Poll

Details: Rivers by Michael Farris Smith
2013, 337 pages, 3.73 stars
$12.99 Kindle, very cheap used print, probably not at library.

"For fans of Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx, “a wonderfully cinematic story” (The Washington Post) set in the post-Katrina South after violent storms have decimated the region.

It had been raining for weeks. Maybe months. He had forgotten the last day that it hadn’t rained, when the storms gave way to the pale blue of the Gulf sky, when the birds flew and the clouds were white and sunshine glistened across the drenched land.

The Gulf Coast has been brought to its knees. Years of catastrophic hurricanes have so punished and depleted the region that the government has drawn a new boundary ninety miles north of the coastline. Life below the Line offers no services, no electricity, and no resources, and those who stay behind live by their own rules—including Cohen, whose wife and unborn child were killed during an evacuation attempt. He buried them on family land and never left.

But after he is ambushed and his home is ransacked, Cohen is forced to flee. On the road north, he is captured by Aggie, a fanatical, snake-handling preacher who has a colony of captives and dangerous visions of repopulating the barren region. Now Cohen is faced with a decision: continue to the Line alone, or try to shepherd the madman’s prisoners across the unforgiving land with the biggest hurricane yet bearing down—and Cohen harboring a secret that poses the greatest threat of all.

Eerily prophetic in its depiction of a Southern landscape ravaged by extreme weather, Rivers is a masterful tale of survival and redemption in a world where the next devastating storm is never far behind.“This is the kind of book that lifts you up with its mesmerizing language then pulls you under like a riptide."

The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
1962, 198 pages, 3.48 stars
$8.55 Kindle, very cheap used print, probably at library.

"First published in 1962, J.G. Ballard's mesmerizing and ferociously prescient novel imagines a terrifying future in which solar radiation and global warming have melted the polar ice caps and Triassic-era jungles have overrun a submerged and tropical London. Set during the year 2145, the novel follows biologist Dr. Robert Kerans and his team of scientists as they confront a surreal cityscape populated by giant iguanas, albino alligators, and endless swarms of malarial insects. Nature has swallowed all but a few remnants of human civilization, and, slowly, Kerans and his companions are transformed—both physically and psychologically—by this prehistoric environment. Echoing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness—complete with a mad white hunter and his hordes of native soldiers—this "powerful and beautifully clear" (Brian Aldiss) work becomes a thrilling adventure and a haunting examination of the effects of environmental collapse on the human mind."

Global Burning: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel by Jonathan Sturak
2017, 245 pages, 4.08 stars
$2.99 Kindle, print $10.94 and up, not library, Kindle Unlimited "free".

"It's the year 2045 and global warming has turned the world into a fireball. Nothing can survive outside and the last humans are confined to the underground. Recently, scientists have discovered the temperature has been rising at a much faster rate and in one month, the shields that protect the underground oxygen supply will be destroyed. All life will be exterminated! Follow Melissa Mercer, James Wilson, and the President of the New America as they try to save the human race from extinction."

Winter World by A.G. Riddle
2019, 418 pages, 4.25 stars
$1.99 Kindle, print starting at 12+, not at library, Kindle Unlimited "free".

"Each month, it grows colder. Snow falls in summer. Glaciers trample cities across North America, Europe, and Asia. The new ice age gripping the Earth shows no signs of stopping.

Chaos erupts. Around the world, people abandon their homes, fleeing the cold, flocking to regions where they can survive.

Nations prepare to go to war for the world’s last habitable zones.

NASA and other scientific organizations race to discover why the world is cooling. They send probes into the solar system to collect readings. Near Mars, one of the probes finds something no one expected: a mysterious object, drifting toward the sun. Could it be responsible for the new ice age? And if so, can we stop it? Or is the artifact merely an observer? Or neither? Could it be a relic from a long-extinct civilization? One thing is certain: investigating the artifact is humanity’s best hope of survival.

As the ice age claims more lives and the world slides into anarchy, an international consortium launches a mission into space to study the object and make contact. But the first contact mission doesn’t go as planned. What the crew discovers out there is beyond anyone’s imagination.

