The best survival books

That title. That. Title. It's also a pretty killer idea, with some razor-sharp social commentary. Women that society views as difficult are quite literally shipped off to a prison planet. Only someone like Kelly Sue DeConnick could pull this off, and her tag team with the artist Valentine De Landro makes this a must-read. It's funny, emotional, and has the added benefit of making you think.

There is a reason Louis L'Amour books remain popular. I wish I had the whole collection, and I read every one I can get my hands on. One I particularly recommend is Down the Long Hills, which is a slight departure from his usual tales. In this one, two children find themselves alone and pitted against weather, wilderness, warriors, and their own worry that they are too little for this journey. I could not help measuring my own knowledge and ingenuity against that of a seven-year-old boy and finding it wanting. Nor could I help admiring the resolve and sense of responsibility that would put most adults to shame. I'll be reading this one again, too.

Girl in Pieces is such an important story for anyone who has gone through any addiction or trauma of any kind before.

Charlotte, the protagonist, is in pieces. At seventeen she’s lost more than most people lose in a lifetime and she’s learned how to forget her trauma in order to protect herself. This is a book about Charlotte surviving in a world that has taken so much, and the journey she undergoes to put herself back together.

Although this book tells a story of people being cruel to themselves, it is ultimately a book about learning how to be gentle with yourself.

The Crossing is the first book of a trilogy. Many Hager is billed as a young person's author but I just adored this story set in the south pacific on a tiny atoll. The scene is set with a young girl called Maryam who has been raised to believe that she and her blessed sisters are special. Soon they will cross the sea and serve a Lord and his apostles. But Maryam is wracked with doubt. As we read on, we can see she has good reason to be. She is being lined up as a human sacrifice. But she is brave and resourceful, she escapes with 3 companions and takes the reader on a magnificent journey into the void.  

Demitria Lunetta is a wonder. Her debut novel, In the After, has been described as a postapocalyptic thriller, but it’s the inclusion of sci-fi and horror elements that really makes this book unputdownable. The novel’s teen protagonist, Amy, is a fierce, plucky, and formidable heroine who literally faces what looks like the end of the world before living to fight, be rescued, and fight some more for herself and the person she cares about most. It’s the perfect read for anyone who loves speculative fiction with grit and adrenaline thrown in.

England, in the near future, walking blindly into totalitarianism, everything falling apart. Eve has grown up in a happy family, with loving parents, but not even they can protect her from the world collapsing around them. Eve sets out on a journey, alone, across the wild Yorkshire moors, in search of new ways of living. This is a powerful, beautiful graphic novel from Una. 

I love thrilling action books, especially zombie ones, that feature a strong female heroine. The more believable they are as an everyday woman and not some CIA agent superhero the better! Turbulent delivered on this and more. I loved the main character and her survival in this post-apocalyptic world was extremely believable. I also loved the twist that technology helped to bring us down because that’s something I have a real fear of, so it made it all the scarier for me. The topping on the rotting cake that tipped this book into my favorites pile was that the story was set in Chicago, near where I live and where most of my books take place as well. It really brought the story home for me (pardon the pun).

Call me weird. I’m not a fan of series books. Unless, that is, they’re written by Nicholas Sansbury Smith. The problem with a book series for me is that I get bored of the same idea book after book after…zzzzzz. But when someone writing a book series is constantly bringing new ideas to the table, it keeps me reading. Couple that with characters we care about, and a heavy focus on moving the plot forward, and I’ll finish a book in no time and be eager to read the next one. This, my friends, is the first book in one of those series. 

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.

This novel is a gritty, realistic look at the crew of a ship attempting to voyage through the Arctic Circle in the 1800s. Soon, they are iced in, and something horrifying waits out in the tundra for them. Loved this book, the building tension, the detail of Dan Simmons’s writing – I could tell he really researched this book.

Your Heart, My Sky is a gorgeous book set on the island of Cuba during a terrible period of starvation in the 1990s. The points of view of two young lovers and a stray dog work together to paint a full picture of both the bleak situation and their heightened emotions during this desperate time.

I found the romance to be the perfect bright spot as the protagonists and their families struggle to survive on the island they love. As always, Engle’s poetry sings as the perfect vehicle for this very personal story that YA fans will surely devour. 

After a virus decimates the world’s female population, an unnamed midwife must work out how to survive and make her way to safety in a world where women are scarce, and men seek to control the few who are left.

