Prehistoric / Evolutionary Fiction
Explore the best prehistoric and evolutionary fiction books! Dive into captivating tales of early humans, dinosaurs, and ancient worlds with our curated list of top reads.
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The Clan of the Cave Bear
by Jean M. Auel
This novel of awesome beauty and power is a moving saga about people, relationships, and the boundaries of love. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Through Jean M. Auel’s magnificent storytelling we are taken back to the dawn of modern humans, and with a girl named Ayla we are swept up in the harsh and beautiful Ice Age world they shared with the ones who called themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. A natural disaster leaves the young girl wandering alone in an unfamiliar and dangerous land until she is found by a woman of the Clan, people very different from her own kind. To them, blond, blue-eyed Ayla looks peculiar and ugly—she is one of the Others, those who have moved into their ancient homeland; but Iza cannot leave the girl to die and takes her with them. Iza and Creb, the old Mog-ur, grow to love her, and as Ayla learns the ways of the Clan and Iza’s way of healing, most come to accept her. But the brutal and proud youth who is destined to become their next leader sees her differences as a threat to his authority. He develops a deep and abiding hatred for the strange girl of the Others who lives in their midst, and is determined to get his revenge.
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The Valley of Horses
by Jean M. Auel
This unforgettable odyssey into the distant past carries us back to the awesome mysteries of the exotic, primeval world of The Clan of the Cave Bear, and to Ayla, now grown into a beautiful and courageous young woman. Cruelly cast out by the new leader of the ancient Clan that adopted her as a child, Ayla leaves those she loves behind and travels alone through a stark, open land filled with dangerous animals but few people, searching for the Others, tall and fair like herself. The short summer gives her little time to look, and when she finds a sheltered valley with a herd of hardy steppe horses, she decides to stay and prepare for the long glacial winter ahead. Living with the Clan has taught Ayla many skills but not real hunting. She finally knows she can survive when she traps a horse, which gives her meat and a warm pelt for the winter, but fate has bestowed a greater gift, an orphaned foal with whom she develops a unique kinship. One winter extends to more; she discovers a way to make fire more quickly and a wounded cave lion cub joins her unusual family, but her beloved animals don’t fulfill her restless need for human companionship. Then she hears the sound of a man screaming in pain. She saves tall, handsome Jondalar, who brings her a language to speak and an awakening of love and desire, but Ayla is torn between her fear of leaving her valley and her hope of living with her own kind.
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The Mammoth Hunters
by Jean M. Auel
Once again Jean M. Auel opens the door of a time long past to reveal an age of wonder and danger at the dawn of the modern human race. With all the consummate storytelling artistry and vivid authenticity she brought to The Clan of the Cave Bear and its sequel, The Valley of Horses, Jean M. Auel continues the breathtaking epic journey of the woman called Ayla. Riding Whinney with Jondalar, the man she loves, and followed by the mare’s colt, Ayla ventures into the land of the Mamutoi--The Mammoth Hunters. She has finally found the Others she has been seeking. Though Ayla must learn their different customs and language, she is adopted because of her remarkable hunting ability, singular healing skills, and uncanny fire-making technique. Bringing back the single pup of a lone wolf she has killed, Ayla shows the way she tames animals. She finds women friends and painful memories of the Clan she left behind, and meets Ranec, the dark-skinned, magnetic master carver of ivory, whom she cannot refuse--inciting Jondalar to a fierce jealousy that he tries to control by avoiding her. Unfamiliar with the ways of the Others, Ayla misunderstands, and thinking Jondalar no longer loves her, she turns more to Ranec. Throughout the icy winter the tension mounts, but warming weather will bring the great mammoth hunt and the mating rituals of the Summer Meeting, when Ayla must choose to remain with Ranec and the Mamutoi, or to follow Jondalar on a long journey into an unknown future.
