“What are the best Post-Apocalypse?” We looked at 325 of the top books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!

Although our Best Post-Apocalyptic book list has several similarities with the Dytopian Book List we created earlier this year, the subject matter is just different enough to provide several hundred unique apocalyptic titles. The top 37 books, all appearing on 3 or more “Best Apocalypse” book lists, are ranked below by how many of those lists they appeared on, including images, descriptions, and links. The remaining 250+ titles, as well as the articles we used, are listed alphabetically at the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

Top 37 Post Apocalypse Books

37 .) Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books

Cat’s Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat’s Cradle is one of the twentieth century’s most important works—and Vonnegut at his very best.

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36 .) Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• The Knowledge
• Listverse

“The Roadmakers left only ruins behind — but what magnificent ruins! Their concrete highways still cross the continent. Their cups, combs and jewelry are found in every Illyrian home. They left behind a legend,too — a hidden sanctuary called Haven, where even now the secrets of their civilization might still be found.

Chaka’s brother was one of those who sought to find Haven and never returned. But now Chaka has inherited a rare Roadmaker artifact — a book called A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court — which has inspired her to follow in his footsteps. Gathering an unlikely band of companions around her, Chaka embarks upon a journey where she will encounter bloodthirsty rirver pirates, electronic ghosts who mourn their lost civilization and machines that skim over the ground and air. Ultimately, the group will learn the truth about their own mysterious past.”

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35 .) Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Science Fiction Books
• Ash Tales
• The Survivalist Blog

Hugh Farnham was a practical, self-made man and when he saw the clouds of nuclear war gathering, he built a bomb shelter under his house. What he hadn’t expected was that when the apocalypse came, a thermonuclear blast would tear apart the fabric of time and hurl his shelter into a world with no sign of other human beings.

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34 .) Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Goodreads
• The Knowledge

“In this final volume of the internationally celebrated MaddAddam trilogy, the Waterless Flood pandemic has wiped out most of the population. Toby is part of a small band of survivors, along with the Children of Crake: the gentle, bioengineered quasi-human species who will inherit this new earth.

As Toby explains their origins to the curious Crakers, her tales cohere into a luminous oral history that sets down humanity’s past—and points toward its future. Blending action, humor, romance, and an imagination at once dazzlingly inventive and grounded in a recognizable world, MaddAddam is vintage Atwood—a moving and dramatic conclusion to her epic work of speculative fiction.”

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33 .) Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

Lists It Appears On:

• Zombie Pop
• Goodreads
• Maryse’s Book Blog

In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America where Benny Imura lives, every teenager must find a job by the time they turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half. Benny doesn’t want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash, but what he gets is a vocation that will teach him what it means to be human.

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32 .) The Children Of Men by P.D. James

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Science Fiction Books
• Goodreads

The human race has become infertile, and the last generation to be born is now adult. Civilization itself is crumbling as suicide and despair become commonplace. Oxford historian Theodore Faron, apathetic toward a future without a future, spends most of his time reminiscing. Then he is approached by Julian, a bright, attractive woman who wants him to help get her an audience with his cousin, the powerful Warden of England. She and her band of unlikely revolutionaries may just awaken his desire to live . . . and they may also hold the key to survival for the human race.

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31 .) The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• The Knowledge
• Listverse

“2047: For the small Pacific Coast community of San Onofre, life in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack is a matter of survival, a day-to-day struggle to stay alive. But young Hank Fletcher dreams of the world that might have been, and might yet be–and dreams of playing a crucial role in America’s rebirth.

The Wild Shore is the first novel in Kim Stanley Robinson’s highly-acclaimed Three Californias Trilogy.”

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30 .) Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse by John Joseph Adams

Lists It Appears On:

• Lit Reactor
• The Knowledge
• Goodreads

Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon — these are our guides through the Wastelands… From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today’s most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon.

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29 .) Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• For Reading Addicts
• Goodreads
• Maryse’s Book Blog

High school sophomore Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when an asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth, like “one marble hits another.” The result is catastrophic. How can her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis are wiping out the coasts, earthquakes are rocking the continents, and volcanic ash is blocking out the sun? As August turns dark and wintery in northeastern Pennsylvania, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.

