Here are 100 books that Tide and Tempest fans have personally recommended if you like
Tide and Tempest.
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As a horror writer whose interests tend to favor morbid topics that are often neglected, end-of-the-world stories have fascinated me since I first read Stephen King’s The Stand at far too young of an age. I love how these works enable the exploration of life, death, and survival. My appreciation for the subject matter deepened during my studies in Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction MFA program, where I learned how genre fiction has the unique ability to both enlighten and entertain readers. This inspired me to write my post-apocalyptic horror novel, What Remains.
I was first introduced to the film adaptation of The Road in my early teens when I went through all five stages of grief in the span of 1 hour and 51 minutes.
I then made a beeline to the bookstore for a copy of McCarthy’s novel, which subsequently solidified my love of end-of-the-world stories in how they can examine what it means to survive.
The Road is a story that has stayed with me over the subsequent decade and a half and greatly influenced my post-apocalyptic novel.
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…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
As a UK registered lawyer, I have spent most of the past 35 years writing about my work. But what has always excited me, from my childhood, is the science fiction worlds which state a truth which is yet to happen, The worlds of H.G Wells; Huxley; Aldous; Orwell; Bradbury; and Atwell. An individual's struggle against overwhelming odds. Not always somewhere where you would want to go. But from which you will always take something away.
I used this book to relieve the boredom of a long daily commute.
Instead of looking out of a train window at the same old scenery I'd passed a thousand times before, I was now taken to a dystopian society in which everything which I had taken for granted about family life was turned upside down. Where humans are manufactured to a specification instead of being born. A new pseudo religion where everyone makes the sign of the ‘T’, to signify their devotion to the original Ford Model T, which was the first vehicle to be manufactured on an assembly line.
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**
EVERYONE BELONGS TO EVERYONE ELSE. Read the dystopian classic that inspired the hit Sky TV series.
'A masterpiece of speculation... As vibrant, fresh, and somehow shocking as it was when I first read it' Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale.
Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Our perfect society achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs.
You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma pills.
I am a Pulitzer-nominated writer who began as a poet, then shifted to prose during a period of aesthetic and personal crisis in my life. I am interested in how the novelist can gather and curate fascinating facts for the reader and incorporate them into the text. I see writing as a great adventure and investigation into issues of empathy, power, and powerlessness, and the individual in an increasingly technological world.
When I wrote my first novel, I began investigating modern-day technology—robotics, bioengineering, AI, and information technology—and have read and worked in this area for over 15 years. It is a pleasure to share some of the books that have informed my own journey.
I love the exquisite writing and haunting narrative in this book—Ishiguro’s prose is masterful, his imagination precise and engrossing. He creates characters that are poignant, complex, and caught in a world beyond their control. Issues of bioengineering, of empathy, of powerlessness, are beautifully woven through the whole.
I am moved by how this book marries technology and deep emotion, the dystopian with the palpable reality of today’s world, and the rapidly changing technological milieu we live in.
One of the most acclaimed novels of the 21st Century, from the Nobel Prize-winning author
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’ve been a science fiction fan for as long as I can remember. As someone who never quite felt like I fit in, these stories became a kind of refuge and revelation for me. They taught me that being on the outside looking in can be its own kind of superpower—the ability to see the world differently, to question it, and to imagine something better. I’m drawn to characters who are flawed, searching, and human, because they remind me that courage and belonging are choices we make, not gifts we’re given. That’s the heart of every story I love and the kind I try to write.
I’d read the reviews, so I was prepared for a great book. I wasn’t prepared to be thrown out of my comfort zone—but in the best possible way.
Mandel made me sit with what it really means to lose everything and still create something beautiful. It’s not about saving the world; it’s about creating a new dream and making it your home. I loved how it celebrates art, memory, and the strange persistence of humanity even when everything else is gone.
This book reminded me that hope is often raw, painful, and ultimately necessary.
'Best novel. The big one . . . stands above all the others' - George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones
Now an HBO Max original TV series
The New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction National Book Awards Finalist PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.
