There are a lot of books out there to choose from if you want to jack up your anxiety levels right now by reading about pandemics, but there are a few that are far-out enough that you can probably read them without comparing them to our current situation. Whether they’re set in the future, supernatural in nature, or just outside the realm of probability, these books offer us pandemics that can’t touch us.

The Fireman by Joe Hill. The pandemic is caused by a spore that spreads a condition called “dragonscale” that eventually causes the infected to overheat and spontaneously combust. Harper, the main character, who is infected, pregnant, and a nurse, is a complex and fascinating character coping in the midst of panic, disease, isolation, and fear.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.  First off, I am biased towards anything by Connie Wills, but this really is a compelling book, impossible for me to put down once I start it. Willis has written a series of time travel novels and short stories that take place at Oxford University, mostly in the history department, headed by Mr. Dunworthy.  Kivrin, one of his students, has been preparing to visit England near the time of the Black Plague, but due to an error in timing, ends up in the midst of it, a stranger in a community that is disintegrating and literally dying. In the future,  plague is spreading speedily through Oxford, which has been locked down in quarantine procedures, and when it is discovered that the tech running the time machine is patient zero, Dunworthy’s superior shuts down the department entirely, leaving Kivrin lost in the past and pandemics raging in both places. Despite the terrifying circumstances, Willis manages to find humor in the humanity and oddities of many of the characters in a story that is dead serious.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. This book has gotten plenty of attention, including compliments from George R. R. Martin. It is post-apocalyptic, varying between a storyline about a group of musicians and actors traveling between the small communities left after a pandemic killed off most of the people, and vignettes about the past, and the people who died from the disease, described in a memorable fashion.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks:  If ever you wanted an alternate history of how an outbreak can spread and lead to massive changes in the world, you’ve got it here.  Brooks uses a different narrative approach than readers may be used to, with his work consisting of short narratives, or “interviews” with different people who lived through the outbreak and the zombie war.

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra: In this series of graphic novels, disease has killed off all the men except one, Yorick Brown, and his pet Capuchin monkey Ampersand. I don’t consider this horror, but it is a brilliant concept, and pulled off beautifully.