Pandemic Reads

It's been 5 years since COVID-19. The list below covers a range of pandemics both real and imaginary.

Updated March 17, 2025
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Fourteen days : a literary project of the Authors Guild of America
Atwood, Margaret
Paper Book
Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days is an irresistibly propulsive collaborative novel from the Authors Guild, with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbors has been secretly written by...
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Atwood, Margaret 1939-
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The first volume in the internationally acclaimed MaddAddam trilogy is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future--from the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments A Kirkus...
The windup girl
Bacigalupi, Paolo.
Paper Book
Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a...
The spare room : a novel
Bartz, Andrea
Paper Book
Staying with a friend and her husband is sexier--and deadlier--than anyone could have imagined, in this "delightfully salacious" (Shondaland) domestic suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese's Book Club pick We Were Never Here. "A...
Year of wonders : a novel of the plague
Brooks, Geraldine.
Paper Book
"When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated mountain village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes, we follow the story of the plague year, 1666, as her fellow villagers make an extraordinary choice. Convinced by a...
World War Z : an oral history of the zombie war
Brooks, Max
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "Prepare to be entranced by this addictively readable oral history of the great war between humans and zombies."--Entertainment Weekly   We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by...
Has anyone seen my toes? : a novel
Buckley, Christopher
Paper Book
From the bestselling author of Thank You for Smoking and Make Russia Great Again comes a comic tour de force, the story of one man's spiraling journey through lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, an aging screenwriter is holed up in a coastal...
The girl with all the gifts
Carey, M. R. 1959-
Paper Book
In the ruins of civilization, a young girl's kindness and capacity for love will either save humanity -- or wipe it out in this USA Today bestselling thriller Joss Whedon calls "heartfelt, remorseless, and painfully human." Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls...
The furies : two Charlie Parker novels
Connolly, John
Paper Book
Chaos and murder arrive in Charlie Parker's hometown of Portland, Maine, with two connected crimes in the latest novel in #1 nationally bestselling author John Connolly's "flawless and highly suspenseful" (PopSugar) series. From "a master of the macabre" (RT Book...
Pandemic
Cook, Robin
Paper Book
New York Times-bestselling author Robin Cook takes on the cutting-edge world of gene-modification in this pulse-pounding new medical thriller. When an unidentified, seemingly healthy young woman collapses suddenly on the New York City subway and dies upon reaching the...
The Andromeda strain
Crichton, Michael
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The novel that redefined the science fiction genre, starring a team of scientists who must uncover what killed the citizens of a sleepy desert town--and stop the deadly contagion before it creates a catastrophe. "I love anything Michael...
The passage : a novel
Cronin, Justin.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * This thrilling novel kicks off what Stephen King calls "a trilogy that will stand as one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction." NOW A FOX TV SERIES! NAMED ONE OF PASTE'S BEST HORROR...
Day : a novel
Cunningham, Michael
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTELLER * An "exquisite" (The Boston Globe) exploration of love and loss, the struggles and limitations of family life--and how we all must learn to live together and apart--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours "The only problem with...
My heart will find you
Deveraux, Jude
Paper Book
"When the world is brought to a standstill in the early days of a global pandemic, Etta Wilmont finds herself suddenly stranded in Kansas City. Desperate to secure a roof over her head, Etta crosses paths with Henry Logan, a lonely older man in need of a caretaker. As Etta and Henry settle into a...
Love in the time of cholera
García Márquez, Gabriel 1927-2014
Paper Book
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * "A love story of astonishing power" (Newsweek), the acclaimed modern literary classic by the beloved Nobel Prize-winning author. In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry...
The dog stars
Heller, Peter
Paper Book
"Leave it to Peter Heller to imagine a postapocalyptic world that contains as much loveliness as it does devastation. His hero, Hig, flies a 1956 Cessna (his dog as copilot) around what was once Colorado, chasing all the same things we chase in these pre-annihilation days: love, friendship, the...
The fireman : a novel
Hill, Joe
Paper Book
