Here are 83 books that Red Dirt Zombies fans have personally recommended if you like
Red Dirt Zombies.
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I’ve been an avid horror fan since staying up late and watching old monster movies on the television when I was a kid. Zombies were always my favorite and after reading hundreds of zombie books I thought I could write with a unique perspective. Drawing from years of military, trucking, and prepping experience, I wrote the Zombie Road series as a tale that offered more hope than doom and gloom. Most of the characters are based on real people so they have real personalities, real hopes and dreams, and real flaws. If you decide to read the series and want to be surprised by the story arc, don’t read too many reviews, just dive right in.
Shelman is one of the Godfathers of indie zompoc. He was an early adaptor to the Amazon self-publishing model and his series, Dead Hunger, was one of the first I read. It starts at the beginning of the outbreak and covers the ups and downs over decades in the 10-book series. Great characters, compelling science, and heartfelt situations kept me reading. The villains were unique, the heroes were likable and funny and the story moves along quickly. There is lots of action and some over-the-top situations as the band of survivors try to stay alive and rebuild a life for themselves. Shelman narrates his own books (and many others) and is one of the absolute best voice actors I’ve listened to.
Something happened to the earth. Inexplicable. Not a product of man, but of nature.
Now Flex Sheridan and Gem Cardoza must do all they can to protect Flex's six-year-old neice Trina and find ways to survive a massive outbreak that has caused most of humankind to metamorphose into the walking dead.
Enter Hemphill "Hemp" Chatsworth. He is a scientist who has expertise in epidemics, as well as a mechanical engineering degree. He's doing all the important work, setting up a mobile lab in which to experiment on the zombies and learn what drives them. But he must also learn what…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I’ve been an avid horror fan since staying up late and watching old monster movies on the television when I was a kid. Zombies were always my favorite and after reading hundreds of zombie books I thought I could write with a unique perspective. Drawing from years of military, trucking, and prepping experience, I wrote the Zombie Road series as a tale that offered more hope than doom and gloom. Most of the characters are based on real people so they have real personalities, real hopes and dreams, and real flaws. If you decide to read the series and want to be surprised by the story arc, don’t read too many reviews, just dive right in.
Jaime is a newcomer in the writing world but you wouldn’t know that by reading her books. Her Chronicles of the Undead series starts out on day one and captures all of the chaos and uncertainty and violence of a zombie outbreak. The book centers on two men caught up in the chaos at their construction jobs in downtown Cleveland. It’s a classic tale of finding safety, finding their families, and doing what needs to be done. As of summer 2020, there are two books in the series but she is writing more and I can’t wait to read the next one.
Lifelong best friends Max and Jesse are six stories high working a construction job, when the gates of Hell explode in downtown Cleveland. They bear witness to the furious beginning of the Zombie Apocalypse. Trapped in the middle of the city, the pair must fight their way back to the only thing that matters… their families.
As the two struggle to make their way out of the city, their families must do whatever is necessary to survive. Max’s family is in a race against time to fortify their suburban castle against…
The moment I read the first page of The Stand, I was hooked on apocalypse stories. The good ones make you question your lifestyle and the bad ones give you hours of tragic entertainment. You’ll be stockpiling rice and toilet paper, and leaving on the hall light against the dark. You’ll be scanning obscure headlines for news of rapidly-spreading diseases and shoveling your own fallout shelter at the first sign of nuclear saber-rattling. Apocalyptic novels can make you into a more prepared person—or a crazy one—and sometimes they’ll even become your career. My recommendation list helped shape me into the writer I am today… sorry about that.
This is a gem of a novel and one that should not ever be skipped over. The author’s humor bleeds through every page. This novel, and the entire series, literally had me in tears of laughter at many points. Even though the comedic aspect does tend to be the overarching theme, it does not detract from the horror of the situations the main characters find themselves in. The main character is obviously based on the author himself, as well as his family and his dog. This is fascinating because many authors may take certain aspects of themselves or loved ones and create characters with a trait or two, but Tufo goes all out and just makes himself a (hopefully!) exaggerated character in his own novel. The series starts small and centralized and builds itself into an entire world (or ten) of horrific and hilarious zombie craziness. You love many of…
Zombie Fallout It was a flu season like no other. With fears of contracting the H1N1 virus running rampant throughout the country, people lined up in droves to try an attain one of the coveted vaccines. What was not known, was the effect this largely untested, rushed to market, inoculation was to have on the unsuspecting throngs. Within days, feverish folk throughout the country, convulsed, collapsed and died, only to be re-born. With a taste for brains, blood and bodies, these modern day zombies scoured the lands for their next meal. Overnight the country became a killing ground for the…
Jake Sledge, a rugged ex-cop turned private eye, teams up with his colossal partner Bobo to navigate the gritty streets of River City.