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28 .) Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books
• The Knowledge
• Goodreads

Riddley Walker is a brilliant, unique, completely realized work of fiction. One reads it again and again, discovering new wonders every time through. Set in a remote future in a post-nuclear holocaust England (Inland), Hoban has imagined a humanity regressed to an iron-age, semi-literate state―and invented a language to represent it. Riddley is at once the Huck Finn and the Stephen Dedalus of his culture―rebel, change agent, and artist.

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27 .) The Death Of Grass by John Christopher

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Science Fiction Books
• The Knowledge
• Goodreads

The Chung-Li virus has devastated Asia, wiping out the rice crop and leaving riots and mass starvation in its wake. The rest of the world looks on with concern, though safe in the expectation that a counter-virus will be developed any day. Then Chung-Li mutates and spreads. Wheat, barley, oats, rye: no grass crop is safe, and global famine threatens. In Britain, where green fields are fast turning brown, the Government lies to its citizens, devising secret plans to preserve the lives of a few at the expense of the many. Getting wind of what’s in store, John Custance and his family decide they must abandon their London home to head for the sanctuary of his brother’s farm in a remote northern valley. And so they begin the long trek across a country fast descending into barbarism, where the law of the gun prevails, and the civilized values they once took for granted become the price they must pay if they are to survive.

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26 .) The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

Lists It Appears On:

• Post Apocalyptic Media
• The Knowledge
• Goodreads
• Abebooks

“Hig somehow survived the flu pandemic that killed everyone he knows. Now his wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley.

But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.”

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25 .) The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Sci-fi Books
• For Reading Addicts
• Tor
• Goodreads

“Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her “”our little genius.””

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.

The Girl With All the Gifts is a groundbreaking thriller, emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end.”

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24 .) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Tor
• Horror Novel Reviews
• Goodreads

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, “The Hunger Games,” a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed.

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23 .) The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books
• Flavorwire
• Goodreads

Set in the visionary future of Atwood’s acclaimed Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood is at once a moving tale of lasting friendship and a landmark work of speculative fiction. In this second book of the MaddAddam trilogy, the long-feared waterless flood has occurred, altering Earth as we know it and obliterating most human life. Among the survivors are Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, who is barricaded inside a luxurious spa. Amid shadowy, corrupt ruling powers and new, gene-spliced life forms, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move, but they can’t stay locked away.

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22 .) Wool by Hugh Howey

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books
• Zombie Pop
• Goodreads

“For suspense-filled, post-apocalyptic thrillers, Wool is more than a self-published ebook phenomenon―it’s the new standard in classic science fiction.

In a ruined and toxic future, a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Sheriff Holston, who has unwaveringly upheld the silo’s rules for years, unexpectedly breaks the greatest taboo of all: He asks to go outside.

His fateful decision unleashes a drastic series of events. An unlikely candidate is appointed to replace him: Juliette, a mechanic with no training in law, whose special knack is fixing machines. Now Juliette is about to be entrusted with fixing her silo, and she will soon learn just how badly her world is broken. The silo is about to confront what its history has only hinted about and its inhabitants have never dared to whisper. Uprising.
“

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21 .) Z For Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• The Knowledge
• The Survivalist Blog
• Goodreads

“Is anyone out there?

Ann Burden is sixteen years old and completely alone. The world as she once knew it is gone, ravaged by a nuclear war that has taken everyone from her. For the past year, she has lived in a remote valley with no evidence of any other survivors.

But the smoke from a distant campfire shatters Ann’s solitude. Someone else is still alive and making his way toward the valley. Who is this man? What does he want? Can he be trusted? Both excited and terrified, Ann soon realizes there may be worse things than being the last person on Earth.”

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20 .) Blindness by José Saramago

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• The Knowledge
• Abebooks
• Goodreads
• Flavorwire

A city is hit by an epidemic of “white blindness” which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man’s worst appetites and weaknesses-and man’s ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man’s will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.

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19 .) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Ash Tales
• For Reading Addicts
• Brightly
• The Guardian

“Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable.

Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now…”

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18 .) The Last Man by Mary Shelley

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Time
• The Knowledge
• Tor
• Bustle
• Flavorwire
• Abebooks

The Last Man is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by Mary Shelley, which was first published in 1826. The book tells of a future world that has been ravaged by a plague. The novel was harshly reviewed at the time, and was virtually unknown until a scholarly revival beginning in the 1960s. It is notable in part for its semi-biographical portraits of Romantic figures in Shelley’s circle, particularly Shelley’s late husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron.

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17 .) Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Lists It Appears On:

• For Reading Addicts
• The Knowledge
• Maryse’s Book Blog
• Brightly
• Tor
• Bustle
• Goodreads
• Business Insider

“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.”

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16 .) Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Horror Novels
• For Reading Addicts
• The Survivalist Blog
• Zombie Pop
• Goodreads
• Horror Novel Reviews
• Nerd Much

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.

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15 .) The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Horror Novels
• Best Science Fiction Books
• Time
• The Knowledge
• Lit Reactor
• Goodreads
• Flavorwire

In the novel that catapulted him to international acclaim upon its publication in 1962, J.G. Ballard’s mesmerizing and ferociously prescient The Drowned World imagines a terrifying future in which solar radiation and global warming has melted the ice caps, and Triassic-era jungles have overrun a submerged and tropical London. Set during the year 2145, the novel follows biologist Dr. Robert Kerans and his team of scientists as they confront a surreal cityscape populated by giant iguanas, albino alligators, and endless swarms of malarial insects. Nature has swallowed all but a few remnants of human civilization, and slowly, Kearns and his companions are transformed―both physically and psychologically―by this prehistoric environment. The Drowned World is both a thrilling adventure and haunting examination of the effects of environmental collapse on the human mind.

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14 .) Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books
• Best Science Fiction Books
• Flavorwire
• io9
• The Guilded Earlobe
• Nerd Much
• Abebooks
• Goodreads

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.

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13 .) The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Science Fiction Books
• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books
• Time
• The Knowledge
• Goodreads
• Nerd Much
• Abebooks
• The Survivalist Blog

“Bill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere twenty-four hours before is gone forever.

But to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the Triffids, strange plants that years before began appearing all over the world. The Triffids can grow to over seven feet tall, pull their roots from the ground to walk, and kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers. With society in shambles, they are now poised to prey on humankind. Wyndham chillingly anticipates bio-warfare and mass destruction, fifty years before their realization, in this prescient account of Cold War paranoia.”

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12 .) Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books
• For Reading Addicts
• Franklin Horton
• The Knowledge
• Abebooks
• Goodreads
• Listverse
• Nerd Much
• The Survivalist Blog

“Alas, Babylon.” Those fateful words heralded the end. When a nuclear holocaust ravages the United States, a thousand years of civilization are stripped away overnight, and tens of millions of people are killed instantly. But for one small town in Florida, miraculously spared, the struggle is just beginning, as men and women of all backgrounds join together to confront the darkness.

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11 .) Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Lists It Appears On:

• M.L. Banner
• Best Science Fiction Books
• Abebooks
• Goodreads
• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books
• Franklin Horton
• Zombie Pop
• Listverse
• The Survivalist Blog

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..

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10 .) One Second After by William R. Forstchen

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books
• Franklin Horton
• Post Apocalyptic Media
• The Knowledge
• M.L. Banner
• Tor
• Zombie Pop
• Nerd Much
• Goodreads

New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us a story which can be all too terrifyingly real…a story in which one man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a war that will send America back to the Dark Ages…A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP). A weapon that may already be in the hands of our enemies.

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9 .) The Passage by Justin Cronin

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Horror Novels
• Time
• For Reading Addicts
• Huffington Post
• Brightly
• Abebooks
• Nerd Much
• Goodreads
• Maryse’s Book Blog

An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival,The Passage is the story of Amy—abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Brad Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape—but he can’t stop society’s collapse. And as Amy walks alone, across miles and decades, into a future dark with violence and despair, she is filled with the mysterious and terrifying knowledge that only she has the power to save the ruined world.

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8 .) The Postman by David Brin

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Horror Novels
• Best Science Fiction Books
• Huffington Post
• The Knowledge
• Tor
• Goodreads
• Listverse
• Abebooks
• The Survivalist Blog

“This is the story of a lie that became the most powerful kind of truth. A timeless novel as urgently compelling as War Day or Alas, Babylon, David Brin’s The Postman is the dramatically moving saga of a man who rekindled the spirit of America through the power of a dream, from a modern master of science fiction.

