Here are 66 books that Pandemic fans have personally recommended if you like
Pandemic.
Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I'm a life-long horror lover and author of dark fiction. I've been reviewing films and video games for Ravenous Monster ezine for nearly a decade, and my Wattpad horror novel The Hound is currently being adapted for film. My favorite thing is the intersection of the horrifying and fantastic with the mundane, and that's what appeals to me so much about zombies: in all of their multitudinous representations, they've always held up a mirror to humanity. No monster can so easily reflect the many facets of humanity as a zombie. Because, after all, the dead were once just like us – and if we're not careful, we might end up just like them in the end.
The first of a series, this book introduces Angel Crawford, a high school dropout with an alcoholic dad, a dead-beat boyfriend, and an addiction to prescription drugs. When things in your life are that bad, waking up as a zombie is more of an opportunity than a setback – especially when her newly undead status comes with a fresh job at the morgue and access to all the brains she can eat. But her new job and secret lifestyle come with a big side portion of murder mystery. This whole series is a fun urban fantasy romp that goes down smoother than a feast of brains.
Living with her alcoholic deadbeat dad in the swamps of southern Louisiana, she's a high school dropout with a pill habit and a criminal record who's been fired from more crap jobs than she can count. Now on probation for a felony, it seems that Angel will never pull herself out of the downward spiral her life has taken.
That is, until the day she wakes up in the ER after overdosing on painkillers. Angel remembers being in an horrible car crash, but she doesn't have a mark on her. To add to the weirdness,…
I have been a voracious zombie fan since George A. Romero changed the nature of zombies with his low-budget breakthrough film, Night of the Living Dead over 40 years ago. Since then, I have watched a ton of zombie movies and shows and read even more zombie books and comics. It was inevitable that they would star in my own books, including my zombie trilogy, The Deadland Saga along with several novellas and short stories.
This is my favorite zombie series of all time. Adair is an incredible writer, and his Slow Burn series gives us plenty of Romero-style zombies that we love, but it also gives us more. In this series, some of the infected don’t turn into regular zombies. Zed is one of these. I don’t want to give any spoilers but trust me on this. If you like a good zombie tale, read Slow Burn, and I guarantee you’ll continue on to book 2 and every other book in this series about zombies with a twist.
A new flu strain has been spreading across Africa, Europe, and Asia. Disturbing news footage is flooding the cable news channels. People are worried. People are frightened. But Zed Zane is oblivious. Zed needs to borrow rent money from his parents. He gets up Sunday morning, drinks enough tequila to stifle his pride and heads to his mom’s house for a lunch of begging, again. But something is wrong. There’s blood in the foyer. His mother’s corpse is on the living room floor. Zed’s stepdad, Dan is wild with crazy-eyed violence and attacks Zed when he comes into the house.…
I’m a Canadian author who thought too much about death as a child. But I was also a happy little goblin who grew up watching Disney fairytales and Transformers cartoons—all of which shine in my blend of twisting horror meeting tales of love and friendship. My degree in History helps me add depth and a political thriller edge. Bands of brothers, found family, and loyal hounds round out my books. I adore being scared, but I also want my characters to find happiness. So I’ll put you on the edge of your seat and have you jumping at the next twist—but don’t worry, the dog always lives.
This book rose out of the grave and grabbed me by the ankles. I’ve always loved (and been completely terrified of) zombies. After 28 Days Later scarred me for life (that one scene with the crow and the blood ACK), zombies became somewhat of an obsession. But I always found myself wanting…more. Then this book shambled in my door, and suddenly, I had the twisted, funny, heartwarming zombie fairytale I never knew I needed in my life. It upended the undead genre, and I will love it forever for giving the mix of zombies and romance a big ole bear hug.
Now a major motion picture starring Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer and John Malkovich, Warm Bodies is the ultimate zombie read this Halloween.
'R' is a zombie. He has no name, no memories, and no pulse, but he has dreams. He is a little different from his fellow Dead.
Amongst the ruins of an abandoned city, R meets a girl. Her name is Julie and she is the opposite of everything he knows - warm and bright and very much alive, she is a blast of colour in a dreary grey landscape. For reasons…
I’ve been reading and enjoying science fiction since, as a kid, I rode my bicycle to the local library to read everything they had. That’s given me a broad exposure to the field from the Golden Age classics to new stuff hot off the presses. I’ve had four science fiction novels published, and in all of them I’ve used personal experiences to create as realistic a world as possible. I’ve also focused on ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances – that combination makes for better stories. I’ll leave the superheroes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe – they’ve got the budget to Blow Stuff Up Real Good!