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The Shelters of Stone
by Jean M. Auel
The Shelters of Stone opens as Ayla and Jondalar, along with their animal friends, Wolf, Whinney, and Racer, complete their epic journey across Europe and are greeted by Jondalar’s people: the Zelandonii. The people of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii fascinate Ayla. Their clothes, customs, artifacts, even their homes—formed in great cliffs of vertical limestone—are a source of wonder to her. And in the woman Zelandoni, the spiritual leader of the Ninth Cave (and the one who initiated Jondalar into the Gift of Pleasure), she meets a fellow healer with whom to share her knowledge and skills. But as Ayla and Jondalar prepare for the formal mating at the Summer Meeting, there are difficulties. Not all the Zelandonii are welcoming. Some fear Ayla’s unfamiliar ways and abhor her relationship with those they call flatheads and she calls Clan. Some even oppose her mating with Jondalar, and make their displeasure known. Ayla has to call on all her skills, intelligence, knowledge, and instincts to find her way in this complicated society, to prepare for the birth of her child, and to decide whether she will accept new challenges and play a significant role in the destiny of the Zelandonii. Jean Auel is at her very best in this superbly textured creation of a prehistoric society. The Shelters of Stone is a sweeping story of love and danger, with all the wonderful detail—based on meticulous research— that makes her novels unique. It is a triumphant continuation of the Earth’s Children® saga that began with The Clan of the Cave Bear. And it includes an amazing rhythmic poem that describes the birth of Earth’s Children and plays its own role in the narrative of The Shelters of Stone.
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El clan del oso cavernario (Clan of the Cave Bear)
by Jean M. Auel
El presente es primer libro de la saga llamada "Los hijos de la tierra"; con el cual se da comienzo a las aventuras de su protagonista: Ayla, una niña cromagnon de 5 años, queda aislada de su tribu por culpa de un terremoto. Pese a ser de una estirpe más desarrollada, es acogida por un grupo de Neardentales, que basa sus razonamientos y comportamientos en las experiencias de sus antepasados. Ayla, el siguiente eslabĂłn evolutivo, introduce el adelanto y la renovaciĂłn y se convierte pronto en una niña fuerte e independiente con un desarrollado instinto de supervivencia. Sus cualidades innatas provocan conmociĂłn y rechazo en la sociedad con la que convive y es expulsada por el jefe del clan hacĂa un futuro incierto.
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Darwin's Radio
by Greg Bear
A 2000 HUGO AWARD NOMINEE Ancient diseases encoded in the DNA of humans wait like sleeping dragons to wake and infect again--or so molecular biologist Kaye Lang believes. And now it looks as if her controversial theory is in fact chilling reality. For Christopher Dicken, a "virus hunter" at the Epidemic Intelligence Service, has pursued an elusive flu-like disease that strikes down expectant mothers and their offspring. Then a major discovery high in the Alps --the preserved bodies of a prehistoric family--reveals a shocking link: something that has slept in our genes for millions of years is waking up. Now, as the outbreak of this terrifying disease threatens to become a deadly epidemic, Dicken and Lang must race against time to assemble the pieces of a puzzle only they are equipped to solve--an evolutionary puzzle that will determine the future of the human race . . . if a future exists at all.
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Darwin's Children
by Greg Bear
Greg Bear’s Nebula Award–winning novel,Darwin’s Radio, painted a chilling portrait of humankind on the threshold of a radical leap in evolution—one that would alter our species forever. Now Bear continues his provocative tale of the human race confronted by an uncertain future, where “survival of the fittest” takes on astonishing and controversial new dimensions. DARWIN’S CHILDREN Eleven years have passed since SHEVA, an ancient retrovirus, was discovered in human DNA—a retrovirus that caused mutations in the human genome and heralded the arrival of a new wave of genetically enhanced humans. Now these changed children have reached adolescence . . . and face a world that is outraged about their very existence. For these special youths, possessed of remarkable, advanced traits that mark a major turning point in human development, are also ticking time bombs harboring hosts of viruses that could exterminate the “old” human race. Fear and hatred of the virus children have made them a persecuted underclass, quarantined by the government in special “schools,” targeted by federally sanctioned bounty hunters, and demonized by hysterical segments of the population. But pockets of resistance have sprung up among those opposed to treating the children like dangerous diseases—and who fear the worst if the government’s draconian measures are carried to their extreme. Scientists Kaye Lang and Mitch Rafelson are part of this small but determined minority. Once at the forefront of the discovery and study of the SHEVA outbreak, they now live as virtual exiles in the Virginia suburbs with their daughter, Stella—a bright, inquisitive virus child who is quickly maturing, straining to break free of the protective world her parents have built around her, and eager to seek out others of her kind. But for all their precautions, Kaye, Mitch, and Stella have not slipped below the government’s radar. The agencies fanatically devoted to segregating and controlling the new-breed children monitor their every move—watching and waiting for the opportunity to strike the next blow in their escalating war to preserve “humankind” at any cost.
