Some places to find our suggestions –
- CareerOneStop, managed by the U.S. Department of Labor, allows you to find your nearest local, free public library by entering your (or your school’s) zip code.
- IndieBound has a bookstore finder tool that helps you find local, small book shops to support if you choose to purchase a copy.
Image: Harper Collins Publisher
1. After the Flood
Author: Kassandra Montag
Publisher: Harper Collins Publisher
Year of publication: 2019
ISBN 13: 9780062889386
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “A little more than a century from now, our world has been utterly transformed. After years of slowly overtaking the continent, rising floodwaters have obliterated America’s great coastal cities and then its heartland, leaving nothing but an archipelago of mountaintop colonies surrounded by a deep expanse of open water… A compulsively readable novel of dark despair and soaring hope, After the Flood is a magnificent, action packed, and sometimes frightening odyssey laced with wonder—an affecting and wholly original saga both redemptive and astonishing.”
2. After the Snow
Author: S.D. Crockett
Publisher: MacMillan Publishers
Year of publication: 2012
ISBN 13: 9781250016768
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “The oceans stopped working before Willo was born, so the world of ice and snow is all he’s ever known. He lives with his family deep in the wilderness, far from the government’s controlling grasp. Willo’s survival skills are put to the test when he arrives home one day to find his family gone. It could be the government; it could be scavengers—all Willo knows is he has to find refuge and his family. It is a journey that will take him into the city he’s always avoided, with a girl who needs his help more than he knows.”
3. Clade
Author: James Bradley
Publisher: Penguin Random House, Penguin Books Australia
Year of publication: 2015
ISBN 13:9781926428659
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “On a beach in Antarctica, scientist Adam Leith marks the passage of the summer solstice. Back in Sydney his partner Ellie waits for the results of her latest round of IVF treatment. That result, when it comes, will change both their lives and propel them into a future neither could have predicted. In a collapsing England Adam will battle to survive an apocalyptic storm. Against a backdrop of growing civil unrest at home, Ellie will discover a strange affinity with beekeeping. In the aftermath of a pandemic, a young man finds solace in building virtual recreations of the dead. And new connections will be formed from the most unlikely beginnings. Clade is the story of one family in a radically changing world, a place of loss and wonder where the extraordinary mingles with the everyday. Haunting, lyrical and unexpectedly hopeful, it is the work of a writer in command of the major themes of our times.”
4. Dry
Author: Neal Shusterman, Jarrod Shusterman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster, Books for Young Readers
Year of publication: 2018
ISBN 13: 9781481481977
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “The drought—or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it—has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers. Until the taps run dry. Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbors and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don’t return and her life—and the life of her brother—is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she’s going to survive.”
5. Everything Changes Volume I
Author: Edited by Milkoreit, Martinez, and Eschrich
Publisher: Arizona State University, Imagination and Climate Future Initiative
Year of publication: 2016
ISBN 13: N/A
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher):”Everything Change features twelve stories from our 2016 Climate Fiction Short Story Contest along with a foreword by science fiction legend and contest judge Kim Stanley Robinson and an interview with renowned climate fiction author Paolo Bacigalupi.”
Free PDF: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gvjk7yvmmbnwkmq/Everything%20Change%20An%20Anthology%20of%20Climate%20Fiction.pdf?dl=0%22
6. Everything Changes Volume II
Author: Edited by Angie Dell, Joey Eschrich
Publisher: Arizona State University, Imagination and Climate Future Initiative
Year of publication: 2018
ISBN 13: N/A
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “Everything Change, Volume II features 10 stories from our 2018 Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest, along with a foreword by our lead judge, renowned science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson.”
Free HTML copy: https://csi.asu.edu/story/climate-fiction-2/
7. Factory Air
Author: Omar El-Akkad,
Publisher: Guernica Magazine
Year of publication: 2019
ISBN 13: N/A
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “Through a megaphone the factory’s chief of security ordered the workers to disband. In collective chorus, which was their own fractured megaphone, the workers chanted their refusal.”