I’m also a personal friend of Jim C. Hines, but we became friends because I was a fan of his work.
This book is the first of a trilogy (which is different than a never-ending series) and takes a new, different, and funny spin on the zombie apocalypse.
Earth was hit by a plague that zombie-fied those humans it didn’t kill. Then the aliens came and cured some humans, who had to join their space fleet. Mostly as janitors and other menial laborers. Marion “Mops” Adamopoulos goes from head janitor to captain of the Earth Mercenary Corps Ship Pufferfish. She can barely fly the ship, but now must fight it.
Definitely a case where an ordinary person gets put in an extraordinary situation.
The Krakau came to invite Earth into an alliance of sentient species, only to find that plague had turned humanity into shambling, near-unstoppable animals. A century later a bioweapon wipes out the Krakau command crew and reverts the rest of the humans to their feral state - only Marion 'Mops' Adamopoulos and her Shipboard Hygiene and Sanitation team on board the Earth Mercenary Corps Ship Pufferfish are left with their minds intact. They stumble onto a conspiracy born from the truth of what happened on Earth all those years ago.
I have long been a fan of zombie apocalypse scenarios. The first movie I watched was the classic Dawn of the Dead remake. Shocked and fascinated, I wanted more, devouring anything I could find on the topic. It wasn’t long before I stumbled across my first zombie apocalypse book, and I was hooked. It became an obsession for a while, and I spent my free time reading one zombie book after another. Finally, I reached a point where I wanted to write my own story and version of the apocalypse, and I did. Fast-forward several years, and I’m now a full-time author with numerous completed series, most of them zombie.
I absolutely loved this book from the start. Alissa was such a force of nature that I couldn’t help but read in awe as she maneuvered through her former workspace, a hospital filled with the undead.
Faced with colleagues and friends turned into monsters, she refused to give up or sink into despair. Instead, she fought for survival and tried to save others. Filled with gore, this is a high-octane tale of death and danger that might leave you with a phobia for hospitals. Nosocomephobia.
One day can change a person’s life forever.Alissa anticipated a normal shift at Mass General Hospital until the zombie outbreak spread through Boston like wildfire. When patients and staff in the ER begin to die, reanimate, and attack the living, Alissa must fight her way to safety to avoid becoming one of the ravenous hordes. To survive, Alissa must develop instincts and skills she did not realize she had and overcome fears no human were meant to face. Escaping the hospital will be tough enough, but can Alissa survive the nightmare gripping Boston and make it out of the city…
Books that make me feel uncomfortable are usually the ones that have stuck with me most over the years. There’s just something so alluring to me about an author who can effectively bring out that feeling in readers. When I started writing stories, I wanted to make my readers squirm – I wanted to layer the guts and gore with underlying psychological themes that made the violence and trauma that much more impactful. These books that I mentioned acted almost as study guides on how to blend shocking violence with themes of loneliness, depression, and rage. If you layer these correctly, you’re going to effectively be able to make your reader uncomfortable and your stories memorable.
This isn’t a zombie book. It’s a book about isolation, depression, rage, and escapism. This is the book I continue to come back to and is always the first one I recommend for someone looking for a new book to read. There’s a slow ramping of violence in this book, married perfectly to the main character’s evolution – resulting in some truly bleak scenes.
“Shocking, emotional, and punctuated by moments of brutal savagery, SLOWLY WE ROT contains some of the most frightening scenes in recent horror fiction. If you enjoy zombie stories, you’ll love this book. If you believe there’s no life left in the zombie subgenre, Bryan Smith is about to prove you wrong. SLOWLY WE ROT is a searing, stunning triumph.”--Jonathan Janz, author of The Nightmare Girl and Savage Species
Long after the zombie apocalypse wiped out most of the human race, a young man named Noah resides in a remote mountain cabin. Several years have passed since he last saw another…
I'm a life-long horror lover and author of dark fiction. I've been reviewing films and video games for Ravenous Monster ezine for nearly a decade, and my Wattpad horror novel The Hound is currently being adapted for film. My favorite thing is the intersection of the horrifying and fantastic with the mundane, and that's what appeals to me so much about zombies: in all of their multitudinous representations, they've always held up a mirror to humanity. No monster can so easily reflect the many facets of humanity as a zombie. Because, after all, the dead were once just like us – and if we're not careful, we might end up just like them in the end.
