Here are 100 books that Gray fans have personally recommended if you like
Gray.
Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
In 2018, my wife and I walked the Pacific Crest Trail southbound with our four children—Canada to Mexico, 142 days, 2,650 miles. Aiden was sixteen, Georgie eleven. You cannot walk that far with your kids without thinking hard about what you are handing them, because you are handing it to them in real time, in front of you, all day. The books I keep returning to are the ones that take that seriously: inheritance that isn't money. A father's temper. A father's schemes. A way of staying put, or not. These are five that ask those questions, and the trail sharpened them for me.
The boy is every boy. He asks if they're still the good guys. The man says yes, carrying the fire. This transaction between a father and a son, stripped of everything else: carry what you're given, keep walking toward the promise, because it's who you are.
Everything soft has been burned off this book, and what's left is a father deciding, hour by hour, what he's handing over.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle).
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…
Gritty, fast-paced, and rooted in family and moral conflict, Darkest Light delivers high-stakes survival, deep emotional tension, and the slow unraveling of civilization after a devastating solar storm knocks out modern life.
When U.S. Marshal Cody Greer’s prisoner transport flight crashes, he and the dangerous man in his custody must…
I've enjoyed being frightened my whole life. From childhood, when I watched old monster movies on TV and read forbidden comic books by flashlight, I have always been a fan of scary films and books. To me, horror is one of the essential human emotions by which we interact with the world. The vampire has always been my favorite monster to fear. But over the years, I have watched bloodsuckers shift from monster to anti-hero and, finally, to sexy companion. Personally, I still prefer the old-school vampires of literature—nasty, mean, with blood-covered fangs and a cold, dead heart. Luckily, the scary OG vamps can still be found. Here are some of my favorites.
This book combines two of my favorite genres—horror and science fiction.
It was written in the early 1950s when science ruled, and the Atomic bomb threatened. The end of the world was a favorite science fiction topic back then, but Matheson (who wrote in both horror and sci-fi genres) did the unthinkable by combining classic vampire tropes with an apocalyptic thriller.
The fun for me is that there is not just one vampire, but a whole world of them! And the vampire hunter (always part of a team in most horror stories) is all alone in his fight for survival. The vamps are still nasty critters—they die but can reanimate by drinking human blood.
It’s a classic vampire fight throughout, until there is a surprise ending! It’s a Vampire-zombie-plague. How can you resist?
An acclaimed SF novel about vampires. The last man on earth is not alone ...Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth ...but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood. By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can one man survive like this?
I love to cheer for underdogs, and young women who are in this category have my special devotion. As a child of the 1960s, I remember a time when women didn’t have the same rights and opportunities as men, and we still seem to be fighting it today. Coming from a trauma-based childhood myself, I find myself comparing and contrasting coping mechanisms. Luckily, I haven’t found it necessary to kill anyone with dragon stone or jacked-up hornets so far. It delights me when these girls win, whether they game the system or fight their way with guns and knives.
I loved these books. The mystery of this society and its strict divisions fascinated me. I related to Tris immediately and her need for more excitement than her Abnegation family could provide. The detachment felt by so many of the characters in their daily roles resonated in my soul as something I have felt as well when confined by societal definition.
As I reflected in our own society, those at the top scheme to gain power for themselves, regardless of the effect on the rest of the people. I was proud of Tris and her colleagues, who joined together to create a better, more just society.
The explosive debut by No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth.
DIVERGENT - a major motion picture series.
For sixteen-year-old Tris, the world changes in a heartbeat when she is forced to make a terrible choice. Turning her back on her family, Tris ventures out, alone, determined to find out where she truly belongs.
Shocked by the brutality of her new life, Tris can trust no one. And yet she is drawn to a boy who seems to both threaten and protect her. The hardest choices may yet lie ahead....
Gritty, fast-paced, and rooted in family and moral conflict, Darkest Light delivers high-stakes survival, deep emotional tension, and the slow unraveling of civilization after a devastating solar storm knocks out modern life.
When U.S. Marshal Cody Greer’s prisoner transport flight crashes, he and the dangerous man in his custody must…
I am a young adult fantasy author and paranoid survivalist. I have spent years curating items for my end-of-days go-bag, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than hanging out in universes that are about to go bang!
I have a twelve-story climbing rope in my storeroom in case the building catches fire. There’s a fire blanket in there and a go-bag, too. Talking about bomb shelters does something to my blood. Preparations excite me; maybe it’s a competitive streak. When I come face-to-face with disaster, I want the groundwork taken care of so I can focus on what’s important, like grabbing my children, our passports, and snacks for the road.
