The novel coronavirus or COVID-19 is on the rise throughout the world. The virus has caused a domino effect across various nations, putting the lives of many on hold. The virus causes shortness of breath, fever, and cough. More than 80% people experience mild symptoms, but the elderly and those with certain health conditions are at high risk of complications. In these tough situations, many of us are staying inside our homes with nothing to do. So, we turn towards entertainment and books to make the most of our time.

The 2011 Warner Bros. film, Contagion, centers on a nationwide pandemic — has become majorly popular on streaming platforms this year. The Simpsons became popular for predicting the spread of a disease. The South Korean film, My Secret Terrius gave the chill to its audience due its close proximity to what is happening all around us. But if you prefer books to movies, there are also novels about that went viral for having predicted the novel coronavirus. Books like The Eyes Of Darkness by Dean Koontz and End Of Days: Predictions and Prophecies about the End of the World by Lindsay Harrison and Sylvia Browne have become popular on google search.

But if you are curious enough to read more than these popular books, there are also novels about other viral outbreaks that can offer you some insights. From recent works like Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven to Robin Cook’s Outbreak, here is a list of 10 books that you read during these tough times. Scroll down to check it out –

OUTBREAK by ROBIN COOK – In this 1987 medical thriller, murder and mystery reach epidemic proportions when a devastating plague sweeps the country. Dr. Marissa Blumenthal of the Atlanta Centers for Disease Control investigates and soon uncovers the medical world’s deadliest secret. As details emerge about the virus’ spread, however, Blumenthal begins to wonder whether someone is manipulating the epidemic from behind the scenes.

THE PLAGUE by ALBERT CAMUS – A gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.  

A MATTER OF DAYSby AMBER KIZER – On Day 56 of the Blustar Pandemic, sixteen-year-old Nadia’s mother dies, leaving Nadia to fend for herself and her younger brother, Rabbit. Both have been immunized against the virus, but they can’t be protected from what comes next. Facing a lawless world of destruction and deprivation, Nadia and Rabbit drive from Seattle to their grandfather’s compound in West Virginia. The illness, fatigue, and hunger they endure along the way will all be worth it once they reach the compound. Unless no one is waiting for them .

THE LAST ONE by ALEXANDRA OLIVIA – 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 to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it human-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them—a young woman the show’s producers call Zoo—stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game.

STATION ELEVEN by EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL – Years after a flu pandemic destroyed human civilization, a troupe of Shakespearean actors known as the Traveling Symphony journey on a two-year circuit around the Great Lakes, performing at the small encampments they find along the way. One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect them.

THE CAMPANIONS by KATIE M. FLYNN – In the wake of a highly contagious virus, California is under quarantine. Sequestered in high rise towers, the living can’t go out, but the dead can come in—and they come in all forms, from sad rolling cans to manufactured bodies that can pass for human. Sixteen-year-old Lilac is leased to a family of strangers. But she realizes she’s able to defy commands, and she throws off the shackles of servitude and runs away, searching for the woman who killed her. Lilac’s act of rebellion sets off a chain of events that sweeps from San Francisco to Siberia to the very tip of South America.

A BEAUTIFUL POISON by LYDIA KANG – Just beyond the Gilded Age, in the mist-covered streets of New York, the deadly Spanish influenza ripples through the city. But with so many victims in her close circle, young socialite Allene questions if the flu is really to blame. All appear to have been poisoned—and every death was accompanied by a mysterious note. Desperate for answers and dreading her own engagement to a wealthy gentleman, Allene returns to her passion for scientific discovery and recruits her long-lost friends, Jasper and Birdie, for help. As more of their friends and family die, alliances shift, lives become entangled, and the three begin to suspect everyone—even each other.

ORYX AND RAKE by MARGARET ATWOOD – Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride.

THE DREAMERS by KAREN THOMPSON WALKER – In an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a freshman girl stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics who carry her away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. Then a second girl falls asleep, and then another, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A quarantine is established. Mei, an outsider in the cliquish hierarchy of dorm life, finds herself thrust together with an eccentric, idealistic classmate. And at the hospital, a new life grows within a college girl, unbeknownst to her—even as she sleeps. A psychiatrist, summoned from Los Angeles, attempts to make sense of the illness as it spreads through the town. Those infected are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, more than has ever been recorded. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?

WILDER GIRLS by RORY POWER – It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty’s life out from under her. It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don’t dare wander outside the school’s fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything. But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence.

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