Climate fiction that will haunt you!  » Yale Climate Connections

Once upon a time, cli-fi, or climate fiction, was considered just a subgenre within science fiction. But as climate change has come to play a bigger part in our lives, especially in our daily lives, it has attracted the attention of writers who work in other genres: crime and detective fiction, historical fiction, horror, mysteries, political thrillers, social justice, and young adult. 

For Halloween 2025, Yale Climate Connections celebrates the new variety of climate fiction with a selection of nine recent novels that could haunt you for years to come – or at least until Halloween 2026. 

The list begins with three novels set at the poles and spanning more than five centuries. 

Closer to home and the present, the next four novels shift genres and locations, from detective fiction to satirical horror, from Texas to Montana and Michigan to Maine. 

New York City plays a major role in the last two selections: a surreal account of a shape-shifting metropolis and a tome about our harrowing environmental politics. One of the most critically acclaimed cli-fi novels of the last five years, “The Deluge,” is now out in paperback. Its nearly 900 pages make it a heavy lift, but once you pick it up, you’ll find it hard to put down. 

As always, the descriptions of the books are adapted from copy provided by their publishers; when two dates of publication are listed, the second is for the paperback edition. 

Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost: A Novel by Donald Niedekker, translated by Jonathan Reeder (Sandorf Passage 2025, 196 pages, $18.95 paperback)

 “I am the nameless crew member who died on Jan. 27, 1597.” So reports the Dutch narrator of Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost. From his icy grave on the Arctic archipelago, Novaya Zemyla, he meditates on the realities of human hubris that led to his early demise, unpacks his childhood in Amsterdam, and comments on the dramatic technological and climatic changes he has endured. From real-life figures like cartographer Petrus Plancius to Arctic foxes and transcendent shaman, and peppered with references to countless historical events, this boldly imaginative, profoundly beautiful novel argues that the unchanging characteristics of human behavior are unquestionably why the natural world has changed in so many ways.

Ice’s End: A Novel by P. Finian Reilly (12 Willows Press 2025, 350 pages, $14.95 paper)

In the year 2123, Earth is parched, privatized, and dying. Roscoe Slake thinks he’s found his escape when he’s accepted into a prestigious internship at StarCross Corporation. But instead of joining the elite in orbit, he’s sent to the company archives – where Earth’s last secrets are buried, not broadcast. There, Roscoe uncovers logbooks from the 19th-century Ross Antarctic Expedition. The journals suggest the expedition uncovered something extraordinary in the polar ice. If true, this discovery could change everything about humanity’s fight for water. Shifting between the expedition’s perilous past and Roscoe’s unraveling present, Ice’s End is a survival story that probes the edges of climate fiction, corporate conspiracy, and what we owe to both history and the future.

The Unveiling: A Novel by Quan Barry (Grove Atlantic 2025, 320 pages, $28.00)

Striker isn’t entirely sure she should be on this luxury Antarctic cruise. A Black film scout, her mission is to photograph potential locations for a big-budget movie about Ernest Shackleton’s doomed expedition. But when a kayaking excursion goes horribly wrong, Striker and a group of survivors become stranded on a remote island along the Peninsula. As the polar ice thaws in the unseasonable warmth, the group’s secrets, prejudices, and inner demons will emerge, including revelations from Striker’s past that could irrevocably shatter her world. With her signature lyricism and humor, Quan Barry affirms that there are no such things as haunted places, only haunted people.

Something in the Water: A Novel by Phyllis R. Dixon (Dafina Books 2025, 304 pages, $18.95 paperback) 

As director of an award-winning investigative news radio show, Billie Jordan is used to helping others fight trouble. But she faces her own when the radio station is sold and she’s unable to find another job. When her husband gets a professorship at an HBCU in his hometown, they relocate to get a fresh start. All is well until severe storms cause massive destruction and contaminate the town’s water supply. Billie learns water woes and boil water notices have existed for years. In her new job at a local bank, she finds connections between money, power, and family that are as dirty as the water. Warned to mind her own business, she persists – and discovers a shocking cover-up.
Billie will need to use all her skills to save her family and expose the corruption.

A Guardian and a Thief: A Novel by Megha Majumdar (Knopf 2025, 224 pages, $29.00)

In a near-future Kolkata, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning, they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, containing their immigration documents, has been stolen. A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay, and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes. In their separate ways, the two families discover how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.

American Mythology: A Novel by Giano Cromley (Doubleday 2025, 304 pages, $28.00)

Every month at St. Pete’s Tavern in rugged western Montana, a meeting is convened by the Basic Bigfoot Society’s members – both of them. Jute and Vergil are lifelong friends, bound by an affinity for the elusive North American Wood Ape. But things are about to get exciting for the Basic Bigfoot Society. Dr. Marcus Bernard, the country’s foremost Bigfoot “expert,” approaches them with a proposition that seems almost too good to be true: join their next expedition, along with a young documentarian, Vicky Xu. Once in the woods, things begin to happen that defy rational explanation. Is this a hoax? Or are they on the precipice of a great anthropological discovery? American Mythology is a fabulous debut about the power of belief and our sacred bond to nature.

We Can’t Save You: A Tale of Politics, Murder, and Maine (A Ryan Tapia Novel) by Thomas E. Ricks (Pegasus Crime 2025, 304 pages, $27.95)

When a group of young Native Americans launches a series of protests against climate change and its effects on the waters and woods of Maine, veteran FBI agent Ryan Tapia is assigned to monitor the movement. After the protesters camp on the lawns of luxurious summer mansions along the Maine coast, they win national media attention – and the wrath of a reactionary president. Growing increasingly sympathetic to the protesters and their cause, Tapia tells them about a possible refuge – a secret CIA base hidden away in the depths of the Maine woods. Enraged, the White House sends an Army unit to track down the protesters. Building to a wind-whipped climax, We Can’t Save You establishes Ryan Tapia as one of the most compelling voices in crime fiction.

The Unmapping: A Novel by Denise S. Robbins (The Bindery 2025, 408 pages, $18.95 paperback) 

There is no flash of light, no crumbling, no quaking. Each person in New York wakes up on an unfamiliar block when the buildings all switch locations overnight. The power grid has snapped, thousands of residents are missing, and the Empire State Building is on Coney Island. The next night, it happens again. Esme Green and Arjun Varma work for the City of New York’s Emergency Management team. As Esme tries to wade through the bureaucratic nightmare of an endlessly shuffling city, Arjun focuses on the ground-level rescue of disoriented New Yorkers. But the fight to hold the city together means tackling questions they were too afraid to ask. With themes of climate change, political unrest, and life in crisis, The Unmapping is a timely debut.

The Deluge: A Novel by Stephen Markley (Simon & Schuster 2023/2024, 896 pages, $23.99 paperback)

In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock even as an ecological crisis advances. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters – a drug addict, an advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning ecoterrorist, a religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of history. A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.