Reading this book was like living through the nightmare of my dreams. Communities came together, scrounging for food and water. Disaster after disaster was ingeniously avoided with other people’s refuse, raw brain power, and the occasional bullet. Man was pitted against man, and the only prize was survival. It was everything I needed to get a true appreciation of the bricks and mortar surrounding me and the covers…
Set in the UK in the immediate aftermath of a mysterious illness which swept the country and left millions dead, the series follows the trials facing a reluctant hero, Dan, and the group he forms around him. They must battle the elements, find sufficient supplies and equipment to survive, and protect themselves against the most destructive force on the planet: other people. Banding together those he found along the way, he has to fight to keep them safe. To keep them alive. To survive.
I’ve always been a bit of a daydreamer and drawn to books that look through a window into the "other world." These novels, often dubbed dystopian, are reflections or exaggerations of our own world, and this always appealed to me. Like the question, "What if?”. The premise of “What if we lived in a world where you had to pay for words?” inspired my first novel, The Qwerty Man. Although I love fiction, I’m more of a nonfiction reader these days and interested in Buddhism (as an education, not religion), geography, and history. I’ve also written travel guidebooks for Lonely Planet and a children’s travel poetry book called Rhyme Travels.
This is actually a children’s novel that I first read at school, and it had a big impact on me. It’s not so well known, and there are other books called "The Guardians", so don’t get confused. This novel was written in 1970 and is set in the not-so-distant 2050.
The world that John Christopher created for this novel really captured my imagination, the difference between the overpopulated "Conurbs" (from conurbation) and the privileged "County" (a land of rolling hills and manor houses).
It’s not too far-fetched, and I think that’s why it spoke to me, as I could easily envisage the world of 13-year-old Rob Randall, who dreamed of escaping the state boarding school in the Conurbs to go to the County. Rob doesn’t fit in and digs a hole under the Barrier that separates the two worlds.
The moral of this story, set in the 21st century, is that freedom has to be won and kept by the young. It won the "Guardian" Prize for Children's Literature.
I’ve been pulled to rich, deep, complex fiction all my life. And I started building my own world when I was nine, adding to The Kota Series over two decades. Even while getting an English Literature degree, I was bored by simple worlds, characters, and stories and always found myself more interested in unique books and fresh reads. Really, the weirder the world, the better! That’s what I’ve continued to look for as a reader, and I’ve been lucky to encounter new authors that a lot of people might not have heard about yet. I’ve found some real world-building gems, like these I’ve discussed. I hope to find many more!
Some dystopian books show futures that aren’t relatable or believable at all. The whole story is a great mix of genres – not just dystopian but also sci-fi, thriller, and it reads like a crime novel with mobsters. The reachers themselves are telepathic/telekinetic and add a unique dimension to a story that otherwise could fit in with a non-fantasy setting. The world-building in this book is so effective exactly because it feels real. I was sucked in and sympathetic toward the reachers because you can easily put many different peoples in their place today, and the political and social aspects of the story feel frighteningly possible.
Rachel’s father called it the running game. Count the exits, calculate the routes, and always be ready to run. She is a Reacher, wanted by the government and the criminal underworld for her psionic powers.
Charlie and his brother John have a reputation for accomplishing the impossible. But after losing his family, Charlie is a broken mess and John is barely keeping him afloat. In desperation, they take a job from a ruthless crime lord, only to discover the girl they are hunting is a Reacher. One of their own kind.
With the help of dangerous and dubious allies, can…
Why hopepunk, and why me? Look, it’s no surprise that you can look around today and find all sorts of indicators that we are entering Heinlein’s “Crazy Years.” Imagining a dystopian or grimdark future isn’t difficult; all you have to do is read the news. But I think that we are writing the history of the future right now, by the choices we make every day. Writing stories that present that optimistic view of the future is not just the right thing to do but necessary, at least to me. As Heinlein said, “A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun…”
I discovered this book in 1985, reading and re-reading the book during high school and, eventually, buying the worn-out copy from the library before graduation.
While it may seem to be a dystopian story – it takes place after a nuclear-biological armageddon, after all – it’s an early example of hopepunk. Candy Smith-Foster repeatedly puts the good of others, including her macaw, Terry (short for Terry Dactyl), ahead of her own welfare. Not bad for a preteen facing the destruction of all she knew.
How much of an impact did this have on me? One of the reasons Kendra’s name starts as Foster-Briggs is to honor Palmer’s masterwork.
