9 Must-Read Near-Future Novels by Women

In Southern California, an entire town is quarantined after a mysterious illness causes people to fall asleep and stay that way—it was a huge inspiration for the first draft of my novel, which had a strong pandemic bent.

Cities are practically uninhabitable when a mother receives an opportunity to live with her daughter in the Wilderness State, a swatch of preserved (and dangerous) nature with eighteen other volunteers.

The end of the world, from the perspective of people stuck in the most isolated places imaginable—an Arctic research facility and a space ship.

A prescient pandemic novel published less than a year before COVID, that haunted me with its alternate reality: What if things had gone much, much worse?

will read anything Edan writes, but this is among my favorites, set in a cult-like community outside of Los Angeles, which is uninhabitable from climate change in this near-future.

Although popularized by the television show, the book about a (terrifyingly) near-future about a fundamentally conservative America is worth it’s own read—told from the perspective of a “Handmaid,” whose sole purpose is to be a breeder for wealthy families.

Among my favorite books of all-time, this post-apocalyptic novel centered the role of art, as a traveling Shakespeare troop navigates a post-pandemic America.

Written in 2000, but set in the early 2020s, this book about a gated community in a climate-ravaged future feels like both a battle cry and a warning we should all heed.

Wellness, motherhood, and technology converge in a near future California, inspired by my experience working in lifestyle media in L.A.