15 of the Best Zombie Books and Novels Ever Written (Based on Popular Opinion)

Looking for a list of the best zombie books ever written? Me too! In fact, that’s what motivated me to create the list you’re reading right now.

But let’s be honest: There’s no such thing as the best zombie apocalypse book or novel of all time. When it comes to fiction, the word “best” is highly subjective. A book that blows me away might fall flat with you, and vice versa.

So, instead of creating my own list, I devised a kind of “master list” of best zombie novels based on popular opinion. Here’s how I went about it…

Creating a ‘Master List’ of Undead Fiction

To identify the 15 works listed below, I reviewed more than two-dozen lists of the best zombie apocalypse novels ever written. These included articles and rankings created by: Audible, Book Riot, Bustle, Epic Reads, Goodreads, LitReactor, and several bookseller and library websites.

I also visited community discussion sites like Reddit to see which zombie books people were recommending most frequently.

(Yes, I spent a lot of time on this project. And no, I didn’t have anything better to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon.)

But enough of this administrative minutiae. Let’s put the appetizers away and sink our teeth into the meat. I now present to you, the ultimate list of best zombie apocalypse novels based on popular opinion.

15 Zombie Books Worth a Look (Alphabetically)

I’ve only read four of the zombie books listed below, so I can’t offer a personal review for each one. Instead, I’ve provided a one-sentence summary for all 15 of them.

1. Carnage Road, by Gregory Lamberson. This novella tells the story of two bikers who travel across the country after their gang is wiped out during a nationwide zombie crisis.
2. Clickers vs Zombies, by J.F. Gonzalez and Brian Keene. This book is a crossover between J.F. Gonzalez’s Clickers series and Brian Keene’s The Rising (also featured on this list).
3. Day by Day Armageddon, by J.L. Bourne. A journal-style zombie book that chronicles the daily struggles of a former military guy living in a world overrun by the undead.
4. Feed, by Mira Grant. The first in a series, Feed tells the story of two bloggers who unravel a political conspiracy involving the undead.
5. The First Days, by Rhiannon Frater. The first in a multi-book series, it tells the story of two women (Jenni and Katie) who travel across Texas during a zombie apocalypse to rescue Jenni’s son.
6. Monster Island, by David Wellington. First published online in serial format, this 2006 novel tells the tale of a zombie who has retained his human intelligence.
7. Plague of the Dead, by Z.A. Recht. The dreadful Morningstar virus causes a whole slew of unpleasant symptoms before killing its victims — only to bring them back again.
8. The Reapers Are the Angels, by Alden Bell. I was glad to find this one on so many lists of the best zombie novels, because we need more literary southern gothic style books about the undead.
9. The Rising, by Brian Keene. It’s another “parent must save child” zombie apocalypse novel, with a preacher, a scientist, and a former prostitute along for the ride.
10. Rot & Ruin, by Jonathan Maberry. From Publishers Weekly: “The delineation between man and monster, survivor and victim is fiercely debated in Maberry’s thoughtful, postapocalyptic coming-of-age tale.”
11. Slow Burn: Zero Day, by Bobby Adair. After being bitten by his infected stepfather, Zed Zane must fight for his life among the zombies as well as the normal people who now fear him.
12. The Splits, by M.V. Clark. A journalistic take on the zombie genre, M.V. Clark’s The Splits offers what some readers have called a “grown-up” and intelligent contribution to the genre.
13. This is Not a Test, by Courtney Summers. The story of a traumatized teenage girl who, along with five other students, must shelter inside their high school during the start of a zombie apocalypse.
14. Warm Bodies, by Isaac Marion. The book that inspired the movie, Warm Bodies tells the dark, heartwarming and often comedic tale of “R,” a zombie who falls for a human girl.
15. World War Z, by Max Brooks. Though it’s not for everyone, World War Z is one of the best zombie books of all time for the way it chronicles humanity’s (often flawed) response to the apocalypse.

These works are very different from one another, so you’ll have to do some research to find out which ones appeal to you. But they all have one thing in common. All 15 of these works have appeared on more than one list of the best zombie apocalypse books of all time. So, who knows .. your new favorite read might be somewhere on this list.

The Three Best Zombie Apocalypse Novels Ever?