One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in…
Mostly, I’m a writer of (hopefully) humorous books and articles largely focused on Vikings and Norse mythology, but I also write non-fiction articles about Scandinavian history, art, and culture. I’ve always been fascinated with the Viking Age, and read as much fiction and non-fiction on the subject as I am able. I’ve discovered many great novels dealing with the “whole Northern thing” (W.H. Auden’s term for Tolkien’s fascination) ranging from realistic historic fiction to highly original urban fantasy that utilizes the standard Norse tropes, but truly imaginative retellings that remain faithfully grounded in the plot points of the ancient stories are rarer. These are my favorites.
Klas Östergren is one of Sweden’s foremost literary novelists and The Hurricane Party was his contribution to Canongate’s early 21st-century Myth Series (although it was apparently subsequently removed from it). The Hurricane Party is the most imaginative retelling of Norse mythology that I’ve read. It focuses on events that precede Ragnarök and takes place in a futuristic, climate-ravaged, dystopian Stockholm. The plot centers around the Flyting of Loki, a pivotal scene from The Poetic Edda in which Loki turns against the gods and kills one of their servants. Östergren’s novel follows the journey of the father (his own invented character) of this servant as he searches for answers to his son’s death against this unique backdrop. The setting and premise are among the most original I’ve ever encountered.
Hanck Orn's son is dead. When they come to the door they tell him it was a heart attack, but he knows they are lying.
So he travels to the outermost reaches of the land to find out what really happened. When he lands on the island he is met by a young woman, hair streaked with blood, raving like a lunatic. She is one of the sisters, who tell him the story of how his son died in the great hall of the Clan, the Norse gods, who were holding a party. But the festivities soon got out of…
I’m an English writer based in Sheffield. I started reading dystopia when I was around 19 and in a very bad place mentally, it became an escape for me and I would read everything in the genre. It got to the point where I was writing in the notes on my phone (not very well, I might add). Somehow dystopia ignited my passion for writing and so I went to university to study it. Almost everything I wrote for both my undergrad degree and my master's was set in a future dystopian UK. It is where my passion still lies and I hope to create more futuristic worlds like those I have listed.
Why am I recommending this book? First of all – Dinosaurs. I don’t know where they came from in the book series and frankly I don’t care. I’ll read anything with dinosaurs. I think this book series is set in a modern UK but it’s never explicitly stated. It’s set in a futuristic world where nature has failed us – because of us – and humans need to find a new way of living. They must learn to live with dinosaurs. Maybe the new Jurassic World film could learn from the characters? Who knows.
The first book in the heart-stopping The Extinction Trials trilogy, for fans of The Hunger Games and Jurassic Park.
Betrayal. Sacrifice. Survival. Welcome to The Extinction Trials...
In Stormchaser and Lincoln's ruined world, the only way to survive is to risk everything. To face a contest more dangerous than anyone can imagine. And they will do anything to win.
But in a land full of monsters - human and reptilian - they can't afford to trust anyone. Perhaps not even each other...
Shortlisted for the 2019 Scottish Teenage Book Prize
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I’m an English writer based in Sheffield. I started reading dystopia when I was around 19 and in a very bad place mentally, it became an escape for me and I would read everything in the genre. It got to the point where I was writing in the notes on my phone (not very well, I might add). Somehow dystopia ignited my passion for writing and so I went to university to study it. Almost everything I wrote for both my undergrad degree and my master's was set in a future dystopian UK. It is where my passion still lies and I hope to create more futuristic worlds like those I have listed.
Kerry Drewery is an author that came in for a Masterclass when I was studying my undergrad in Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. As this book series was right up my alley, I decided to buy every book on kindle (and most recently in paperback). This series reminded me a lot of 1984 with the dark setting and horrific outcomes. Set in a future London, the reality show format of the book gives an insight into human nature. How far will we go for entertainment?
A heart-stopping thriller. Shortlisted for the Lancashire Libraries Book of the Year 2018.