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Ember from the Sun
by Mark Canter
In the blue ice of an arctic cave, a scientist has made an extraordinary discovery: a woman's body, frozen for 25,000 years in a near-perfect state, with pliant tissues, vessels filled with blood--and an embryo waiting to be born.... They called her Ember, the child of their heart, born to surrogate parents who refused to yield her after birth. Raised among the Quanoot Indians, Ember is as modern as those around her, a young woman struggling with a loneliness and yearning she does not yet understand. Stronger than her classmates, imbued with the power to heal, Ember's soul resounds with the cries and whispers of a time she has never seen, and of a people who beckon her home. Desperate to unravel the mystery of her birth, Ember embarks on a spellbinding journey to find the people who call to her in her dreams. Guided by a shaman who has waited for her return, pursued by the man of science who brought her to life, Ember is drawn to a place where no one else can go--where her ancestors, the golden-skinned people of her dreams, wait for her to set them free....
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Isle of Woman
by Piers Anthony
Fantasy history of the human race told through the experiences of a single human family reincarnated through the ages.
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Shame of Man
by Piers Anthony
The second epic adventure follows two lovers and their struggle to preserve their way of life against all odds.
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Hope of Earth
by Piers Anthony
In Isle of Woman and Shame of Man, the firs two volumes of the monumental Geodyssey saga, bestselling author Piers Anthony chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of two remarkable families reborn again and again in some of the most turbulent eras of human history. Now, with Hope of Earth, Anthony brings us a stirring epic that ranges from our ancient beginnings in Africa's Great Rift Valley to the windswept Andes a century from now, and includes some of history's most fascinating figures--the mysterious "Ice Man" of the Swiss Alps, the decadent King Herod, the British Warrior Queen Boudica, the Mongol Chieftan Tamurlane, and King Louis XIV of France. Exciting, imaginative, and inspiring, Hope of Earth is the story of a group of heroic men and women, bound by ties of passion, honor, and blood, who struggle to transcend our violent past and forge and new and shinning future.
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Muse of Art
by Piers Anthony
Anthony's Geodyssey Series is the story of humanity as seen through the eyes of a handful of courageous men and women reborn again and again in some of the most turbulent stages of history. The arts set humanity apart from all other species on earth, and this fourth book in the saga explores the special talents that have inspired and motivated man since the earliest days of existence.
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Almost Adam
by Petru Popescu
Riveting thriller about a paleoanthropologist digging fossils in Kenya who discovers a young proto-human boy thought to be extinct.
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No Enemy But Time
by Michael Bishop
A secret experiment in time travel sends a twentieth century man a million years into the past in Central Africa.
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Raising Abel
by W. Michael Gear
When her brother is murdered, Veronica Tremaine tries to uncover who is killing genetics professors and encounters three more would-be victims in her brother's co-worker Bryce Johnson, research assistant Rebecca Armely, and Rebecca's young son. By the authors of Dark Inheritance. Reprint.
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The Ugly Little Boy
by Isaac Asimov
Plucked out of the past and transported forty thousand years into the future, a Neanderthal child discovers that human nature has remained unchanged, in an expanded version of an original Asimov story
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Blood of the Tiger
by Rose Estes
In a prehistoric world of great savagery sorcery, two outcasts from warring tribes set off on a dangerous quest of discovery
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Brother to the Lion
by Rose Estes
The outcasts, Emri and Hawk, exiled by an evil shaman and pursued by his warriors, must seek their destiny to the north in the mysterious land of glaciers. Here at the base of the moving mountains, Emri must win the chieftainship of his adopted clan--or all will perish!
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Spirit of the Hawk
by Rose Estes
Emri and Hawk must lead the surviving members of their new clan, the People of the Deer, to safety across the perilous tundra before the Cold Time arrives. Beyond the nearly impassable mountains of ice and snow, Emri will face his greatest challenge of all--to defeat the evil shaman or die!
