On the wall in my office, I have an old newspaper article containing a recipe for Boris Karloff's guacamole. (If you're interested, the title of the article is "Boris Karloff Mad About Mexican Food.") I keep it there because it reminds me of what I love about this genre, in that monsters can contain multitudes. They're not just evil... they can also love guacamole. A good monster novel will have you both cowering in fear and feeling a pang of empathy for the creature, making it a ton of fun to read.
This was a Covid-read for me. We spent some of Covid in Vermont, next to the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT. If you’ve never been, it’s worth going just for this bookstore. Truly incredible.
Anyway, I saw this book in their sci-fi section and read the back copy and was hooked — a foul-mouthed talking crow, a post-apocalyptic wasteland, shambling human zombies. It’s told from the point of view of animals which have survived. There’s also a nice environmental message. It’s weird, odd, funny, insane, and delightful.
A humorous, big-hearted romp through the apocalypse, where even a cowardly crow can become a hero. Perfect for fans of Dawn of the Dead and Isaac Marion's Warm Bodies.
'A thoroughly enjoyable account of the end of the world as we know it. The Secret Life of Pets meets The Walking Dead.' Karen Joy Fowler
'It's transformative, poignant, and funny as hell. S.T. the irrepressible, cursing crow is my new favourite apocalyptic hero.' Helen Macdonald, New York Times bestselling author of H Is for Hawk
S.T. is a domesticated crow. He is a bird of simple pleasures: hanging out with…
I am a lifelong fan of all things post-apocalyptic. Books, movies, television, games – I have enjoyed all of it. I knew I wanted to write post-apocalyptic fiction before I was ten years old. I had to wait almost three decades before life gave me the opportunity to do it. I’ve always been fascinated by the many different ways people can survive these kinds of catastrophes. As dark and visceral as the genre can sometimes be, I will always look for the elements of hope.
I enjoyed the scope and scale of this epic story. I found the author’s portrayal of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things inspiring. Humanity is connected, and relies on that network of relationships to survive. The metaphor of The Postman reestablishing those links is still one of my all-time favorite depictions of that concept.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • “A moving experience . . . a powerful cautionary tale.”—Whitley Strieber
He was a survivor—a wanderer who traded tales for food and shelter in the dark and savage aftermath of a devastating war.
Fate touches him one chill winter’s day when he borrows the jacket of a long-dead postal worker to protect himself from the cold. The old, worn uniform still has power as a symbol of hope, and with it he begins to weave his greatest tale, of a nation on the road to recovery.
As an Irish-Italian-American, I’ve got a lifetime of cultural and family traditions to bring to the table, and I want that in the books I read. I love books that celebrate the beauty of life, love, family, and creation. A novel can open up the world, and uplift the reader, adding joy to life – that’s what I’m looking for when I read, and I imagine others, too, want uplifting stories. That doesn’t mean preachy or sanctimonious – stories should be about real imperfect people who sometimes fall short of the ideal – but I definitely want stories that take place in a universe where God, and right and wrong, exist.
In this book, the author speculates about the events that could give rise to the anti-Christ, and a few brave souls who might try to stop his rise to power.
But this is not your grandfather’s end-times fiction. It’s deeply entrenched in actual events of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, and the story is eminently plausible.
It’s not about world wars or secret underground Christian armies – it’s about how pride is conquered by humility, how the biggest things the devil can throw at us are defeated by the holiness of unknown saints.
This is the real deal. You will not want to put it down!
Michael O'Brien presents a thrilling apocalyptic novel about the condition of the Roman Catholic Church at the end of time. It explores the state of the modern world, and the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary religious scene, by taking his central character, Father Elijah Schafer, a Carmelite priest, on a secret mission for the Vatican which embroils him in a series of crises and subterfuges affecting the ultimate destiny of the Church.
Father Elijah is a convert from Judaism, a survivor of the Holocaust, a man once powerful in Israel. For twenty years he has been "buried in the…
To be honest, and this will sound strange, but suspense is the air I breathe. I’m a pretty calm, boring human being, and the only thing that gets my heart pumping are films, TV, books, and video games in this genre. Suspense and thrillers are genres that make up ninety percent of the entertainment that I consume, and one hundred percent of the entertainment that I write.
