7 Climate Fiction Book Recommendations
Read up on the growing genre of climate fiction with these 7 book recommendations.
Last winter, sheerly by accident, I went on a climate fiction reading binge. To say I enjoy climate fiction feels odd, since so much of it is steeped in disaster, but I'm often drawn to books that explore what could happen. So when large swathes of the midwest was plunged into below average (and significantly below freezing) temperatures last winter, I suppose it made sense that I was swept up in stories where draught, heat, and hurricanes took center stage.
While there are obviously common themes in the books recommended below, there are certain books that I think pair well together because they explore similar situations in entirely different ways.
Here are 7 climate fiction novels that envision the before, during, and after (sometimes very long after) climate disasters.
The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Pair this novel with Bruce Holsinger's The Displacements. In this novel, we see the aftermath of numerous hurricanes that've hit Florida from the view of those who've chosen to stay—even when the rest of society has left. In The Displacements, we see the story of those who've chosen to leave.
Synopsis: Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.
As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature.
Told in four parts—power, water, light, and time—The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.
Order a copy of The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton.
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The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger
In addition to pairing well with The Light Pirate, Bruce Holsinger has once again (just as in The Gifted School) crafted a nuanced story that explores the race, class, and social tensions as they reach their boiling point.
Synopsis: An adrenaline-fueled story of lives upended and transformed by an unprecedented catastrophe.
To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full-time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna—the world’s first category 6 hurricane—upends everything they have taken for granted.
When the storm makes landfall, it triggers a descent of another sort. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing, and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the American South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will “normal” ever return?
A suspenseful read plotted on a vast national tapestry, The Displacements thrillingly explores what happens when privilege is lost and resilience is tested in a swiftly changing world.
* Bonus: Bruce Holsinger will teach a session on writing climate fiction at the 2023 Writer's Digest Annual Conference. Register now to hear him speak!
Order a copy of The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger.
The Deluge by Stephen Markley
Set aside a few weeks to read this epic that spans decades, features an extraordinary cast of characters, and blends literary fiction with the page-turning tension of a thriller.
Synopsis: From the bestselling author of Ohio, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity.
In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come.
From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity’s last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.
Order a copy of The Deluge by Stephen Markley.
L.A. Weather by María Amparo Escandón
For a taste of how the increasing draught conditions and wildfires are affecting people today, this novel explore the effects on one family in L.A.
Synopsis: Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants a little rain. L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and he’s harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage.
Their three daughters—Claudia, a television chef with a hard-hearted attitude; Olivia, a successful architect who suffers from gentrification guilt; and Patricia, a social media wizard who has an uncanny knack for connecting with audiences but not with her lovers—are left questioning everything they know. Each will have to take a critical look at her own relationships and make some tough decisions along the way.
With quick wit and humor, María Amparo Escandón follows the Alvarado family as they wrestle with impending evacuations, secrets, deception, and betrayal, and their toughest decision yet: whether to stick together or burn it all down.
Order a copy of L.A. Weather by María Amparo Escandón.
Solar by Ian McEwan
Climate fiction doesn't exactly have a reputation for being humorous, but some of the scenarios in this novel are so awkward they can help but be funny. At the same time, it's a representation of how people, even when armed with extensive knowledge, just can't help but make bad choices.
Synopsis: Dr. Michael Beard’s best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions, and halfheartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. Meanwhile, Michael’s fifth marriage is floundering due to his incessant womanizing. When his professional and personal worlds collide in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself for Michael to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and save the world from environmental disaster. But can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?
Order a copy of Solar by Ian McEwan.
American War by Omar El Akkad
Set in the not-too-distant future, this novel is a disturbing and all-too-realistic cautionary tale of what could happen when America turns on itself again.
Synopsis: An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle—a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself. Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.
Order a copy of American War by Omar El Akkad.
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Spanning hundreds of years, these interconnected short stories that envisions what happens when a melting permafrost releases a plague not seen for millenia, will stick with you long after you turn the last page.
Synopsis: For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague—a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice.
In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.
Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.
From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resilience of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.
Order a copy of How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu.
About Amy Jones
Amy Jones is the Editor-in-Chief of Writer’s Digest and was the managing content director for WD Books. She is the editor of the Novel and Short Story Writer's Market and Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market. Prior to joining the WD team, Amy was the managing editor for North Light Books and IMPACT Books. Like most WD staffers, Amy is a voracious reader and has a particular interest in literary fiction, historical fiction, steamy romance, and page-turning mysteries. When she’s not reading, Amy can be found daydreaming about Italy or volunteering at her local no-kill cat shelter. Find Amy on Twitter @AmyMJones_5.
