Here are 100 books that The Wastelander fans have personally recommended if you like
The Wastelander.
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I love reading and writing books set in the near future in apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic settings. These days, they don’t feel far away or unlikely. I like the idea that even if the world falls apart and things are terrible, one of the things worth fighting for is love. Love, beauty, and hope can be found in expected ways and make life worth living. As someone who grew up reading about dark historical times and dark future times, I’ve wanted to find ways to connect to less bleak versions of a possible future. While there are dozens of stories about survival and hardship, these stories of love and hope fill me with optimism.
I loved that we got to the main story so quickly and its unique beginning.
A man kidnaps his pretty neighbor and locks her in a cage in his basement to keep her safe from a deadly virus. This is chapter one. Her rage-fueled reaction to this felt authentic, and until the pandemic kills almost everyone, bringing about the end of the world, we are on her side.
I love the banter and dynamics between the two main characters, who might have dated before the end of the world if they’d been brave enough to connect, but only met because of the abduction. When they emerge into the new world together, I love that they choose to stick together, rebuild, and include others.
This book could have been bleak, but instead, like the wildflowers, it is surprisingly sweet and hopeful.
Don’t miss this heart pounding apocalyptic romance from New York Times bestselling author Kylie Scott!
There’s only one person Dean Wallace wants to save from the end of the world: sunshine girl from across the street. She’s always smiling. Who knows, maybe she can teach him a thing or two about how to live? But saving her against her will is harder than he expected.
Astrid Hardy doesn’t know what to think when she wakes up in her hot neighbor’s basement. He says he wants to protect her from the deadly virus threatening to collapse society. But that sounds like…
Robin dreamed of attending Yale and using her brain. Kory lived on the streets of Seattle and relied on his brawn. Without the asteroid, they never would have met.
For three years, Robin and her grandfather have been hiding, trusting no one. When a biker gang moves into town, Robin…
I love reading and writing books set in the near future in apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic settings. These days, they don’t feel far away or unlikely. I like the idea that even if the world falls apart and things are terrible, one of the things worth fighting for is love. Love, beauty, and hope can be found in expected ways and make life worth living. As someone who grew up reading about dark historical times and dark future times, I’ve wanted to find ways to connect to less bleak versions of a possible future. While there are dozens of stories about survival and hardship, these stories of love and hope fill me with optimism.
While the characters of this story are preppers and likely to survive an end-of-the-world event, I love that the story focuses on a young woman and her grandmother, who, despite all the planning, face this cyberattack without the men in their lives.
It is also believable that a cyber-attack and the climate crisis would play a role in the story, as the worst winter in over a hundred years isolates the survivors. I like how we are introduced to the fiercely protective MMC in the spring after a second tragedy has struck.
I also loved the bits of my mythology and lore woven into the story that make it stand out among other apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories. This one also focuses on connection and rebuilding.
We all experience underworld journeys, times when it seems like the life we knew was hijacked and the world is suddenly unrecognizable.
Jessie's future looks bright. She's a successful artist with an MFA and a job she loves when her clairvoyant grandmother has a vision of imminent catastrophe. Jessie, her dog, Wolfie, and Grammie flee to AspenRidge, their isolated off-grid retreat in Colorado's Rocky Mountains. The next day, a cyber-attack destroys the power-grid, and Jessie fears her father won't make it home from his conference in England.
Shawn struggled with PTSD after three tours in Afghanistan as a Navy corpsman.…
I love reading and writing books set in the near future in apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic settings. These days, they don’t feel far away or unlikely. I like the idea that even if the world falls apart and things are terrible, one of the things worth fighting for is love. Love, beauty, and hope can be found in expected ways and make life worth living. As someone who grew up reading about dark historical times and dark future times, I’ve wanted to find ways to connect to less bleak versions of a possible future. While there are dozens of stories about survival and hardship, these stories of love and hope fill me with optimism.
I enjoyed this book because of its unusual premise.
As a deadly pandemic sweeps the world, killing ninety-nine percent of people, a convicted convict rots in his prison cell. When the warden falls sick, he directs the immune prisoner to find his daughter.
I also like that the warden’s daughter is out there trying to save herself, not waiting to be rescued. Like the other stories on my list, it is the dynamic between the main characters and how they learn to care for each other despite their opposite backgrounds that makes this story work.