Let’s take a closer look at three of these books in particular. Across all of the lists I reviewed, the three works featured below appeared time and time again. So I guess you could call these three of the best zombie apocalypse books ever written, according to “the masses.”

Feed, by Mira Grant

Feed is the first novel in Mira Grant’s “Newsflesh” series, which also includes the books Deadline, Blackout and Feedback. This well-written novel offers a fresh spin on the zombie genre, and therefore appears on several lists of the best zombie books of all time.

Regarding the series as whole, The New York Times wrote:

“Mira Grant’s hit Newsflesh trilogy was an astonishing take on the tired zombie apocalypse subgenre — precisely because it was barely about the zombie apocalypse at all. It wore other hats: epidemiology thriller, genre-savvy black comedy and a fascinating exploration of the future of (not so) new media.”

My advice: If you like the premise of this book, give it a chance. It starts a bit slow, especially when compared to some of the other zombie novels on this list. But it turned out to be an engaging read, in my opinion.

I’m not sure if I would put Feed on my own list of best zombie books, but apparently a lot of folks feel it deserves that kind of ranking.

Rot and Ruin, by Jonathan Maberry

Jonathan Maberry’s Rot and Ruin also appears on numerous lists featuring the “best zombie novels” of all time. It’s part of a multi-book series that also includes Dust and Decay, Flesh and Bone, and Fire and Ash

Rot and Ruin tells the story of Benny Imura, a teenage boy who grows up in a post-apocalyptic world where zombie hunting is a way of life.

This coming-of-age tale delivers some philosophical depth you don’t often find in zombie fiction. But don’t let that deter you — this book still has all the thrills and chills you would expect from the genre.

Booklist reviewer Daniel Kraus described Rot and Ruin as “an impressive mix of meaning and mayhem.”

World War Z, by Max Brooks

World War Z is not your typical zombie novel. In fact, it’s not a novel at all. It’s a collection of fictional, first-person accounts from The Zombie War (borrowing a format used by Studs Terkel in his Pulitzer Prize-winning World War II history, The Good War).

If you’re serious about the zombie genre, you’ll want to put World War Z on your reading list. It appears on many lists and rankings of the best zombie books ever, and with good reason.

Brooks took the undead genre in a totally new direction, providing first-hand (fictional) accounts from a variety of voices that span the globe.

Throughout this book, we get to watch the zombie apocalypse unfold one stage at a time. We read about the initial outbreak of the so-called “African Rabies,” the “Great Panic” that occurs when people begin to realize the truth, and the all-out military efforts launched against the zombie hordes.

This book is more of a thinker than a thriller, though it does have some gripping scenes spread throughout. It’s a thoughtful, contemplative exploration of what might really happen to the world if a zombie outbreak occurred.

And while it was written long before COVID, it resonates more deeply in the wake of that pandemic.

The Reapers Are the Angels: A Personal Favorite

In closing, I’d like to recommend one of my all-time favorite zombie novels, The Reapers Are the Angels. Written by Alden Bell (pseudonym for Joshua Gaylord), this book follows the life-or-death struggles of a fifteen-year-old female protagonist named Temple.

For me, it was the quality of writing that set this book apart from so many others in the genre. Reapers has a literary quality to it, in addition to the typical brutality found within zombie novels.

As many others have pointed out, this book has a kind of Southern Gothic vibe to it. And that’s not surprising, since the author cites William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor as two of his favorite authors.

But it was the protagonist’s world view that captured my attention. From the very first pages, we know we’re dealing with a complex and philosophical fifteen-year-old girl.

Here’s a quote from the first page that illustrates the unique (for zombie fiction) writing style used in this book. Here, young Temple is reflecting on the beauty of some bioluminescent fish she saw swimming around her ankles:

And you could say the world has gone to black damnation, and you could say the children of Cain are holding sway over the good and the righteous—but here’s what Temple knows: she knows that whatever hell the world went to, and whatever evil she’s perpetrated her own self, and whatever series of cursed misfortunes brought her down here to this island to be harbored away from the order of mankind, well, all those things are what put her there that night to stand amid the Daylight Moon and the Miracle of the Fish—which she wouldn’t of got to see otherwise.

This kind of writing either appeals to you or it doesn’t. If it does appeal to you — and if you’re also a fan of zombie fiction — you should put this novel on your reading list ASAP.