If you're familiar with Hugh Howey's work, it's probably thanks to his Wool series of post-apocalyptic sci-fi. I, Zombie is a very different sort of book. It's still post-apocalyptic in subject, but the tone is even darker and filled with both horror and melancholy for the dying world. The zombies here are prisoners of their own bodies, forced to drift and commit horrific violence that they can feel but cannot prevent. You'll get to meet several such zombies in this book and really feel for them as you see each one's backstory and how they came to be part of the horde – and it's that pathos that makes this book something special.
This book contains foul language and fouler descriptions of life as a zombie. It will offend most anyone, so proceed with caution or not at all.
And be forewarned: This is not a zombie book. This is a different sort of tale. It is a story about the unfortunate, about those who did not get away. It is a human story at its rotten heart. It is the reason we can't stop obsessing about these creatures, in whom we see all too much of ourselves.
I’m a member of the Horror Writers Association and have been a professional writer since 1997. I got into writing horror because I love reading horror and watching horror movies. Even as a kid, I watched horror movies on Saturday afternoons and read horror books late at night—under the covers, with a flashlight. I collected Universal monster models as a kid too and still have my collection and have even added to it. I love all things horror and believe I have a deep understanding of what scares people and how to scare them. I guarantee that the books on my list will scare you to the bone.
Get your horror on! This collection of flash fiction will activate your taste buds like zombies drawn to fresh brains. These stories oozed from the brains of some of the best horror writers from around the world, the likes of Ramsey Campbell, Nate Kenyon, Tim Lebbon, William F. Nolan, Eric Guignard, Lisa Morton, Jack Ketchum, Nancy Kilpatrick, Del Howison, (yours truly) Fred Wiehe, and many more. Also, Mike Mignola of Hell Boy fame designed the cover art! I was honored to be included in this anthology and thoroughly enjoyed reading the other stories by these masters of horror.
Do you like your horror in small bite-sized chunks? If so, then SLICES OF FLESH from Dark Moon Books will activate your taste buds like zombies drawn to fresh brains. These flash fiction stories oozed from the brains of some of the best horror writers from around the world and will fit perfectly into your daily diet of "scary." SLICES OF FLESH includes the following short horror tales: Acceptance (Reesa Brown), Air Baby (Stephen Volk), All Paths Lead to Psychopath (Sephera Giron), Althea's Mistake (Jennifer Word), Angst (Fran Friel), The Bastard Called Hope (Jennifer Brozek), Big Bite (Rick Hautala), Blame…
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…
I’ve been reading horror books and watching horror movies since I was entirely too young to do either—thanks to my father’s collection of Stephen King books and my uncle’s love of horror movies. Now I’m a horror writer and wake early each morning to make blank pages darker. Zombies remain one of my favorite horror sub-genres. There’s something relentlessly compelling about these mindless ghouls linking inside each of us waiting for some triggering event to set them loose. Maybe it’s the resulting chaos. Maybe it’s the gruesome horror. Mostly, it’s how such tales show us the fragility of our civilization and the darkness of our own nature.
Originally released in ten parts as a horror serial, The Resurrected is a real treat. For starters, the zombie virus has a unique origin. The planet is hit by a series of freak storms. In the aftermath, strange flowers bloom, spreading a virus that transmits across humanity. The shocking action that follows is told from a shifting array of characters with many of their stories intertwining. My favorite thing about this book is Hart’s visceral description. Her sensory details will transport the reader right into each moment. It’s a wicked read, and features the best zombie sex scene you’ll ever read!
The Resurrected, The Compendium, includes the entire contents of the original serial, parts 1-10. Some content has been revised or updated and may differ from the original. When a series of freak storms sweep across the world, they leave behind something more than devastation. First come the swift-growing flowers, smelling like heaven and dying as quickly as they bloom. Next comes the infestation as the flowers breed and multiply inside their hosts. After that, chaos, mayhem and death. And after that...resurrection.