An unlikely savior searching for an angel in the midst of Hell...As a convict serving a life sentence, I shouldn't be playing the hero to the prison warden's damsel-in-distress daughter. But with ninety-nine percent of the population projected to die from a rapidly-spreading virus and society falling into chaos, the desperate, dying father’s options are limited. And since I'm immune to the virus, he puts his daughter's life in my hands with one simple directive: Find her. I only know the warden's daughter from a photograph, but she glows like she was Heaven-sent. Protecting her gives me purpose in this…
Robin dreamed of attending Yale and using her brain. Kory lived on the streets of Seattle and relied on his brawn. Without the asteroid, they never would have met.
For three years, Robin and her grandfather have been hiding, trusting no one. When a biker gang moves into town, Robin…
I love reading and writing books set in the near future in apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic settings. These days, they don’t feel far away or unlikely. I like the idea that even if the world falls apart and things are terrible, one of the things worth fighting for is love. Love, beauty, and hope can be found in expected ways and make life worth living. As someone who grew up reading about dark historical times and dark future times, I’ve wanted to find ways to connect to less bleak versions of a possible future. While there are dozens of stories about survival and hardship, these stories of love and hope fill me with optimism.
As a lover of fairytales growing up, I enjoyed the fairytale elements of Rapunzel, which are interwoven throughout the story of Hailey, a sheltered, rich man’s daughter, who has been kept apart since the Impact.
With her father’s unexpected death, she’s forced to make a difficult decision about her future, because as a single, young woman, there is nothing for her alone in this harsh world.
I love that she doesn’t feel sorry for herself or whine, but makes the best choice possible available in allying herself with Levi. While she doesn’t believe in love, hope, or happily ever after, I love that her choice leads her to find happiness anyway.
She needs a man to keep her alive in a world full of monsters.He'll do.Ever since the world fell apart, I've been like a princess trapped in a tower, looking down at our chaotic new reality from an upstairs window and never allowed to risk the dangers outside. Then my father dies, and there's no one left to keep me safe from selfish, violent men no longer restrained by social boundaries.I need someone, and the leader of the local gang is my best choice.Rough and intimidating, he's no prince. But Levi agrees to keep me safe, and I do my…
Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by scary movies, creature features, and books that tell tales of the strange and supernatural. Years later, my own books explored those things that scare us, from monsters of the deep and the ways we die to the mythology of blood. Research for those books led me into realms that explained why we fear the things we do. Many of those fears are found in horror novels, which provide an endless source of fright, release, and entertainment within their haunting pages. I can’t think of any other genre of writing that takes its readers on such a joyously terrifying ride.
There isn’t another horror novel written in the past ten years that scratched at my brain as much as this one. Baztericca’s brilliance lies in her writing a story that no one else has thought of before. The subject matter–humans have run out of animals to eat–seems like an obvious one.
What is striking about the book is that it is told in an almost clinical fashion, observing horror with a detachment that is precise and unemotional. The plot follows one man through the routines of his life, but it’s the world in which he exists that haunts you. By the time I finished, it was easy to imagine the world of “Tender Is The Flesh” becoming all too real.
It all happened so quickly. First, animals became infected with the virus and their meat became poisonous. Then governments initiated the Transition. Now, 'special meat' - human meat - is legal.
Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans - only no one calls them that. He works with numbers, consignments, processing. One day, he's given a gift to seal a deal: a specimen of the finest quality. He leaves her in his barn, tied up, a problem to be disposed of later.
But she haunts Marcos. Her trembling body, and watchful gaze, seem to understand. And soon, he becomes…
I love to read. Reading since I was 3 years old, devouring book after book. As I grew, my taste expanded. Yet it was the sci-fi book, The Black Hole, by Disney that I discovered in second grade that captured my passion for writing and storytelling. I cannot count how many books I've read, but I can tell you the ones that have left a lasting impression on me. Because of that, I began to write my own stories. I've seven books written and published, the newest one releasing soon. While my tastes in books vary, only one thing remains consistent: finding the best books that capture me and hold me hostage!
Eric Landfried put a new spin on a dystopian setting. I’ve always enjoyed the movies Mad Max and Book of Eli. With Solitary Man (and yes, I start singing the Johnny Cash song!), I got the same vibe as those movies, yet with a twist! From zombie-like cannibals to a super-enhanced military general, the character was hard-pressed to survive. I just couldn’t put this book down!
Ten years after a brutal war, cannibals and humans fight over the pieces of a hardscrabble existence.
Former Navy SEAL Doyle has been prowling the broken remnants of a devastated America for years. Alone in an armored bus loaded with weapons and supplies, he's grateful for his solitude. Being alone makes it easier to survive, as others can become a liability in the end of the world. But when a particularly brutal attack leaves Doyle in need of fuel and repair, he has no choice but to venture into the nearest settlement.
