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.
A covert agent is recalled from leave when a flying saucer lands in Iowa and parasitic slugs begin attaching themselves to human hosts. The slugs control their victims' bodies while drawing on their memories, and the agent and a small team race to expose the invasion before the people in charge are no longer human.
The Moon suddenly breaks apart, and a small group of people escapes to orbit while Earth becomes uninhabitable. They must keep a fragile space habitat alive long enough to preserve the human species, and decide what kind of society to build.
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.
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.
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.
An aging astronomer stays behind at a remote Arctic research station after the world loses contact with everyone else. Far above, the crew of a returning space mission hears nothing from Earth. Their two stories move toward each other across the ice and the dark.
A wanderer in a ruined America puts on a dead postman's uniform and invents a story about a restored postal service. The lie gives scattered survivors hope, then grows into something he must defend.
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.
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.
An early mining machine called the Boneshaker shattered Seattle and released a gas that kills people or turns the dead into rotters. Sixteen years later, Briar Wilkes enters the walled ruins after her son Zeke, who hopes to clear his father's name, goes in. She finds the ruined city ruled by a masked inventor and his followers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Strange objects fall into the deepest oceans, and soon ships vanish and coastal towns are attacked by something unseen. A radio journalist and his wife follow the escalating crisis as humanity struggles to understand an enemy that never shows itself.
Abducted human women crash-land on a frozen alien planet. Georgie sets out for help and meets Vektal, a blue horned alien who says she is his mate and that his chest purrs in her presence. He will help her people survive, but the planet's harsh rules bind them together.
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.
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.
A man called Snowman may be the last human left, living in a tree above a ruined city and watching over a gentle new species. Through his memories the reader learns how his brilliant friend Crake and the woman they both loved brought the world to its end.
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.
When a system integrates Earth, Jake Thayne is pulled into the Tutorial along with everyone else. Forced to hunt monsters and absorb their power, he grows far faster than most, while the world he returns to is no longer the one he left.
A vast alien craft from Alpha Centauri enters the Solar System, and the elephant-like Fithp announce themselves by destroying satellites and a Soviet space station. They land in Kansas and demand humanity's surrender, while scientists, soldiers and even science-fiction writers scramble to understand the invaders and mount a defence.
Rachel White is a thirty-year-old lawyer in New York who has always lived in the shadow of her glamorous best friend, Darcy. After a drunken night on her birthday, Rachel sleeps with Darcy's fiancé, Dex, a law-school classmate she has quietly loved for years. Their affair continues in secret, forcing Rachel to weigh loyalty, love, and the life she actually wants.
Start with “The 5th Wave”, “The Puppet Masters”, “Seveneves”: they are the closest to “The Host” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “The Host” these are Alien Invasion, Dual Identity, Love Triangle), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “The 5th Wave”, “Seveneves”, “The Road”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
