If the way Kirsten keeps Shakespeare alive and Clark curates the Museum of Civilization moved you, you’ll love the gentle, aching survival in The Dog Stars. Hig and his dog Jasper fly a battered Cessna over the ruins of Colorado, growing a garden, mending radios, and navigating prickly companionship with the gun-bright Bangley. It’s the same tender focus on small mercies you felt in the airport community and on the Symphony’s road—less about firefights, more about how people choose to be human when the world is gone.

Loved how Station Eleven braided Arthur Leander’s pre-collapse fame with Kirsten’s wanderings and Clark’s airport years? Cloud Atlas pushes that mosaic further: six interlocked narratives—from Adam Ewing’s 19th‑century voyage to Sonmi‑451’s far-future rebellion and “Sloosha’s Crossin’” after civilization’s fall—echo and refract one another. That elegant nonlinearity scratches the same itch as Mandel’s leapfrogging timelines, rewarding you with emotional payoffs as patterns snap into place.

If you were drawn to how Station Eleven weaves Jeevan, Kirsten, the Prophet, and Clark into a panoramic picture of the Georgia Flu, World War Z delivers a riveting oral history of catastrophe. You’ll hear from Dr. Kwang Jingshu at the first outbreak, a South African architect of the Redeker Plan, an Israeli intelligence officer, and a U.S. grunt like Todd Wainio—each voice as textured and personal as the Symphony’s actors swapping stories by the campfire.

If “Survival is insufficient” resonated—art and kindness matter—then the soft, restorative hope of A Psalm for the Wild‑Built will too. Tea monk Dex and the robot Mosscap wander through forests and villages asking, “What do people need?” Much like the Symphony’s performances soothing the post‑flu world and Clark’s careful curation of memory at the airport, this is a quiet celebration of purpose, community, and grace after upheaval.

If the Traveling Symphony’s camaraderie hooked you—the way performers become kin under the “Survival is insufficient” banner—follow Lauren Olamina as she flees a collapsing California, gathering strangers into a makeshift family and founding Earthseed. Like the Symphony protecting one another between settlements and facing the Prophet’s threat, Lauren’s group survives by shared purpose, trust, and the stubborn conviction that something better can be built together.