I am passionate about words and reading, and I love books that examine and record the chaos and mayhem of human existence. When I think about why I don’t want to die, it’s mainly because I can't bear the thought of missing out on what happens next. I feel privileged to be alive during this strange, fraught time of epochal change and to be able to use my skills as a writer to record not just the facts of what happens but how it feels to witness it all, the sensibility of our time, the recording of which is, I believe, the essence of great literature.
I was surprised at how much I loved The Wizard of the Kremlin. I was sorry to reach the last page. Why? The central character is a fascinating post-modern Machiavellian political strategist whose machinations set the global standard for disinformation as a political tool in the post-modern, digital world.
Vadim Baranov is based on a real-life character, Russian President Putin’s long-time former PR man and advisor, Vladislav Sirkov. The book is an imagined one-night meeting with the now-retired former reality TV producer, an utterly cynical but simultaneously surprisingly morally aware man, who unwinds the story of his career.
THE INTERNATIONAL SENSATION - a stunning work of political fiction about the rise to power of Putin's notorious spin doctor
'A great book, casting light on the creatures that crawl and slither behind the Kremlin's walls, on the mineral hardness of Putin, on the chaos engine that is his way of hurting us' John Sweeney
'An acute and timely dissection of Russian power, told through the eyes of a shadowy political advisor to Putin' Financial Times
'A fictional wandering through the dark corridors of the Kremlin' The Times, Biggest Books of the Season
I grew up in the ‘60s, when women were not in charge of anything much. I’ve always been fascinated by strong women. Amelia Earhart was a particular favorite, as were the suffragettes, Michelle Obama, and others. The strongest thing I’ve done in my life is to seize opportunities when they arise. I forged a second career that way, taking more than one leap of faith to do what I’ve always known I could do, be a writer. During and after my first career as a dental hygienist I took opportunities to be a newspaper wire editor, then a columnist, a magazine writer, an indexer, a nonfiction writer, and a novelist.
This is a new dystopian matriarchal novel, first in a series, that I’ve just discovered. Interestingly, it’s been described as the opposite of The Handmaid’s Tale.
The story is of a female-controlled society in which men are kept imprisoned and used as breeders. Neen, a female scientist who is interviewing men for their potential as sperm donors, begins to question the status quo when some of the men she meets don’t fit her preconceptions.
I was attracted to the book because its story is comparable to my book, but the tone and world-building are completely different. I loved the plot twists and the focus on ethical dilemmas.
" (...) The author outdid herself with this novel which is both entertaining and thought-provoking." Readers' Favorite ★★★★★
A genetically enhanced female. A male breeder fighting for his life in the Arena Dome. A world ruled by five clans of super-women. What could possibly be wrong with such a well-designed world?
When Neen and Tem's paths cross they uncover a web of lies spun so deep, that the truth seems like a mere illusion.
In the near-future propaganda-driven dystopian society of EVE, women control the world.
Young brilliant scientist, Neen Salvek of genetically enhanced Clan Triverser is assigned to screen…
I have always loved fictional works that explore deep truths of humanity and existence. As a teen struggling to understand my purpose and beliefs, I grew fond of dystopian books with subtle, hope-filled messages pointing to God as our salvation amid chaos. I loved the genre so much that I began writing a Christian dystopian novel of my own and self-published it at 19, weaving pieces of my testimony throughout the main character's inner journey. For me, a book is only as good as its characters, no matter how gripping the plot is. So, the books on this list contain some of the genre's most authentic, intricately written souls.
The Choosing is close to my heart because it highlights how the lowest in society, the outcasts, the unchosen, are chosen by God. The main character’s ongoing battle to see her worth struck a chord with me when I first read it as a teen struggling with my identity.
The overarching theme of this book is that when the world says you are worthless, God says you are priceless. The intriguing plot reeled me in from the first chapter, and the characters were so well fleshed out that I wished I could befriend them in person.
The Choosing is a beautifully crafted YA Christian dystopia, and finishing the book made me feel like I was saying goodbye to family.
2016 Christy Award Winner! (Young Adult category) 2016 Christy Award Finalist (First novel category) Like all citizens since the Ruining, Carrington Hale knows the importance of this day. But she never expected the moment she’d spent a lifetime preparing for―her Choosing ceremony―to end in disaster. Ripped from her family, she’ll spend her days serving as a Lint, the lowest level of society. She knows it’s her duty to follow the true way of the Authority.
But as Carrington begins this nightmare, rumors of rebellion rattle her beliefs. Though the whispers contradict everything she’s been told, they resonate deep within.
