-stakes adventure of a teenage boy faced with conflicting loyalties, set in a dark future America devastated by the forces of climate change.

In America’s flooded Gulf Coast region, oil is scarce, but loyalty is scarcer. Grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts by crews of young people. Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota–and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or by chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it’s worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life….

In this powerful novel, Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a fast-paced adventure set in the vivid and raw, uncertain future of his companion novels The Drowned Cities and Tool of War.

The Young World

by Chris Weitz

Welcome to New York, a city ruled by teens.

After a mysterious Sickness wipes out the rest of the population, the young survivors assemble into tightly run tribes. Jefferson, the reluctant leader of the Washington Square tribe, and Donna, the girl he’s secretly in love with, have carved out a precarious existence among the chaos.

But when a fellow tribe member discovers a clue that may hold the cure for the Sickness, five teens set out on a life-altering road trip, exchanging gunfire with enemy gangs, escaping cults and militias, braving the wilds of the subway–all in order to save humankind.

This first novel from acclaimed film writer/director Chris Weitz is the heart-stopping debut of an action-packed trilogy.

After (Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia)

Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

If the melt-down, flood, plague, the third World War, new Ice Age, Rapture, alien invasion, clamp-down, meteor, or something else entirely hit today, what would tomorrow look like? Some of the biggest names in YA and adult literature answer that very question in this short story anthology, each story exploring the lives of teen protagonists raised in catastrophe’s wake-whether set in the days after the change, or decades far in the future.

New York Times bestselling authors Gregory Maguire, Garth Nix, Susan Beth Pfeffer, Carrie Ryan, Beth Revis, and Jane Yolen are among the many popular and award-winning storytellers lending their talents to this original and spellbinding anthology.

Hawk

by James Patterson

In this dark dystopian tale, 17-year-old Hawk is growing up hard and fast in post-apocalyptic New York City—until a perilous destiny forces her to take flight and protect her home.

Where is Maximum Ride?

Ten years ago a girl with wings fought to save the world. But then she disappeared.

Now she's just a fading legend, remembered only in stories.

Hawk doesn't know her real name. She doesn't know who her family was, or where they went. The only thing she remembers is that she was told to wait on a specific street corner, at a specific time, until her parents came back for her.

She stays under the radar to survive . . . until a destiny that's perilously close to Maximum Ride's forces her to take flight. Someone is coming for her.

But it's not a rescue mission. It's an execution.