8. Flight Behavior
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Collins Publisher
Year of publication: 2012
ISBN 13: 9780062124272
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “Flight Behavior is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking parable of catastrophe and denial that explores how the complexities we inevitably encounter in life lead us to believe in our particular chosen truths. Kingsolver’s riveting story concerns a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee who experiences something she cannot explain, and how her discovery energizes various competing factions—religious leaders, climate scientists, environmentalists, politicians—trapping her in the center of the conflict and ultimately opening up her world. Flight Behavior is arguably Kingsolver’s must thrilling and accessible novel to date, and like so many other of her acclaimed works, represents contemporary American fiction at its finest.”
9. Fragment
Author: Craig Russell
Publisher: Thistledown Press
Year of publication: 2016
ISBN 13: 9781771871112
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “When avalanching glaciers thrust a massive Antarctic ice sheet into the open ocean, the captain of an atomic submarine must risk his vessel to rescue the survivors of a smashed polar research station; in Washington the President’s top advisor scrambles to spin the disaster to suit his master’s political aims; and meanwhile two intrepid newsmen sail south into the storm-lashed Drake Passage to discover the truth. Onboard the submarine, as the colossal ice sheet begins its drift toward South America and the world begins to take notice, scientists uncover a secret that will threaten the future of America’s military power and change the fate of humanity. And beneath the human chaos one brave Blue Whale fights for the survival of his species.”
10. Loosed Upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction
Author: Edited by John Joseph Adams
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Year of publication: 2015
ISBN 13: 9781481450317
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “Collected by the editor of the award-winning Lightspeed magazine, the first, definitive anthology of climate fiction—a cutting-edge genre made popular by Margaret Atwood. Is it the end of the world as we know it? Climate Fiction, or Cli-Fi, is exploring the world we live in now—and in the very near future—as the effects of global warming become more evident. Join bestselling, award-winning writers like Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, Kim Stanley Robinson, Seanan McGuire, and many others at the brink of tomorrow. Loosed Upon the World is so believable, it’s frightening.”
11. Midnight at the Electric
Author: Jodi Lynn Anderson
Publisher: Harper Collins
Year of publication: 2017
ISBN 13: 9780062393555
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “2065: Adri has been handpicked to live on Mars. But weeks before launch, she discovers the journal of a girl who lived in her house more than a hundred years ago and is immediately drawn into the mystery surrounding her fate. 1934: Amid the fear and uncertainty of the Dust Bowl, Catherine’s family’s situation is growing dire. She must find the courage to sacrifice everything she loves in order to save the one person she loves most. 1919: In the recovery following World War I, Lenore tries to come to terms with her grief for her brother, a fallen British soldier, and plans to sail from England to America. But can she make it that far? While their stories span thousands of miles and multiple generations, Lenore, Catherine, and Adri’s fates are entwined in ways both heartbreaking and hopeful. In Jodi Lynn Anderson’s signature haunting, lyrical prose, human connections spark spellbindingly to life, and a bright light shines on the small but crucial moments that determine one’s fate.”
12. New York 2140
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Year of publication: 2017
ISBN 13: 9780316262347
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “As the sea levels rose, every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city. There is the market trader, who finds opportunities where others find trouble. There is the detective, whose work will never disappear — along with the lawyers, of course. There is the internet star, beloved by millions for her airship adventures, and the building’s manager, quietly respected for his attention to detail. Then there are two boys who don’t live there, but have no other home — and who are more important to its future than anyone might imagine. Lastly there are the coders, temporary residents on the roof, whose disappearance triggers a sequence of events that threatens the existence of all — and even the long-hidden foundations on which the city rests.”
