Is it too soon to read about Pandemics? Are we ready to be scared out of our wits by novels that detail the horrors of a society run amok by the ravages of disease? Do we want to know all about infectious disease and the fine line between discoveries and outbreaks? It turns out, we do. This list was compiled for the winter adult reading program and no one seemed to complain too much about reading something that hit close to home. Pandemics have been the stuff of dystopian fiction for a long time and the 1793 and 1918 pandemics have been written about over and over as new information and theories come to light. One imagines that the Covid pandemic will still be written about a century out too. There is something for everyone on this list. All of these books are in infosoup and most of them are here at this library.

Agnes at the end of the world. McWilliams, Kelly. Collection: Teen Fiction, Call #: McWilliams

Sixteen-year-old Agnes must escape a cult and a Prophet as she attempts to save the world from a pandemic

Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics, and Place. Irvine, Amy. Collection: On Order, Call #:

Letters penned during pandemic by writers Pam Houston and Amy Irvine as they shelter in place in Colorado's high country, one on either side of the Continental Divide.

An American plague : the true and terrifying story of the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. Murphy, Jim. Collection: Children Nonfiction, Call #: 614.5 MUR

In a powerful, dramatic narrative, critically acclaimed author Jim Murphy describes the illness known as yellow fever and the toll it took on Philadelphia’s residents, relating the epidemic to the major social and political events of the day and to 18th-century medical beliefs and practices

A beginning at the end. Chen, Mike. Collection: Fiction, Call #: Chen

Four survivors come together as the country rebuilds in the aftermath of a devastating pandemic. With stunning foresight, this character-driven postapocalyptic suspense is an intimate, hopeful look at how people can move forward by creating something better.

A bright as heaven. Meissner, Susan. Collection: Large Print, Call #: Meissner

Pauline Bright and her husband come to 1918 Philadelphia with hopes for a better life that are quashed when the Spanish Flu arrives. Despite loss, they learn the meaning of love by taking in a baby orphaned by the disease.

Bunker : building for the end times. Garrett, Bradley L. Collection: Nonfiction, Call #: 613.69 Gar

Currently, 3.7 million Americans call themselves preppers. Millions more prep without knowing it. Bradley Garrett, who began writing this book years before the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, argues that prepping is a rational response to global, social, and political systems that are failing to produce credible narratives of continued stability

COVID : the politics of fear and the power of science. Siegel, Marc. Collection: Nonfiction, Call #: 362.1962414 Sie

People are afraid. COVID-19 has upended our lives as it poses new medical dangers, economic suffering and grave uncertainty about the world around us. The collateral damage is enormous, but politics invade perception. There are so many unknowns. Does a treatment work? Is a vaccine coming? How likely are you to catch COVID and how can you best protect yourself and your family? What are the real risks and what is hysteria?

COVID-19 : the pandemic that never should have happened and how to stop the next one. Mackenzie, Debora. Collection: Nonfiction, Call #: 614.5 Mac

In a gripping, accessible narrative, a veteran science journalist lays out the shocking story of how the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic happened and how to make sure this never happens again

The Decameron project : 29 new stories from the pandemic. Collection: NEW, Call #: 813 Dec

Presents a collection of short stories originally commissioned by "The New York Times Magazine" as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, from twenty-nine authors including Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Edwidge Danticat, and more, in a project inspired by Boccaccio's "The Decameron."

Don't stand so close to me. Walters, Eric. Collection: Children Fiction, Call #: Walters

In this novel for middle readers, 13-year-old Quinn and her friends try to adjust to life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The end of October : a novel. Wright, Lawrence. Collection: Fiction - Mystery/Thriller, Call #: Wright

In this propulsive medical thriller--from the Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author--Dr. Henry Parsons, an unlikely but appealing hero, races to find the origins and cure of a mysterious new killer virus as it brings the world to its knees.

The fever of 1721 : the epidemic that revolutionized medicine and American politics. Coss, Stephen. Collection: Nonfiction, Call #: 616.912 Cos

The fever of 1721 : the epidemic that revolutionized medicine and American politics

Flu : the story of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 and the search for the virus that caused it. Kolata, Gina Bari. Collection: Nonfiction, Call #: 614.5 Kol

The fascinating, true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe.

How we live now : scenes from the pandemic. Hayes, Bill. Collection: Nonfiction, Call #: 779.997471 Hay

In How We Live Now, author and photographer Bill Hayes offers an ode to our shared humanity--capturing in real time this strange new world we're now in (for who knows how long?) with his signature insight and grace. As he wanders the increasingly empty streets of Manhattan, Hayes meets fellow New Yorkers and discovers stories to tell, but he also shares the unexpected moments of gratitude he finds from within his apartment, where he lives alone and--like everyone else--is staying home, trying to keep busy and not bored as he adjusts to enforced solitude with reading, cooking, reconnecting with loved ones, reflecting on the past--and writing.

Lethal agent. Mills, Kyle. Collection: Fiction, Call #: Flynn

An unprecedented bioterrorism plot threatens to kill millions of Americans in the midst of a divisive presidential election, in the next thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Mitch Rapp series.

