A couple more YA suggestions (here via friend of friend):

The Green Book</i>, Jill Patton Walsh (everyone leaves the earth because it's being destroyed)

Scott Westerfeld's The Last Days</i> isn't so much post-apocalyptic as during-apocalyptic, but it's in a similar area.

I have Last Days on my to be read shelf. Yeah, that and M.T. Anderson's Feed both seem to be set during the apocalypse, rather than after.

Does Peeps not count on this list, because it's only the beginning of the end?

You know, after reading Last Days, Peeps feels more like it fits than it did when it was the only one I'd read, somehow ...

I believe Jennifer Armstrong's Fire Us series is post apocalyptic. For adults, The Stand (Stephen King), Swan Song (Robert McCammon), On the Beach (Nevil Shute), and White Plague (Frank Herbert).

And since I just ordered a copy of the first Fire-Us book, I should have remembered it!

Not apocalyptic, but have you read Nina Kiriki Hoffman's stuff?

I have -- though it's been a while -- and very much like it!

I've been pondering your list for some time, Janni, and working my way through some of them. I was in the teen section of my local library today and came across Hole in the Sky by Pete Hautmann. Have you read it? It's set on the edge of the Grand Canyon, after most of humanity has been wiped out by a flu like illness twenty or so years from now?

You know, I knew about this when it first came out, and then somehow completely forgot about it. Thanks for reminding me!

I finished it in a sitting. It's good - interesting take on what it would be like to grow up in the remnants of our collapsed civilization. I had a minor problem with some of the details but won't go into that in case you do read it.

Gillian

I was just revisiting your post-apoc list, and I thought of a couple of fantastic adult books that you don't have listed.

Have you read World War Z by Max Brooks? It's a zombie book, told in interviews in the aftermath of a worldwide zombie infestation, and it is brilliant.

It's one of the most detailed post-apoc books I've read. It touches on the social, political, military, and of course personal aspects of a disaster like this. There's also an audiobook version that's excellent.

Another adult post-apoc book I read recently is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It follows a father and his son as they trek across post-nuclear America, armed with a cart of scavanged food and blankets and a pistol. They are travelling to the coast, in hopes of finding someplace warmer to survive the winter.

It is harsh. Parts of it were some of the harshest things I have ever read. It is difficult to get your head into, and impossible to stop reading. I read it in one day, compulsively.

I'd not met either of these--they're on the list now for future reading! :-)

Along with Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue, which I only just read for the first time.

How was that? I keep seeing it in the store, but it is worth the time?

It was okay, but not one of my favorites. Worth reading, but I wouldn't put it at the top of the list.

Two more books for your list (you have infected my thinking - I now have post-apoc on the brain.)

The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy.

A gorgeous book about San Francisco, in the very distant aftermath of a plague that wiped out much of the earth's population. San Francisco has become a city haunted by memories and ghosts, populated by artists who have turned the city into their canvas. But power-hungry men are moving across the country, and the fragile new life that they're building it threatened.

This book is totally gorgeous. Its spirit and characters and city captivated me - this is a city book as much as a post-apoc book. It recently was reprinted by Firebird, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Vanishing Point, by Michaela Roessner, is another fascinating and gorgeous volume.

This apocalypse is what they refer to as The Vanishing - the sudden and mysterious, and seemingly arbitrary dissapearance of 90% of the population. Thirty years later, the survivors, still reeling from the loss of thier loved ones and their society, are trying to rebuild a society and put thier lives back together. One scientist attempts to study the Vanishing, to try and figure out what happened.

(swoon) The Changes trilogy by Peter Dickinson. It's maybe late middle readers or YA. Okay, it's not the whole world, but people in England go nuts and smash technology -- fearing it evil -- and a few can control the weather.

The Girl Who Owned a City by O.T. Nelson.

TV Series: The Tribe. A virus wipes out all adults, so teens and kids are left to rebuild society, and they live in tribal communities. Some of the older teens have children throughout the series, major characters change and die, and all of this seems to be dealt with in a non-preachy, but wow-this-is-difficult way. Some of the dialogue sucks, IMO, but the stories themselves seem compelling.

Several (adult) J.G. Ballard books are either post-apocalyptic or during. The Burning World comes to mind.

This is the Way the World Ends by... James Morrow I think.

One of my super-favorite PKD stories, "The Days of Perky Pat." I would *love* to see a movie someday, maybe by Pixar.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World... sort of. It's by Haruki Murakami.

Not sure if The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood quite fits.

Both War of the Worlds and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

Isaac Asimov's Nightfall!!!

Not sure if the Uzumaki manga series counts.

Part of The Green Futures of Tycho by William Sleator.

PS If you and/or Larry decide spur-of-the-moment that a zombie walk would be fun, I have one couch and open floor space.