#1 New York Times Bestseller From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to...
The stand : the complete & uncut edition
King, Stephen 1947-
Paper Book
#1 BESTSELLER * NOW A PARAMOUNT+ LIMITED SERIES * Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting--and eerily plausible--as when it was first published. One of The...
Bird box
Malerman, Josh
Paper Book
"A book that demands to be read in a single sitting, and through the cracks between one's fingers. There has never been a horror story quite like this. Josh Malerman truly delivers." -- Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool Written with the narrative tension of...
Sea of Tranquility
Mandel, Emily St. John
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years...
Station Eleven
Mandel, Emily St. John 1979-
Paper Book
This Anniversary Edition of Station Eleven, a finalist for the National Book Award and named a Best Book of the Twenty-First Century by the New York Times, celebrates ten years of this now iconic novel with a new color illustration and a guide to "The Mandelverse" A...
The summer of lost and found
Monroe, Mary Alice
Paper Book
A timely, tender, and compassionate tale of perseverance, love, and the bonds of family in the face of tremendous and sometimes painful upheaval in this latest novel in the New York Times bestselling Beach House series. The coming of spring usually means renewal, but for...
How high we go in the dark : a novel
Nagamatsu, Sequoia
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE * ROXANE GAY'S AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK * FINALIST FOR THE URSULA K. LE GUIN PRIZE "Moving and thought-provoking . . . offering psychological insights in lyrical prose while seriously exploring speculative conceits." --...
The last one a novel
Oliva, Alexandra
Audiobook
Survival is the name of the game as the line blurs between reality TV and reality itself in Alexandra Oliva's fast-paced novel of suspense. She wanted an adventure. She never imagined it would go this far. It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods...
Wish you were here : a novel
Picoult, Jodi
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the author of Small Great Things and The Book of Two Ways comes "a powerfully evocative story of resilience and the triumph of the human spirit" (Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy...
Year one
Roberts, Nora
Paper Book
A #1 New York Times Bestselling AuthorChronicles of The One (Book 1)It began on New Year's Eve. The sickness came on suddenly and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. In weeks, over half of the world's population was decimated. In a world where every stranger could be a savage or a savior,...
The years of rice and salt
Robinson, Kim Stanley.
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD * The bestselling author of the Mars trilogy boldly reimagines the past seven hundred years in this "exceptional and engrossing" (New York Post) saga, constructing a world vastly different from the one we know. . . "A thoughtful, magisterial alternate...
Blindness
Saramago, José.
Paper Book
A stunningly powerful novel of humanity's will to survive against all odds during an epidemic by a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. An International Bestseller  * "This is a shattering work by a literary master."--Boston Globe
Lock in
Scalzi, John
Paper Book
TheNew York Times bestseller,Lock In, is a blazingly inventive near-future thriller from the Hugo Award-winning John Scalzi. Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than...
Our country friends : a novel
Shteyngart, Gary
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK * ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Town & Country, Good...
Lucy by the sea : a novel
Strout, Elizabeth
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a poignant, pitch-perfect novel about a divorced couple stuck together during lockdown--and the love, loss, despair, and hope that animate us even as the world seems to be falling apart. ...
Find me : a novel
Van den Berg, Laura
Paper Book
Long-listed for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize After two acclaimed story collections, Laura van den Berg brings usFind Me, her highly anticipated debut novel--a gripping, imaginative, darkly funny tale of a young woman struggling to find her place in the world. ...
Annihilation
VanderMeer, Jeff.
Paper Book
A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM ALEX GARLAND, STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC NOW AVAILBLE IN A SPECIAL NEW TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION The Southern Reach Trilogy begins with Annihilation, the Nebula Award-winning novel that "reads as if Verne or...
The summer place : a novel
Weiner, Jennifer
Paper Book
When her twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser is shocked. But the wheels are in motion. Headstrong Ruby has already set a date (just three months away!) and spoken to her beloved safta, Sarah's mother Veronica, about having the...
Zone one : a novel
Whitehead, Colson
Paper Book
In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization under...

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