He was a survivor–a wanderer who traded tales for food and shelter in the dark and savage aftermath of a devastating war. Fate touches him one chill winter’s day when he borrows the jacket of a long-dead postal worker to protect himself from the cold. The old, worn uniform still has power as a symbol of hope, and with it he begins to weave his greatest tale, of a nation on the road to recovery.”

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7 .) On the Beach by Nevil Shute

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books
• Best Horror Novels
• For Reading Addicts
• The Knowledge
• Brightly
• Abebooks
• Goodreads
• Flavorwire
• Listverse
• Horror Novel Reviews

After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud that is heading their way and bringing certain death to everyone in its path. Among them is an American submarine captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and children in the United States must be dead. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from somewhere near Seattle, and Captain Towers must lead his submarine crew on a bleak tour of the ruined world in a desperate search for signs of life. Both terrifying and intensely moving, On the Beach is a remarkably convincing portrait of how ordinary people might face the most unimaginable nightmare.

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6 .) Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books
• Best Science Fiction Books
• For Reading Addicts
• The Knowledge
• The Survivalist Blog
• Tor
• Goodreads
• Listverse
• The Guilded Earlobe
• Nerd Much
• Abebooks

A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he’d either dreaded or hoped for.

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5 .) I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• For Reading Addicts
• Huffington Post
• The Knowledge
• The Richest
• Zombie Pop
• Lit Reactor
• Abebooks
• Listverse
• Horror Novel Reviews
• Nerd Much
• Goodreads
• The Survivalist Blog

“Robert Neville may well be the last living man on Earth . . . but he is not alone.

An incurable plague has mutated every other man, woman, and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creatures who are determined to destroy him.

By day, he is a hunter, stalking the infected monstrosities through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn…”

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4 .) A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Sci-fi Books
• Time
• For Reading Addicts
• The Knowledge
• The Richest
• Zombie Pop
• Lit Reactor
• Goodreads
• Flavorwire
• Listverse
• Nerd Much
• Abebooks
• The Survivalist Blog

“In the depths of the Utah desert, long after the Flame Deluge has scoured the earth clean, a monk of the Order of Saint Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: holy relics from the life of the great saint himself, including the blessed blueprint, the sacred shopping list, and the hallowed shrine of the Fallout Shelter.

In a terrifying age of darkness and decay, these artifacts could be the keys to mankind’s salvation. But as the mystery at the core of this groundbreaking novel unfolds, it is the search itself—for meaning, for truth, for love—that offers hope for humanity’s rebirth from the ashes.”

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3 .) World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

Lists It Appears On:

• Ash Tales
• Best Science Fiction Books
• Time
• For Reading Addicts
• Post Apocalyptic Media
• The Knowledge
• The Richest
• Abebooks
• Flavorwire
• Horror Novel Reviews
• Nerd Much
• Best Horror Novels
• Zombie Pop
• Goodreads

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 from those apocalyptic years, 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.

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2 .) The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Lists It Appears On:

• Abebooks
• Ash Tales
• Best Horror Novels
• Best Sci-fi Books
• Brightly
• Flavorwire
• For Reading Addicts
• Goodreads
• Horror Novel Reviews
• Huffington Post
• Lit Reactor
• Maryse’s Book Blog
• Nerd Much
• Post Apocalyptic Media
• The Knowledge
• The Richest
• Time
• Tor
• Zombie Pop

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.

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1 .) The Stand by Stephen King

Lists It Appears On:

• Abebooks
• Ash Tales
• Best Horror Novels
• Best Science Fiction Books
• Brightly
• Business Insider
• Flavorwire
• For Reading Addicts
• Goodreads
• Horror Novel Reviews
• Huffington Post
• Lit Reactor
• M.L. Banner
• Nerd Much
• The Guardian
• The Guilded Earlobe
• The Knowledge
• The Richest
• The Survivalist Blog
• Time
• Tor
• Zombie Pop

“Stephen King’s apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published.

A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge—Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious “Dark Man,” who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them—and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.”

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The Additional Books Taking Place In A Post Apocalypse World

32 Best Apocalypse Book Sources/Lists