Two members of the first contact mission may hold the keys to humanity’s salvation.

Dr. Emma Matthews is the commander aboard the International Space Station. For months, she has watched the world below freeze and civilization unravel. The headlines tell only half of the story. The messages from her sister tell the rest, of a world witnessing mass migrations, fighting for survival, struggling to provide a future for their children. When a catastrophe strikes the ISS, Emma faces her own fight for survival.

Dr. James Sinclair is one of the greatest scientists alive. A mind before his time. Years ago, he invented something with the potential to change the world--an invention that would upset the balance of power in the world forever. Fearing that change, his enemies sent him to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. But with humanity’s future at stake, NASA asks him to join the first contact mission. His expertise is vital to the mission’s success--and to saving Emma. With the clock ticking down to humanity’s final days on Earth, James makes a decision that will change his life forever and may determine the fate of the entire human race."

FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven
2016, 272 pages, 4.25 stars
$12.99 Kindle, cheap used paperback, not at library

"Since the 1970s, FantasticLand has been the theme park where “Fun is Guaranteed!” But when a hurricane ravages the Florida coast and isolates the park, the employees find it anything but fun. Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares. How could a group of survivors, mostly teenagers, commit such terrible acts?

Presented as a fact-finding investigation and a series of first-person interviews, FantasticLand pieces together the grisly series of events. Park policy was that the mostly college-aged employees surrender their electronic devices to preserve the authenticity of the FantasticLand experience. Cut off from the world and left on their own, the teenagers soon form rival tribes who viciously compete for food, medicine, social dominance, and even human flesh. This new social network divides the ravaged dreamland into territories ruled by the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, and the Mole People. If meticulously curated online personas can replace private identities, what takes over when those constructs are lost?

FantasticLand is a modern take on Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale that probes the consequences of a social civilization built online. "

Here's the actual description of Winter World:

A global ice age... pushes the human race to the brink of extinction.

In our darkest hour, an international consortium ventures into space, looking for answers.
Near Mars, they make a groundbreaking discovery.
Could it save us from the ice age?
Or is it the cause?
The race is on to find out--and to save humanity.

* * *

From A.G. Riddle, the worldwide bestselling author of The Atlantis Gene and Departure , comes a new sci-fi thriller that will change the way you look at Earth’s place in the solar system forever.

* * *

Each month, it grows colder. Snow falls in summer. Glaciers trample cities across North America, Europe, and Asia. The new ice age gripping the Earth shows no signs of stopping.

Chaos erupts. Around the world, people abandon their homes, fleeing the cold, flocking to regions where they can survive.

Nations prepare to go to war for the world’s last habitable zones.

NASA and other scientific organizations race to discover why the world is cooling. They send probes into the solar system to collect readings. Near Mars, one of the probes finds something no one expected: a mysterious object, drifting toward the sun. Could it be responsible for the new ice age? And if so, can we stop it? Or is the artifact merely an observer? Or neither? Could it be a relic from a long-extinct civilization? One thing is certain: investigating the artifact is humanity’s best hope of survival.

As the ice age claims more lives and the world slides into anarchy, an international consortium launches a mission into space to study the object and make contact. But the first contact mission doesn’t go as planned. What the crew discovers out there is beyond anyone’s imagination.

Two members of the first contact mission may hold the keys to humanity’s salvation.

Dr. Emma Matthews is the commander aboard the International Space Station. For months, she has watched the world below freeze and civilization unravel. The headlines tell only half of the story. The messages from her sister tell the rest, of a world witnessing mass migrations, fighting for survival, struggling to provide a future for their children. When a catastrophe strikes the ISS, Emma faces her own fight for survival.

Dr. James Sinclair is one of the greatest scientists alive. A mind before his time. Years ago, he invented something with the potential to change the world--an invention that would upset the balance of power in the world forever. Fearing that change, his enemies sent him to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. But with humanity’s future at stake, NASA asks him to join the first contact mission. His expertise is vital to the mission’s success--and to saving Emma. With the clock ticking down to humanity’s final days on Earth, James makes a decision that will change his life forever and may determine the fate of the entire human race.

Thanks Wendy, edited the text in the first comment.