I recently finished Eruption by Michael Crichton and James Patterson and am looking for recommendations of books about natural disasters, plane crashes etc, the sort of books that build anxiety all the way through to the big event.
Thanks,
And if you like volcanoes, I recommend Eruption.
by IrisEmber
7 Comments
Airframe, by Michael Crichton
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is a personal but haunting favorite
Isaak’s Storm by Erik Larson
I love volcanoes, so thanks for the recommendation!
I’m not sure how big you want to go on the disaster scale, so here are two with very different scopes: *Heavy Weather*, by Bruce Sterling, which is set in a future US ravaged by massive tornadoes as a result of climate change, where a group of scientists/storm chasers are trying to gather enough data to predict a theoretical new “F6” tornado that could become a permanent fixture of the atmosphere, a la the Great Red Spot; and *Lucifer’s Hammer*, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, in which the Earth gets punched in the face by a comet. This one is a little bit different in that the disaster hits midway through so there’s both the build-up and the aftermath, whereas *Heavy Weather* is pretty much all build-up, but they are two of my favorites. (*Lucifer’s Hammer* in particular is pretty old, from 1977, so it’s probably dated in some respects at this point, but it’s a classic for a reason.)
Isaac’s Storm.
The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough
Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala
Not exactly what you’re asking for because it has to do a lot with grief and the aftermath, but I really enjoyed it.
The scale of the disaster is honestly hard to grasp.