A murdered lawyer drags them into a web of political intrigue, neo-Nazi thugs, and bloody showdowns. With sharp wit and hard-hitting action, Jake tackles scumbags the only…
I’ve been an avid horror fan since staying up late and watching old monster movies on the television when I was a kid. Zombies were always my favorite and after reading hundreds of zombie books I thought I could write with a unique perspective. Drawing from years of military, trucking, and prepping experience, I wrote the Zombie Road series as a tale that offered more hope than doom and gloom. Most of the characters are based on real people so they have real personalities, real hopes and dreams, and real flaws. If you decide to read the series and want to be surprised by the story arc, don’t read too many reviews, just dive right in.
Haywood starts out on day one and the action rarely slows down. Howie and Dave are some of the best characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading about and what sets this series apart is the location. Haywood is British and the series is set in England naturally. The challenges are different, the landscape is different and the undead are definitely different. Over the 25-book series, and still going strong, the undead evolve and change and it’s a fascinating tale to follow.
The Undead. The First Seven Days Compilation Edition.The UK's #1 horror series.A deadly infection spreads across Europe.The Undead Series: A terrifying account of one man desperately struggling to survive this harrowing event.rrhaywood.com
I heart zombies. I have always loved them. Even when I was a baby. Every time I could watch a zombie movie, I did. I even secretly rented zombie films from Blockbuster Video (remember those?) and the library without my parents knowing.
Some people hate the idea of combining bloggers and zombies, but I loved that it was something different and new. But what I loved most about this series is that it offered us a glimpse into a world after the zombie apocalypse.
The first book is the best but the whole series is worth reading.
Now, for the first time, Mira Grant's complete New York Times bestselling NEWSFLESH trilogy is available in a single volume.
"Alive or dead, the truth won't rest. My name is Georgia Mason, and I am begging you. Rise up while you can."
The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.
Now, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail…
I love novels that show female characters finding their way in life, and especially women who use writing to help themselves to grow and evolve. Finding my own voice through writing has been my way of staking my claim in the world. It hasn’t always been easy for us to tell our stories, but when we do, we’re made stronger and more complete. The protagonist of my novel The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann fights hard to tell her own story. I know something about being held back by male-dominated expectations and Victoria’s situation could easily take place today. But when women writers finally find their voices, the works they create are of great value.
A complex, deeply researched epic, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois spans multiple generations of a Southern Black family, from slavery to the present.
The story takes place in several different worlds: an African village, the experience of Southern sharecroppers, sorority life at a Black college. Author Honoree Fanonne Jeffers creates a huge cast of sympathetic characters, especially the protagonist, Ailey Pearl Garfield.
I loved how Ailey’s character evolves through the years and settings until we understand that she has taken the many stories passed down to her and is using them in her PhD thesis, and that we are essentially reading her research. It’s such a clever way of weaving a woman writer’s tale into the story of many generations of a heroic family.
An instant New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today Bestseller • AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times • Time • Washington Post • Oprah Daily • People • Boston Globe • BookPage • Booklist • Kirkus • Atlanta Journal-Constitution • Chicago Public Library
Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel • Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction • Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction • Nominee for…
Caroline Herschel has always lived in the shadows. Beholden to her wildly popular older brother, William, who rescued her from servitude, she's worked hard to build a life for herself – one where she can go unnoticed and repay the debt she believes she owes him. But when her brother…
I'm a contemporary African American writer born and raised in the South. It was this sense of place that has shaped my artistic sensibilities. I was in my mid-twenties, searching, seeking for answers and direction on my own, when other Black southern writers were instrumental in pointing me in the right direction: Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Walker, Ernest J Gaines, Alice Walker, Arna Bontemps, Albert Murray, just to name a handful. Their writings were revelatory. The same issues that they were dealing with a generation earlier were the same ones I was struggling with every day. It opened my eyes, mind, heart and creativity to put into perspective what I was feeling.
In 1946, two African American couples were lynched in rural Georgia by a white mob. Grooms fictionalized that account from the perspective of one of the victims, perpetrators, and a pre-teen eyewitness and in the process comes to terms with redemption, race, and violence not only in the South but in the nation as well. Grooms has the ability to juxtapose the beauty of the Southern landscape with the horrors that have occurred there with breathtaking imagery and conciseness. This book not just deals with the victims of such horrific acts, but the often untold damage done to the progeny of those who perpetrated the act. This is a fiction that will always be relevant as long as a nation struggles with injustice, oppression, and white supremacy.