I can only speak from my experience and, wow, this book hooked me right at the end of that first chapter, “but it’s happening faster.” Now to go into what that means, I will remain spoiler-free, but my jaw dropped. And the story only ramped up after that.
I love stories where the protagonist finds themselves in genuine peril, and Claire puts Harry August in a particular type of peril that truly had me terrified for his well-being in every chapter. The best type of suspense escalates in every chapter and it escalates here in this book in the best possible ways.
'ONE OF THE FICTION HIGHLIGHTS OF THE DECADE' Judy Finnigan, Richard and Judy Book Club
Featured in the Richard and Judy Book Club, the BBC Radio 2 Book Club and the Waterstones Book Club Winner of the John W. Campbell Award Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award
SOME STORIES CANNOT BE TOLD IN JUST ONE LIFETIME
No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before.
I first studied creation myths at the University of California, Berkeley, and my favorite tales about the beginnings and endings of the world soon crept into my fiction. These allusions began as simple nods to the past, but after the sudden deaths of family members and a harrowing wildfire evacuation during a worldwide pandemic, apocalypses seemed very present in my life. I wrote my debut book From the Cavesduring this time, while attending Portland State University’s MFA program for creative writing, and the books in this list, like my novella, share a specific exploration of the post-apocalyptic, one interested in beginnings and creation at the end of the world.
I first learned about Penelope Farmer’sBeginnings: Creation Myths of the World while reading Megan Hunter’sThe End We Start From. In her short book, Farmer has compiled fragments of myths from around the world, and she organized these brief excerpts into sections that describe the beginning of the world, the origin of the earth and Man, flood and fire mythologies, the origin of death and food plants, and the end of the world. To see such different (and, sometimes, intriguingly similar) mythologies from diverse cultures sharing fundamental interests is inspiring in itself, and for such a quick survey of our world’s origin stories, the book is cosmic in scope and a wonderful jumping off place for additional research.
Stories and poems from many countries explaining the Creation and the different ways people have tried to interpret their world and experiences from the beginning of time.
My life quest has been to find true magic. Once believing it could only be uncovered in ruins or cathedrals continents away, I ended up discovering it in my own backyard under the Big Sky. When I was young, I read everything science fiction and fantasy to feel like that magic was real and bask in worlds far different from my own. Now, as a professional editor and author based in the West… I still read everything science fiction and fantasy, but now I get paid to do it.
A serious Welcome To The Nightvale-styled western, Golgotha is like any other mining town… except full of writhing demonic worms desperate to possess you. So many legends and religions rub elbows in this saloon-heavy godforsaken place that it feels like any re-imagined version of a dark fantasy americana world, warts and all, is possible. Each character threatened to whisk me on a new journey. I mean, there’s a doctor who can keep severed heads alive? A boy with a mysterious green eye? An unkillable gunslinger sheriff? An angel running a casino? An assassin queen? What is even happening? But all this allowed my imagination to flourish. Instead of spelling out the reasoning for the clashing magic and lore, it reminded me why I love speculative fiction in the first place: the possibilities.
Nevada, 1869: Beyond the pitiless 40-Mile Desert lies Golgotha, a cattle town hiding more than its share of unnatural secrets. The sheriff bears the mark of the noose around his neck; a dead man whose time has not yet come. His half-human deputy is kin to coyotes. The mayor guards a hoard of mythical treasures. And a shady saloon owner, fingers in everyone's business, may know more about the town's origins than he's letting on. Golgotha has known many strange events, but nothing like the primordial darkness stirring in the abandoned silver mine overlooking the town. Bleeding midnight, an ancient…
I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction and by Biblical Scripture. That may seem dichotomous to some, but not to me. I have a passion for science and for Scripture because both bring understanding about our world from the microcosm to the macrocosm. My writings are a mixture of science and mystery with a science fiction feel and a Christian perspective. I like stories that show how truth arises even from the dark, confusing, and ambiguity of life to help one discover something about God they may not have considered before, and at the same time enjoy a fun, fast-paced, and exciting journey as they read.
When I read this book, I felt our world was on the brink of such a scenario. The bravery and fortitude of the main character was inspiring, and I hoped I could be so brave in the moment when it really matters. Granted, if I had the money this character did, it may make some choices easier to pull off. But still, he had a lot at stake to consider when push came to shove. Hopefully, at such critical times I hope we all can have faith in what truly matters.