I am a compulsive reader and writer of speculative fiction, in love with the genre’s capacity to extrapolate our present social, economic and technological into horrifying/astonishing futures. That being said, I need strong writing and compelling characters to pull me into a world and make it feel lived in and real. It’s this kind of emotional realism that I seek out as a reader and try to create as an author.
A generational ship fallen to ruin and tribalism? Sign me up! Roy spares no effort in bringing to life his vivid, action-packed book. The fun here is less the characters than the world-building and how artfully the past is revealed plot-point by plot-point like a delicious sci-fi strip-tease. Plus, Roy drew the shit out of this book.
1
author picked
Habitat
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
16, and
17.
What is this book about?
All his life, Hank Cho wanted to join the ranks of the Habsec - the rulers
of the orbital habitat his people call home. But when he finds a powerful,
forbidden weapon from the deep past, a single moment of violence sets his life -
and the brutal society of the habitat - into upheaval. Hunted by the
cannibalistic Habsec and sheltered by former enemies, Cho finds himself caught
within a civil war that threatens to destroy his world.
A new barbarian
sci-fi adventure from SIMON ROY (Prophet, Jan's Atomic Heart, Tiger Lung).
Collecting installments originally serialized in ISLAND MAGAZINE…
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 explores the end of the world in the most intimate and emotional way possible.
What moved me deeply was not the apocalypse itself, but the quiet relationship between father and son, trying to preserve goodness in a world where goodness no longer seems to matter. I felt a constant weight while reading, as if hope itself was fragile and rare.
It made me reflect on what it truly means to carry faith and humanity when everything else is gone.
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…
Schoolteacher turned writer. With the encouragement of my old college friend, the great Michael Crichton I began writing detective novels—paperback originals at first, then a hardback thriller called Target of Opportunity, which was a detective novel but included a long section of historical background about the Resistance in southern France. From there I moved to biographical fiction: novels about Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant. Then straight historical fiction, often with a Parisian background, because I’ve lived and worked in that marvelous city and can’t get enough of it.
Here is the other archetypal plot, the reverse of the first: “A Stranger Comes to Town.” In this case, a protagonist who seems an unlikely but brilliantly persuasive amalgam of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Adams—a bookish Easterner—arrives in the Dakota Territory in 1883 to make a new life for himself after the death of his wife. The new life will feature lynchings, cattle drives, saloons, brothels, and an even harsher wilderness than Diony Hall found in Kentucky. The author’s cinematic Warlockis a western masterpiece. This forgotten title is every bit as good.
It's 1883 in Johnson County, in the old Dakota Territory a rugged, wide-open landscape of rolling, red earth, prairie, and cattle as far as the eye can see. But the land is closing, the "Beef Bonanza" is ending, and the free-range cattlemen are stuck watching a way of life disappear in a blaze of drought and gunfire. An action-packed western from one of the masters of the genre, Oakley Hall's The Bad Lands blends round-ups and rustlers, whorehouses and land grabs, shoot-outs and the threat of hangings in a tale of the war between the cowboys and the cattle barons.…
I grew up in a small community surrounded by mountains and vast public land. I learned to ride a horse before riding a bike, and my dad taught me about recreating in remote areas. I didn’t think of those lessons as survival training, but in my novels, the skills I learned as a kid often save the characters’ lives. All the books on this list feature ordinary people doing extraordinary things to survive and, in some cases, protecting those they love. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
This novel has it all, ancient lore, nightmares, mysticism, self-discovery, friendship, a budding romance, and intense action and adventure.
When four friends are sucked into an alternate universe filled with danger, they must survive a host of nightmarish threats and find their way to the center of the web to escape.
I love stories of survival against the odds, but this was exceptionally interesting as the threats are not what anyone would expect. Much of the book takes place in the badlands of South Dakota, another place I’m familiar with. I’m a sucker for a story set in a place that would be difficult to survive under the best of circumstances.
When seventeen-year-old Jory Pike cannot shake the hellish nightmares of her parent’s deaths, she turns to an old family heirloom, a dream catcher. Even though she’s half blood Chippewa, Jory thinks old Indian lore is so yesterday, but she’s willing to give it a try. However, the dream catcher has had its fill of nightmares from an ancient and violent past. After a sleepover party, and during one of Jory’s most horrific dream episodes, the dream catcher implodes, sucking Jory and her three friends into its own world of trapped nightmares. They’re in an alternate universe—locked inside of an insane…
