Books like “The 5th Wave”

What to read after “The 5th Wave” by Rick Yancey: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel · 2014
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
After a flu wipes out most of humanity, a travelling theatre troupe moves between the small settlements that remain, performing Shakespeare. The story follows survivors across decades and asks what of civilization is worth carrying forward.
2
The Road
Cormac McCarthy · 2006
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic 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
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.
4
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.
5
Severance
Ling Ma · 2018
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
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.
6
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.
7
Earth Abides
George R. Stewart · 1949
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
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.
8
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.
9
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.
10
The Maze Runner
James Dashner · 2009
Similar setting: “Post-Apocalyptic World”
- Post-Apocalyptic World
- Survival
Thomas wakes in a maze with no memory of who he is, surrounded by boys who arrived the same way. Each day the walls open and monstrous machines roam, and Thomas becomes sure he was part of the experiment that trapped them.
11
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.
12
I Am Legend
Richard Matheson · 1954
Same genre: “Post-apocalyptic fiction”
Robert Neville believes he is the last human in a world overrun by people transformed by a plague. By day he hunts them and repairs his house; by night they besiege it, and he tries to understand what the survivors have become.