From Tim LaHaye, co-author of the renowned Left Behind series, and Craig Parshall comes an epic story ripped from the headlines of world events and filtered through Scriptural prophecy.
Joshua Jordan, former US spy-plane hero now turned weapons designer, has come up with a devastatingly effective new missile defense system-the Return to Sender laser weapon. But global forces are mounting against America, and corrupt White House and Capitol Hill leaders are willing to do anything to stop the nation's impending economic catastrophe-including selling-out Joshua and his weapon.
With help from a group of powerfully connected Christian leaders known as the…
I
got this from the library at the beach over vacation and read it in a day. I
just couldn’t put it down.
A Children’s Bible is a weird, dark, vaguely
post-apocalyptic story for adults featuring a child protagonist. In other
words, right up my alley. Readers may guess from my own work I love young
protagonists. They have a lot of power, especially when they take the reader
through some heavy topics.
I really connected with the narrator in this story,
and I loved the way Millet showed both her maturity and wisdom and her youth,
all mixed together. Very engrossing.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet's sublime new novel-her first since the National Book Award-longlisted Sweet Lamb of Heaven- follows a group of eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their parents at a lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their elders, who pass their days in a hedonistic stupor, the children are driven out into a chaotic landscape after a great storm descends. The story's narrator, Eve, devotes herself to the safety of her beloved little brother as events around them begin to mimic scenes from his cherished picture Bible.
Millet, praised as "unnervingly talented" (San Francisco Chronicle), has produced a…
I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction and by Biblical Scripture. That may seem dichotomous to some, but not to me. I have a passion for science and for Scripture because both bring understanding about our world from the microcosm to the macrocosm. My writings are a mixture of science and mystery with a science fiction feel and a Christian perspective. I like stories that show how truth arises even from the dark, confusing, and ambiguity of life to help one discover something about God they may not have considered before, and at the same time enjoy a fun, fast-paced, and exciting journey as they read.
I found this book interesting from the perspective that it is almost the flip side of the bookLeft Behind. While Left Behinddeals with the inner circle battling the evil world leader, this book is more about the people in the periphery who are not close to the action. It shows how the acts of the evil world leader affect the average person and reveals their view of what is taking place around them.
Who Will Usher in Earth’s Final Days? Are we living in the end times? Is it possible that the players depicted in the book of Revelation could be out in force today? And if they are, would you know how to recognize them?
In Agents of the Apocalypse, noted prophecy expert Dr. David Jeremiah does what no prophecy expert has done before. He explores the book of Revelation through the lens of its major players—the exiled, the martyrs, the elders, the victor, the king, the judge, the 144,000, the witnesses, the false prophet, and the beast.
I had the passion to write Necessary Deeds because: 1) as someone who'd spent 20+ years writing novels, dealing with untrustworthy literary agents, and book-doctoring other writers’ novels in order to pay rent, I'd come to know betrayal (“best friend” writers who stole drafts of mine and called them their own, novelists who backstabbed me after I helped them land agents and book contracts, and so on); 2) like many people who lived through the drug-and-alcohol-laced Eighties, I had a long relationship with someone that ended because they cheated on me. So I never doubted that, as I wrote Necessary Deeds, my heart knew well what motivated its characters.
This book leans a bit more toward the literary fiction category than do most books I read these days, but it’s among my top five because of two elements it develops, and poignantly so: 1) the constant threat of death for not only the narrator but also others he knows, and 2) a love story.
And the love story, much as it got to me emotionally, never once struck me as sappy. Instead, it was very realistic. Very human. Very no-b.s. As a result, altogether, this novel offers terrific storytelling.
THE ROAD - but with hope. Hig, bereaved and traumatised after global disaster, has three things to live for - his dog Jasper, his aggressive but helpful neighbour, and his Cessna aeroplane. He's just about surviving, so long as he only takes his beloved plane for short journeys, and saves his remaining fuel. But, just once, he picks up a message from another pilot, and eventually the temptation to find out who else is still alive becomes irresistible. So he takes his plane over the horizon, knowing that he won't have enough fuel to get back. What follows is scarier…