13. Orleans
Author: Sherri Smith
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Year of publication: 2014
ISBN 13: 9780147509963
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “After a string of devastating hurricanes and a severe outbreak of Delta Fever, the Gulf Coast has been quarantined. Years later, residents of the Outer States are under the assumption that life in the Delta is all but extinct…but in reality, a new primitive society has been born. Fen de la Guerre is living with the O-Positive blood tribe in the Delta when they are ambushed. Left with her tribe leader’s newborn, Fen is determined to get the baby to a better life over the wall before her blood becomes tainted. Fen meets Daniel, a scientist from the Outer States who has snuck into the Delta illegally. Brought together by chance, kept together by danger, Fen and Daniel navigate the wasteland of Orleans. In the end, they are each other’s last hope for survival.”
14. The Broken Earth Trilogy – The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky
Author: N.K. Jemisin
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Year of publication: 2015 – 2018
ISBN 13: 9780316229302; 9780316229289; 9780316229258
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “Book One in The Broken Earth Trilogy – This is the way the world ends…for the last time. A season of endings has begun. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world’s sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long-dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.”
15. The Carbon Diaries series – The Carbon Diaries 2015, The Carbon Diaries 2017
Author: Saci Lloyd
Publisher: Holiday House
Year of publication: 2009 – 2011
ISBN 13: 9780823426898; 9780823423903
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “It’s the year 2015, and global warming is ravaging the environment. In response, the United Kingdom mandates carbon rationing. When her carbon debit card arrives in the mail, sixteen-year-old Laura is just trying to handle the pressure of exams, keep her straight-X punk band on track, and catch the attention of her gorgeous classmate Ravi. But as multiple natural disasters strike and Laura’s parents head toward divorce, her world spirals out of control. With the highest-category hurricane in history heading straight toward London, chronicling the daily insanity is all Laura can do to stay grounded in a world where disaster is the norm.”
16. The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future
Author: Naomi Oreskes, Erik Conway
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Year of publication: 2016
ISBN 13:9780231169547
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought and—finally—the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093, when the disintegration of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet led to mass migration and a complete reshuffling of the global order. Writing from the Second People’s Republic of China on the 300th anniversary of the Great Collapse, a senior scholar presents a gripping and deeply disturbing account of how the children of the Enlightenment—the political and economic elites of the so-called advanced industrial societies—failed to act, and so brought about the collapse of Western civilization. In this haunting, provocative work of science-based fiction, Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway imagine a world devastated by climate change. Dramatizing the science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, the book reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do and reveals the self-serving interests of the so called “carbon combustion complex” that have turned the practice of science into political fodder. Based on sound scholarship and yet unafraid to speak boldly, this book provides a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate change literature.”
17. The Islands at the End of the World
Author: Austin Aslan
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Year of publication: 2015
ISBN 13: 9780385744034
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “In this fast-paced survival story set in Hawaii, electronics fail worldwide, the islands become completely isolated, and a strange starscape fills the sky. Leilani and her father embark on a nightmare odyssey from Oahu to their home on the Big Island. Leilani’s epilepsy holds a clue to the disaster, if only they can survive as the islands revert to earlier ways. A powerful story enriched by fascinating elements of Hawaiian ecology, culture, and warfare, this captivating and dramatic debut from Austin Aslan is the first of two novels. The author has a master’s degree in tropical conservation biology from the University of Hawaii at Hilo.”
18. The Ministry for the Future
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Year of publication: 2020
ISBN 13: 9780316300162
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis.”
19. The Overstory
Author: Richard Powers
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Year of publication: 2018
ISBN 13: 9780393356687
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): “The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.”
20. Water, Inc.
Author: Varda Burstyn
Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada
Year of publication: 2005
ISBN 13: 9781859845967
Recommended age range: 15 – 18 year olds
Description (from publisher): A private American consortium of corporate owners aims to pipe and ship water from northern Quebec to the US. Congressmen, state governors, and a federal administration hostile to Canada ride shotgun for them, aided by a brilliant, existentially torn Quebec deputy minister and a cut-throat minister of finance. They’re resisted by a whistle-blowing executive, the director of a major US environmental organization, a group of Quebec ecologists, a feisty British journalist, three rogue policemen, a reluctant eco-terrorist, and a maverick Vermont governor hated by the consortium and the White House.