The most recommended books about earthquakes

I often enjoy writing about characters with various special powers and so I admire how Jackson Ford imbues his superheroes with such depth of characterization. This is the second book in the Frost Files series, which follows the adventures of a telekinetic heroine Teagan Frost. She is a compelling protagonist and written with such verisimilitude - if telekinesis existed, what would it really be like to have such a power? how would the government react to someone who could move objects with their mind? Jackson Ford’s answers to these questions, and his fast pacing with multiple cliffhangers, all made this book a delightful read!

In this wonderful novel, massive earthquakes cause a geological catastrophe that changes the world’s geography overnight. The upheaval of the ocean floor forms a land bridge that connects the island of Guernsey with mainland Britain. By removing the sea from the English Channel, Christopher creates a peculiar, surreal landscape which, we soon discover, is populated by some peculiar and surreal people. I particularly enjoyed the captain of the grounded ship who tries to run his vessel as though nothing has changed. John Christopher was the grandmaster of the post-apocalyptic genre.

Dark Inside centers around a series of powerful earthquakes that shake every continent on Earth and awakens a supernatural inner rage within people. The concept of this novel is incredibly fascinating and is another novel that shows the power of Mother Nature - with a twist. After the earthquakes, the world descends into a hellish landscape that, at times, eerily mirrors events that have taken place in the real world. The apocalypse is brought on by the evilness of humanity, which makes it an interesting read. 

This was an amazing collection of facts and myths about predicting the weather. There is a superb range of dates and anecdotes, which made me really think about how people may use the events of the past to predict what might happen in the future.

I thought it was amazing that he included some discussion of earthquakes, and I was impressed about where he sought his information, often being contacted by members of the public about things he had not mentioned in his radio show. I think this is a great book to dip into during a year, seeing how the weather on one date might foresee the conditions on another. Fascinating. 

When I left the East Coast for California fifty years ago, everyone warned me about earthquakes. They thought I was foolish! I can recall only Loma Prieta. I had fallen asleep on the couch while the World Series was being played close by. My daughter, not the quake, woke me up to feel the shaking. Compared to thunderstorms, blizzards, and hurricanes back east, earthquakes were more mythological than actual.

Life was calm until the 2017 night when smoke coming through an open window awoke me. No fire engines or signs of burning anywhere, I went back to sleep. In the morning, I discovered that a firestorm had raged through towns and country fifteen miles away, taking an area larger than Rhode Island. Like so many that hellish night, the president of my university fled her home in pajamas, barefoot. So did Fies, a local artist, and his wife flee. He… show more.

Amazingly, the seismic disasters that this book documents, which took place in the middle of the United States in the nineteenth century, have been almost entirely forgotten by scientists and planners.

How can earthquakes remake an entire region, physically and socially—and yet to be erased from history within two generations? This is a mind-boggling story about the short attention span of those entrusted to protect against environmental destruction.

Earthquakes and Volcanoes is another one of the fabulous Reader’s Digest Pathfinders series specifically for kids. It features scientists at work measuring the temperature of red-hot lava, destructive earthquakes, and monstrous tsunamis bearing down on coastal ports. The cause of all of these is simply explained in the context of our planet’s shifting plate tectonic motor. The book’s author, Dr. Lin Sutherland, gave me a great helping hand during my Ph.D. degree at Macquarie University by organizing access to state-of-the-art uranium-lead age dating equipment for my sapphire samples. We became firm friends and colleagues after that, going on together to publish numerous research articles on sapphires and rubies.

This book showcases the extraordinary writing of the novelist and journalist Elena Poniatowska. She weaves together the voices of multiple journalists, her own reflections, and above all the testimonies of dozens of survivors of the two earthquakes that battered Mexico City and surrounding areas on September 19 and 20, 1985. It is both a moving report of people's suffering as well as a stirring portrait of how common people stepped in and created search and rescue teams and offered relief when government efforts failed. Poniatowska masterfully captures what many historians consider a key before and after moment in modern Mexican history.

The oldest book on the list, Lucifer’s Hammer seems to be an end-of-the-world tale. And it is to a degree: the world is forever altered after a comet enters the earth’s atmosphere and breaks apart, the huge pieces slamming into the West Coast.

It’s the aftermath, though, where things get interesting. How do people survive? How much of their humanity survives with them? This is the story Niven and Pournelle tell, with a level of realism that echoes people’s attitudes and actions witnessed during the COVID pandemic.

With a clash between rival forces leading to a showdown that dictates the survivors’ future, Lucifer’s Hammer has continued to resonate with me years after reading it.

What starts out as a camping trip in remote Halape for a boy scout troop from Hilo turns desperate when an earthquake hits and their camp is devastated by a tsunami. The boys are scattered, and it’s up to Dylan and his nemesis Louie to reunite the troop and get them to safety. Inspired by real events that I remember, this book is a survival story about friendship, leadership, and teamwork that keeps readers on the edge of their seats.