An ocean of minutes. Lim, Thea. Collection: Fiction, Call #: Lim

America is in the grip of a deadly flu pandemic. When Frank catches the virus, his girlfriend Polly will do whatever it takes to save him, even if it means risking everything. She agrees to a radical plan--time travel has been invented in the future to thwart the virus. If she signs up for a one-way-trip into the future to work as a bonded laborer, the company will pay for the life-saving treatment Frank needs

One for sorrow : a ghost story. Hahn, Mary Downing. Collection: Children Fiction, Call #: Hahn

From ghost story master Mary Downing Hahn, a chilling middle grade tale set during the flu pandemic of 1918.

Orleans. Smith, Sherri L. Collection: Teen Fiction, Call #: Smith

Set in a futuristic, hostile Orleans landscape, Fen de la Guerre must deliver her tribe leader's baby over the Wall into the Outer States before her blood becomes tainted with Delta Fever

The orphan collector. Wiseman, Ellen Marie. Collection: , Call #:

In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia's overcrowded streets and slums, and from the anti-German sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. Army, hoping to prove his loyalty. But an even more urgent threat has arrived. Spanish influenza is spreading through the city. Soon, dead and dying are everywhere. With no food at home, Pia must venture out in search of supplies, leaving her infant twin brothers alone...

Pale rider : the Spanish Flu of 1918 and how it changed the world. Spinney, Laura. Collection: Nonfiction, Call #: 614.518 Spi

The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth--from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people, it exists in our memory as an afterthought to World War I.
In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test.

Pandemic. Cook, Robin. Collection: Fiction, Call #: Cook

The explosive new medical thriller from New York Times-bestselling author Robin Cook. After a young, seemingly healthy woman collapses suddenly on the NYC subway and dies by the time she reaches the hospital, her case is initially chalked up to a virulent strain of influenza. That is, until she ends up on Dr. Jack Stapleton's autopsy table, where Jack discovers something eerily fishy: First, that the young woman has had a heart transplant, and second, that her DNA matches that of the transplanted heart. Strangely, two more incidences of young people with this same sudden and rapid illness follow, and Jack fears that this could be the start of an unprecedented pandemic. But the facts aren't adding up. Something is off about these cases, something creepy, and only Jack can figure it out before it's too late.

The pull of the stars : a novel. Donoghue, Emma. Collection: Fiction, Call #: Donoghue

Dublin, 1918: three days in a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu. A small world of work, risk, death, and unlooked-for love, in Donoghue's best novel since Room (Kirkus Reviews)In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together.

The rules of contagion : why things spread - and why they stop. Kucharski, Adam. Collection: Nonfiction, Call #: 302.2 Kuc

A deadly virus suddenly explodes into the population. A political movement gathers pace, and then quickly vanishes. An idea takes off like wildfire, changing our world forever. We live in a world that's more interconnected than ever before. Our lives are shaped by outbreaks - of disease, of misinformation, even of violence - that appear, spread and fade away with bewildering speed. To understand them, we need to learn the hidden laws that govern them.

Scribe : a novel. Hagy, Alyson Carol. Collection: Fiction, Call #: Hagy

Drawing on traditional folktales and the history and culture of Appalachia, Alyson Hagy has crafted a gripping, swiftly plotted novel that touches on pressing issues of our time--migration, pandemic disease, the rise of authoritarianism--and makes a compelling case for the power of stories to both show us the world and transform it.

Spillover : animal infections and the next human pandemic. Quammen, David. Collection: Nonfiction, Call #: 614.43 Qua

A masterpiece of science reporting that tracks the animal origins of emerging human diseases.

Station eleven : a novel. Mandel, Emily St. John. Collection: Fiction, Call #: Mandel

A movie star who's decided to pound the boards as King Lear collapses and dies mid-performance, and shortly thereafter civilization collapses and starts dying as well. The narrative then moves between the actor's early career and a journey through the blasted landscape 15 years after the book's opening events

Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America's Poets Respond to the Pandemic. Quinn, Alice. Collection: NEW, Call #: 811.608 Qui

A movie star who's decided to pound the boards as King Lear collapses and dies mid-performance, and shortly thereafter civilization collapses and starts dying as well. The narrative then moves between the actor's early career and a journey through the blasted landscape 15 years after the book's opening events

Vic Lee's Corona Diary 2020: A Personal Illustrated Journal of the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020. Lee, Vic. Collection: On Order, Call #:

Vic Lee's Corona Diary is an exquisitely illustrated graphic novel-style memoir chronicling the dramatic events around the global spread of the coronavirus

Year one. Roberts, Nora. Collection: Fiction, Call #: Roberts

It began on New Year's Eve. The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed--and more than half of the world's population was decimated. Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magic rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river--or in the ones you know and love the most. As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City

The Young Elites. Lu, Marie. Collection: Teen Fiction, Call #: Lu YE 1

Adelina Amouteru is a survivor of the blood plague: marked by a jagged scar, snow-white hair and lashes. Cast out by her family, Adelina has finally found a place to belong within the secret society of Young Elites. To some, the Elites are heroes, here to save innocents in desperate situations. But to the Inquisition Axis, the white-robed soldiers of Kenettra, they are monsters with demonic powers who must be brought to justice