I’ve noticed a lot of plagues and epidemics in YA fiction lately. It used to be that a plague was a good way to explain a decimated world in a YA post-apocalyptic story, but more frequently now I’m seeing stories that tackle the plague during its rise and dominance rather than its lingering after-effects. This includes some historical fiction about the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which can evoke the same sort of mood as post-apocalyptic tales set in a fictional future. To many who lived through it, the 1918 flu may have felt like the end of the world.

Below are a few titles published within the last few years that feature plagues or epidemics prominently. I tried to focus on stories where the plague is the plot rather than simply exposition. Are there any that I’ve missed?

The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe
Sixteen-year-old old Kaelyn challenges her fears, finds a second chance
at love, and fights to keep her family and friends safe as a deadly new
virus devastates her island community. | Sequels: The Lives We Lost, The Worlds We Make

Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin
In this twist on Edgar Allen Poe’s gothic short story, a wealthy
teenaged girl who can afford a special mask to protect her from the
plague that decimated humanity in the mid-1800s, falls in love, becomes
caught up in a conspiracy to overthrow an oppressive government, and
faces the threat of a new plague. | Sequel: Dance of the Red Death

Conversion by Katherine Howe
When girls start experiencing strange tics and other mysterious symptoms
at Colleen’s high school, her small town of Danvers, Massachusetts,
falls victim to rumors that lead to full-blown panic, and only Colleen
connects their fate to the ill-fated Salem Village, where another group
of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago. | Kimberly’s review

Love is the Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson
A chance meeting with Roosevelt David, a
homeland security agent, at a party for Washington DC’s elite leads to
Emily Bird waking up in a hospital, days later, with no memory of the end of
the night. Meanwhile, the world has fallen apart: A deadly flu
virus is sweeping the nation, forcing quarantines, curfews, even martial
law. And Roosevelt is certain that Bird knows something. Something
about the virus–something about her parents’ top secret scientific
work–something she shouldn’t know.

A Matter of Days by Amber Kizer

A Death-Struck Year by Makiia Lucier
When the Spanish influenza epidemic reaches Portland, Oregon, in 1918,
seventeen-year-old Cleo leaves behind the comfort of her boarding school
to work for the Red Cross.

Pandemic by Yvonne Ventresca
Lil is left home alone when a deadly pandemic hits her small town in New
Jersey. Will Lil survive the flu and brave her darkest fears?

In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters
In San Diego in 1918, as deadly influenza and World War I take their
toll, sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches desperate mourners
flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort and, despite her
scientific leanings, must consider if ghosts are real when her first
love, killed in battle, returns. | Kimberly’s review

The Program by Suzanne Young
When suicide becomes a worldwide epidemic, the only known cure is The
Program, a treatment in which painful memories are erased, a fate worse
than death to seventeen-year-old Sloane who knows that The Program will
steal memories of her dead brother and boyfriend. | Sequel: The Treatment | Dual review