An adored celebrity has been killed. Sixteen-year-old Martha Honeydew was found holding a gun, standing over the body.
NOW JUSTICE MUST PREVAIL.
The general public will decide whether Martha is innocent or guilty by viewing daily episodes of the hugely popular TV show Death is Justice, the only TV show that gives the power of life and death decisions - all for the price of a premium rate phone call.
My reading habits came from my mom, a voracious reader. Every book she enjoyed she would leave on my bedside table. I’d read them after school until I fell asleep and finish them up in the morning before breakfast. All of that reading allowed me to hone in on my preferred genre. If you haven’t guessed by my list, it’s dystopian. No matter the story, it will never get old because it will always have three things: Self-discovery, hope, and an intriguing world to explore. In the rare lull between books, when I can’t find a world I like, I write one for myself.
I loved reading this book for the same reason that I loved reading Divergent; the idea of splitting a society up into factions makes this story ripe for dystopian themes.
I’ve always been drawn to this genre for its common themes of self-discovery and hope, and this does an amazing job of checking off those boxes for me.
Answering the calling may be the last thing she does.
For thirty years, the people of Landore have been segregated by the five callings, living in disunity and isolation.
But for 18-year-old Talia Caffrey choosing one of the five is her hope at finding a place in a society that has rejected her. When her best friend, Jules, is kidnapped on the eve of her calling ceremony, everything changes. She walks away from her chance at belonging, becoming a fugitive who must hide her true self.
Talia’s life becomes even more complicated when she encounters seven strangers who challenge everything…
I’ve always been curious about how stories shape how we see the world. As a child, I noticed there were countless conflicting stories explaining how things worked. But which stories were the real ones? Which were true? At university, I studied the stories we tell ourselves about how the world will end. And as we live in times that can feel quite apocalyptic, I’m particularly fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what the future holds. If society dissolved around us, what stories would we tell ourselves to keep going? Are we telling those stories now?
I found this book realistic in a really frightening way. The entire societal structure of the world depends on the stories we humans tell ourselves about ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and I think the book plays with this very cleverly.
It has a very tender depiction of what happens to us and our stories when we’re all alone, and I still think about the way generational guilt is woven through the story.
It was one of those books where I kept walking up to my wife to say, “Can I read you something?” and, “Listen to this…” because the ideas are so big, but the language is so clipped and to the point.
In this taut, dystopian tale, an island nation ravaged by the Change has built an enormous concrete barrier around its coastline-the Wall. Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls trapped amid the rising seas outside. A blend of the most compelling issues of our time-climate change, increasing fear, widening divisions-The Wall is a suspenseful story of love, trust, and survival.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As an author who, in my ‘other’ life, has studied psychology and social work, I love to write about the impact of change on individuals and communities – what do my characters grieve, what relationships become important to them, what are the roles or goals that motivate them now and what do they need to do to survive, both individually and in their new society. And I love to be able to write about a place – a location – that I know well, hence the Sunshine Coast Hinterland as a setting for The Rise. I hope you enjoy the books that I’ve recommended as much as I have!
The cover drew me in but I loved the worldbuilding in this book, both in the premise of what happened to our world (toxic oceans, anyone?) but also how characters now need to live and survive. And with great rising tension and twists, this was a book that left me reading much later in the night than I should have!
I was drawn in by the 4 main characters – even when I wanted to slap them, I still wanted to know what was going to happen to them. And the way the society was set up really tore at my sense of ethics – a great thing to have in a dystopian book, I think…how does the new society sit with you?
In a new world isolated by a rising, toxic sea, a single bridge connects Askala to the Outlands. Those who remain will need to pass a Proving to determine if they have the intelligence and heart to champion the future of their broken Earth.
Those who succeed will become Bound, the ones chosen to breed.
Those who fail, are Unbound. Free of responsibility, but robbed of their ability to bear children.
Four young lives are born into this world. Magnus and Callix, two brothers determined to uphold this new order. Two brothers in love with…
