The best books like Yellowjackets are the ones its creators drew on. Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson have cited William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the 1972 Andes flight disaster and the Donner Party, so start with Lord of the Flies, then Alive (the account of the Andes survivors) and Alma Katsu’s The Hunger (the Donner Party as a horror novel). For the all-girls version of the story, read Rory Power’s Wilder Girls or Kim Liggett’s The Grace Year.

Yellowjackets premiered on Showtime on November 14, 2021. It follows a New Jersey high school girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness in 1996, where they survive for nineteen months, and the survivors’ lives 25 years later. Three seasons have aired; a fourth and final season is scheduled to premiere on November 22, 2026.

Quick picks

Book The Yellowjackets connection Audiobook narrator
Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954) Stranded schoolchildren build their own society and turn savage William Golding
Alive by Piers Paul Read (1974) Nonfiction: the 1972 Andes crash and the 72 days before rescue Paul Ansdell
The Hunger by Alma Katsu (2018) The Donner Party, hunger and something worse in the dark Kirsten Potter
Wilder Girls by Rory Power (2019) Girls cut off on an island, a strange sickness, a woods they can’t trust Print edition linked below
The Grace Year by Kim Liggett Sixteen-year-old girls banished to the wild for a year, and the violence among them Emily Shaffer

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

British schoolboys survive a plane crash on an uninhabited island and try to govern themselves without adults; it falls apart into fear and violence. It is the most direct ancestor of the show’s wilderness timeline. Golding himself reads the Listening Library audiobook . It has been filmed in 1963 and 1990, and a BBC series written by Jack Thorne premiered on February 8, 2026.

Alive by Piers Paul Read

The true story behind much of the show’s darkest material. In October 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, carrying a rugby team, crashed in the Andes; 16 of the 45 people aboard survived 72 days in the mountains. Read’s 1974 book was the basis for the 1993 film Alive. Paul Ansdell reads the Dreamscape audiobook .

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

A retelling of the Donner Party’s 1846 to 1847 journey west that adds a supernatural threat to the real hardship, including a sickness that drives a violent hunger for human flesh. It is the closest match for the show’s blend of survival and possible supernatural dread, and it was a Bram Stoker Award finalist. Kirsten Potter reads the Penguin Audio edition .

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

At the Raxter School for Girls, on an island under quarantine, a disease called the Tox has killed the teachers and is changing the students’ bodies. When one of three best friends disappears, the others break quarantine to find her. Its publisher pitches it as “a feminist Lord of the Flies,” and it is the best pick if the friendships among the girls are what hooked you. Delacorte hardcover on Amazon .

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

In Garner County, girls are sent into the wilderness for their sixteenth year to “release their magic” before marriage, and not all of them come back. The danger comes as much from the other girls as from the poachers waiting in the woods, which makes it the closest match for the show’s group dynamics. Emily Shaffer reads the Macmillan Young Listeners audiobook .

Where to go next

For more survival listening, see survival-story audiobooks . For horror more broadly, try horror audiobooks for audiobook lovers .

Sources