Books like “Station Eleven”

What to read after “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Severance
Ling Ma · 2018
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
A millennial office worker in New York keeps showing up to her publishing job as a fever turns people into repetitive, wandering shells. Her account of the collapse moves between satire of work and the quiet end of the world.
2
The Road
Cormac McCarthy · 2006
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction” and “Literary fiction”
A father and his young son walk through a burned America, pushing a cart of scavenged supplies and hiding from bands of survivors who hunt people for food. Their only aim is to keep moving south and stay alive while holding on to decency.
3
The Year of the Flood
Margaret Atwood · 2009
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
A religious sect called God's Gardeners expects a coming catastrophe and tries to live apart from the corrupt world around it. Two women, Toby and Ren, tell how they reached the group and what happened to them after the disaster they predicted.
4
The 5th Wave
Rick Yancey · 2013
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
After a series of waves wipes out most of humanity, sixteen-year-old Cassie is alone and running from an enemy that could look like anyone. To find her little brother she will have to trust a stranger, even as she learns how the invasion really works.
5
The Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham · 1951
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
A meteor shower blinds most of humanity, leaving a few sighted survivors in a world where walking, venomous plants have escaped from farms. A young man and a small group try to reach safety and decide what kind of society can be rebuilt.
6
Earth Abides
George R. Stewart · 1949
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
A plague kills nearly everyone on Earth. An ecologist emerges from the mountains to find empty cities and a few survivors, and spends the rest of his life watching a new, smaller society take shape without the old world's machinery.
7
Wool
Hugh Howey · 2011
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
- Post-Apocalyptic World
- Survival
In a future where the air outside is deadly, people live in a buried silo and are told that anyone who asks to go outside will be sent there to die. When a sheriff starts asking questions about the world beyond the walls, the silo's careful order begins to crack.
8
The Girl with All the Gifts
M. R. Carey · 2014
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
A gifted child lives in a military base, strapped into a chair for lessons while hungries roam outside. When the base falls, she and her teacher cross a broken England while she learns what she is and what she can choose to become.
9
Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler · 1993
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
In a near-future California wrecked by drought and lawlessness, a teenage girl who feels the pain of others builds a new belief while her walled neighbourhood falls apart. She leads a small group north, looking for land and for something to hold on to.
10
Bird Box
Josh Malerman · 2014
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
Something outside drives anyone who sees it to violence, so the survivors live blindfolded. Malorie has kept two children safe for years. Now she must row them downriver without looking, toward a refuge that may or may not exist.
11
Children of Time
Adrian Tchaikovsky · 2015
Similar setting: “Post-Apocalyptic World”
- Post-Apocalyptic World
- Survival
After humanity's fall, a terraforming experiment leaves a world where evolved spiders build a growing civilisation. A last ark ship of humans arrives above the planet, setting the two species on a collision course across centuries of war, memory and first contact.
12
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller Jr. · 1959
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
- Post-Apocalyptic World
- Apocalypse
After a nuclear war, monks in a desert abbey preserve the few books that survive, including a blueprint signed by a martyred engineer. Across centuries they copy, guard and argue over the relics while civilisation slowly rebuilds and then repeats its old mistakes.