Here are 100 books that On the Beach fans have personally recommended if you like
On the Beach.
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I’ve been a hiker for a long time, but it wasn’t until COVID-19 that I began to pay attention to the forests I was hiking through. I started with field guides to edible plants, then used Seek and iNaturalist apps to identify more species, and started taking macro photography of what I found. The more I paid attention to the minutiae of the natural world, the more I fell in love with every part of it. I’m worried our current priorities for climate change (preserving our way of life) are misguided. I’m worried about the future of all species. Every insect and every plant I’ve looked at close up is breathtakingly beautiful and worth saving.
As a fan of post-apocalyptic novels, I’ve always wondered what the world would actually look like without us. Weisman provides the answer in this book. He visits places that appear to have successfully moved on from humanity, such as the Białowiea forest, the Korean Demilitarized Zone, and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, showing nature thriving without us.
It’s both comforting and sobering, suggesting, yet again, that humans aren’t necessary to the world and, in fact, maybe the world is better off without us. The most jaw-dropping revelation for me was when a paleobiologist calmly stated that humans will go extinct eventually. All species do. But life on Earth will keep going.
Revised Edition with New Afterword from the Author
Time #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
Over 3 million copies sold in 35 Languages
"On the day after humans disappear, nature takes over and immediately begins cleaning house - or houses, that is. Cleans them right off the face of the earth. They all go."
What if mankind disappeared right now, forever... what would happen to the Earth in a week, a year, a millennium? Could the planet's climate ever recover from human activity? How would nature destroy our huge cities and our…
Winner of Indies Today’s 2021 Best Contemporary Novel
“A flawless literary gem."
Can anyone have both fame and love? Andrew O’Connell is Hollywood’s next big leading man, and the rakish Irishman is basking in his newfound celebrity while thirsting for both greater fame and for someone to love.
As a travel writer, author, broadcaster, speaker, and producer, I’ve reported from over 100 countries on 7 continents for major print and digital publications worldwide and networks like National Geographic and Travel Channel. I kicked off my career with a solo, 12-month round-the-world backpacking adventure, largely inspired by the formative books I read below. Embracing the world with insatiable curiosity, an open heart, an open mind, a sense of humour, and enthusiasm to share my stories clearly resonated. Here I am, two decades later, author of a half-dozen bestselling books that focus on my own eclectic travels, which will hopefully inspire others as these books inspired me.
A deserved, all-time classic, this book seems to transcend time to capture the spirit of wanderlust. I was young and impressionable when I read it for the first time, and it inspired a sense of profound restlessness to explore, grow, and hit the road to see for myself.
Neal Cassidy and Jack Kerouac are wild, occasionally unhinged protagonists, and their journey consists of hustling, romance, and drinking their way to a good time. Kerouac’s writing made me long for similar misadventures, where life is simple and finding the road is all that matters. Subversively, the novel promotes a full life and whole human experience, which makes working 9 to 5 that much more difficult.
The legendary novel of freedom and the search for authenticity that defined a generation, now in a striking new Pengiun Classics Deluxe Edition
Inspired by Jack Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naivete and wild ambition and imbued with Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed…
Like many people of my generation, I first discovered fantasy worlds through morning cartoons. Then came comics, but The Lord of the Rings changed everything for me, followed by Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and many more. I was an introverted child, often bored with ordinary life, and these worlds gave me somewhere to escape. Most importantly, I loved journeys that transformed characters, because they gave me hope that people could change too. I created fantasy realms in my head for years, but it took reaching my 40s to finally start putting them on paper. Today, I write and publish my own stories, including Chronicles of Ankhara, through AltWorld Comics.
I read this trilogy in 1998 when I had just finished high school.
Even then, I understood the book presented Frodo as the main hero, but I was always aware that without Sam, Frodo couldn't go far. He was just a gardener in the beginning, but when the books were over, he proved himself and even became the mayor of the Shire.
Seeing a regular guy carrying the main hero on his shoulders is something else. The decisions he made and his forcing himself to do more transformed him into a natural hero and a leader.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.
Winner of Indies Today’s 2021 Best Contemporary Novel
“A flawless literary gem."
Can anyone have both fame and love? Andrew O’Connell is Hollywood’s next big leading man, and the rakish Irishman is basking in his newfound celebrity while thirsting for both greater fame and for someone to love.
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…
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?
Even though I’m from humid DC, I’ve been drawn to the desert since I first set foot there as a kid on a family road trip. Now, I’m lucky enough to live in Utah, home to some of the world’s most legendary desert landscapes. One reason I love the desert is the otherworldly scenery: uncanny arches, bizarre hoodoos, and sand dunes you could disappear into. Before your eyes, layers of geologic time unfold in epochs. The desert is a great place for contemplating the past and future—and for great adventures, with endless sandstone walls to climb, slick rock to bike, and sagebrush-lined trails to hike.
This novel considers what will happen when the Southwest runs out of water, a very real possibility, especially with climate change, and something I care about as a Utah resident.
It pulls you into the action right away and keeps you on your toes until the very end, weaving together the narratives of a few different characters, including a journalist, a refugee from Texas, and a henchman (aka “the water knife”) who’s paid to destroy rival water supplies.
An alum of Oberlin College (like me!), Paolo Bacigalupi is a master of telling engaging stories about possible futures defined by climate change. I highly recommend this thoughtful novel and his other books!
From the international bestselling author of the Hugo and Nebula award-winning The Windup Girl, comes an electrifying thriller set in a world on the edge of collapse.