I loved this story for its incredible world-building and the fresh approach to the struggles of a woman trying to exist in a world of chaos, competition, and aggression. I really appreciated the practicalities of survival that the main character prioritises over any sense of idealism or femininity: the novel beautifully casts those themes aside to portray the midwife’s deeper and more profound strengths. 

An undead-rising means that there will be no early-bird buffets, no fast-food drive-throughs, and no food delivery services. And all of the Michelin chefs will be zombies, incapable of providing star-level dishes. But that doesn't mean you have to eat poorly! Wilson's and Bauthus' book details the culinary techniques and recipes needed to meet even the most finicky eater's gustatory and nutritional needs. The names of the recipes are worth the read alone! My personal favorite is "The Wok-ing Dead Stir-fry," although "Life's Chard, but it will be OKale" is a close second. 

A child of immigrants 20-something professional selling bibles, Severance is about Cadence Chen’s story of completing her early career job during a pandemic before setting off into the dystopian horror of society’s collapse.

Severance is a satire everyone needs to read after our own worldwide pandemic.

It’s funny: the prologue starts the band of survivors that Candence joins learning to start campfires in the wilderness from youtube and how to shoot. It parodies our materialistic culture that treats occupations like destinies and shares the feeling of estrangement many of us children of immigrants feel too.

It’s a maturation story with a different flavor: coming of age out of the material sensibilities that sometimes overwhelm our own good sense.

There’s just something about the man-versus-nature struggle, especially when the sheer force of Mother Nature is so vividly described in the pages of this book based in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Main characters Sophie and Finn, no strangers to backstories brimming with tremendous pain and loss, face down the eye of the hurricane, learning to lean on each other while learning more about the beauty of life. With such immersive descriptions (including the location’s wild horses!), readers can expect to be transported to the Southern coast on a true journey of self-discovery and second-chance love.

This book is the first in a series and has such a unique premise. It feels part sci-fi, part dystopia, and part fantasy which makes for a fascinating read. Set in a dismal future, humanity lives inside a controlled domed city called Reverie. Our main protagonist—Aria—has to leave its protection when things go awry for her and venture into the wilderness outside. She meets Perry, a member of the tribes that claim the outside world as their own. Sparks fly as they work through their prejudices and come to understand one another, and help each other to survive. Always a fabulous recipe for a breathtaking enemies-to-lovers romance.

This is a haunting and uncomfortable book, in the best way; it’s one that you can’t stop thinking about because it raises difficult questions without providing easy answers. Barker writes about the immediate postwar period through the eyes of a German girl who must come to terms with what her country and her own family have done during the war. This book doesn’t gloss over anything; we see firsthand what the Soviet occupation means for the German civilian population, and we must grapple with questions of culpability and justice, of who deserves judgment and who has the right to mete it out.

This World War II story with a mystical twist had me fascinated and invested the whole way through.

Yona lives as a girl of the wilderness and finds herself fighting to protect Jewish refugees who have escaped the ghettos. With her knowledge of the forest, she vows to protect her found family, though surviving the German winter proves very dangerous.

The lengths Yona goes for people she just met tugged at my heartstrings, and the unique setting felt almost otherworldly. With a touch of folklore, this story keeps your head in the stars, but your heart grounded to Earth.

Dr. Alex Cross and Detective John Sampson are preparing to leave on their “manly trip” into the Montana wilderness when they receive a call from Metro PD. A dead CIA officer puts a pause on their plans. During his investigation, Alex receives an unnerving text from the criminal genius known as “M” who has terrorized Cross and his family for years. Alex and John eventually make it to Montana. Their vacation takes a treacherous 360-degree turn as they venture deep into the rugged Montana wilderness. Two rival teams of trained assassins are hunting them. One controlled by “M”. The other by the cartel. Cross and Sampson are isolated and cut off in a life-or-death struggle. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. A thriller right up until the end.

In Wilder Girls, a bizarre, unprecedented plague called the Tox has infested an island home to an all-girls boarding school. The Tox causes those it infects to mutate in gruesome ways—growing gills, claws, an extra spine, et cetera. The schoolgirls and remaining sparse crew of staff members have developed a system of survival, but when one girl goes missing and her friend determines to find her, everything is thrown into chaos.

This book will grip you hard from the first sentence, sink its teeth into you, shake you around, then have you gasping for air on the floor by the time you hit the last page. Seriously, this is an insane, intense ride, perfect for any fan of weird fiction and body horror. (That’s me.)