An engrossing novel based on the true story of the 1946 lynching of two black couples in Georgia
Inspired by true events, The Vain Conversation reflects on the 1946 lynching of two black couples in Georgia from the perspectives of three characters-Bertrand Johnson, one of the victims; Noland Jacks, a presumed perpetrator; and Lonnie Henson, a witness to the murders as a ten-year-old boy. Lonnie's inexplicable feelings of culpability drive him in a search for meaning that takes him around the world and ultimately back to Georgia, where he must confront Jacks and his own demons, with the hopes that…
I grew up in a coastal landscape and aspired from childhood to read my way through it by knowing its plants. I once watched a master carver at work on a totem pole at a living museum and could relate the wood curls falling from his adze to the giant cedars growing at the site. As a university student, I worked in a botanical show garden, learning so much about the provenance of plants and what they tell us about geography, history, and beauty. These experiences, in childhood and early adulthood, formed my lifelong interest in ethnobotany, nomenclature, and mythology, explored through the lens of creative work.
I am always grateful when a book introduces me to a place completely unknown to me. Janisse Ray’s gorgeous memoir does exactly that: southern Georgia's disappearing longleaf pine forests. Her introduction to this landscape is a gift to readers, who will yearn, as she does, for its regeneration after a century of exploitation.
Raised in a junkyard along a busy highway, this writer learned the land’s history through the stories of her parents and others; she learned the intricate ecology of the pines and their companion flora and fauna, almost lost to industry and greed. Lyrical and beautifully written, Ray’s evocations of complex plant communities linger in the mind long after you’ve finished the book.
From the memories of a childhood marked by extreme poverty, mental illness, and restrictive fundamentalist Christian rules, Janisse Ray crafted a "heartfelt and refreshing" (New York Times) memoir that has inspired thousands to embrace their beginnings, no matter how humble, and to fight for the places they love. This new edition updates and contextualizes the story for a new generation and a wider audience desperately searching for stories of empowerment and hope.
Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1, hidden from Florida-bound travelers by hulks of old cars. In language at once colloquial, elegiac, and informative, Ray…
I’m a writer of sapphic horror and romance fiction, and a professor of nineteenth and twentieth literature and Women’s and Gender Studies. I’ve been an avid reader of ghost-focused fiction since I was a little kid. This fascination was, in part, encouraged by my horror-loving parents, but I think I’ve just always loved being scared, and for me, the scariest thing imaginable is a haunted house. I’ve read widely in the genre, by turns spooked, thrilled, and baffled, and this reading eventually encouraged me to write my own haunted house novels. If you love a chilling tale, you’re going to love the books on this list.
This is a significant departure from the notion of a “haunted house” most of us are familiar with. We expect an old house, haunted by the past, far from humankind, and left to rot and fester in isolation somewhere remote. The haunted house in Siddons’s novel, however, is right in the middle of an upper-class neighborhood in Atlanta, and it’s a brand-new build. Rather than being haunted by the ghosts of the past inhabitants, the house itself is a force of evil, corrupting all who cross its threshold in terrible, terrifying, and often deadly ways.
An unparalleled picture of that vibrant but dark intersection where the Old and the New South collide.
Thirtysomething Colquitt and Walter Kennedy live in a charming, peaceful suburb of newly bustling Atlanta, Georgia. Life is made up of enjoyable work, long, lazy weekends, and the company of good neighbors. Then, to their shock, construction starts on the vacant lot next door, a wooded hillside they'd believed would always remain undeveloped. Disappointed by their diminished privacy, Colquitt and Walter soon realize something more is wrong with the house next door. Surely the house can’t be haunted, yet it seems to destroy…
Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Next, her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small,…
I’ve always been fascinated by things paranormal and supernatural. There is so much in the “real” world that we don’t understand and can’t prove their existence, but there is enough video and photos, as well as stories, that I don’t see how we can say there’s not more beyond our five senses. Many of my own books center on paranormal abilities and events, and I do love reading about them as well!
This is a second series for the writing team of Ilona Andrews. Though I do like the Kate Daniels series, like so many others, I liked the world here a little better. Each book focused on a different couple, and the two main characters felt real in a fantasy landscape full of nightmares and danger.
Step into a whole new world in the first Novel of the Edge from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Kate Daniels series.
The Edge lies between worlds, on the border between the Broken, where people shop at Wal-Mart and magic is a fairy tale—and the Weird, where blueblood aristocrats rule, changelings roam, and the strength of your magic can change your destiny...
Rose Drayton thought if she practiced her magic, she could build a better life for herself. But things didn’t turn out the way she’d planned, and now she works an off-the-books job in the…