WATER IS POWER
The American Southwest has been decimated by drought, Nevada and Arizona skirmish over dwindling shares of the Colorado River, while California watches.
When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Las Vegas water knife Angel Velasquez is sent to investigate.
With a wallet full of identities and a tricked-out Tesla, Angel arrows south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape…
I have an idea. A conviction, let's call it, that humanity is not doomed. The Mad Max scenario where civilization collapses, thrusting us into an anarchic hellscape in which the living envy the dead, is totally unrealistic and not likely to happen. So let's imagine a post-apocalyptic scenario in which people come together to help each other, to save what knowledge they can, to build something new and useful. To learn the lessons from the destruction that came before. This is what I tried to imagine in my novel Bannerless, and this is why this topic interests me so much.
So, this is a novel about a world in which a global pandemic means that large gatherings are illegal and everyone has adapted to life at home in isolation. It was published in 2019, and I read it summer of 2020. I'm not sure I've ever read anything that was this spookily, horrifyingly prophetic. That said, it's also really punk and ultimately uplifting. One of the characters is the lead singer of the band who it turns out inadvertently gave the last public concert ever, and she's trying to revive live music with underground concerts. Another character is the virtual talent scout who joins her cause. The story is about how you peel yourself out of trauma and disaster to find community again. Be warned, at this historical moment this one's a bit of a kick in the teeth.
'In A Song for a New Day, liberty and creative endeavour are compromised by political and socioeconomic reality. Pinsker presents a frighteningly real near-future US [and] movingly charts Rosemary's coming-of-age story as her world and Luce's collide' Guardian
BEFORE Luce is on the road. Success is finally within grasp: her songs are getting airtime; the venues she's playing are getting larger. But mass shootings, bombings and now a strange contagion are closing America down around her...
AFTER Rosemary is too young to remember the Before. She's grown up in a world where proximity to others is not only unusual, it…
I have an idea. A conviction, let's call it, that humanity is not doomed. The Mad Max scenario where civilization collapses, thrusting us into an anarchic hellscape in which the living envy the dead, is totally unrealistic and not likely to happen. So let's imagine a post-apocalyptic scenario in which people come together to help each other, to save what knowledge they can, to build something new and useful. To learn the lessons from the destruction that came before. This is what I tried to imagine in my novel Bannerless, and this is why this topic interests me so much.
When you study the long arc of history you begin to suspect that apocalypses aren't just inevitable, they're common. And so is survival, which is a really heartening thought. Human beings are crazily adaptable, and our ability to come together in communities (ideally, when we're at our best, which granted isn't always and is hard to see sometimes) will aid our survival. Annalee Newitz tells us how this is has happened before, and how it can happen again.
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in Science & Technology
In its 4.5 billion-year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How? In this brilliantly speculative work of popular science, Annalee Newitz, editor of io9.com, explains that although global disaster is all but inevitable, our chances of long-term species survival are better than ever. Scatter, Adapt, and Remember explores…
I have always been fascinated by stories where faith, myth, and the human condition collide in unexpected ways. The kinds of books that don’t just tell a story, but make you question God, morality, suffering, and what remains of humanity when everything collapses. These are the kinds of stories that stay in your head long after you finish reading. They mix faith, myth, and the end of the world in ways that feel strangely personal and unsettling. They are not simple fantasy, not traditional horror, and not religious fiction in the usual sense. They sit in a strange space where belief, suffering, and human nature all collide.
I love this book because it turns the biblical idea of good versus evil into something frighteningly human and tangible.
What stayed with me was not the plague or the supernatural elements, but how ordinary people reveal who they truly are when the world collapses. I felt constantly unsettled by how thin the line is between morality and survival.
This story made me reflect deeply on faith, corruption, and the fragile nature of civilization in ways that few novels ever have.
Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by virus and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published.
Soon to be a television series.
'THE STAND is a masterpiece' (Guardian). Set in a virus-decimated US, King's thrilling American fantasy epic, is a Classic.
First come the days of the virus. Then come the dreams.
Dark dreams that warn of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the charnel house and Prince of…
Why me / this list? Well, as a kid of parents whose cities were blitzed, I spent my early years in a tiny English village, eventually walking to school through the graveyard of a 12th-century church. We moved to Canada when I was eight, and a whole new history bloomed – Iroquois and coureur de bois were magnetic! As I evolved into a voracious reader, Lee, Orwell, and Vonnegut got me into the complexity of people. Now I’m compelled to read (and write) stories centered on how experiences shape us as individuals, and as societies.
P.S. Shortly after my departure, archeologists found Roman ruins under that tiny English village.
Published just two days after World War II was declared in Europe in 1939, and two years before the United States would enter the conflict, Dalton Trumbo’s powerfully emotional story centering on horribly wounded American World War I soldier Joe Bonham sparked controversy for its anti-war stance, while also winning the 1939 National Book Award for Most Original Book.
Apparently inspired by an article Trumbo had read about the Prince of Wales paying an emotional visit to Curley Christian, a Canadian soldier who’d survived the loss of all four limbs at the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge. Johnny Got His Gun is simply a gut-wrenching read that took me to places no one should really go.
Let’s just say I was a different 14-year-old the day I closed its covers and sat thinking for a very, very long time.
“Trumbo sets this story down almost without pause or punctuation and with a fury accounting to eloquence.”—The New York Times
This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered—not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives. . . . This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome . . . but so is war.
