Prehistoric Fiction
Explore the best prehistoric fiction books! Dive into captivating stories set in ancient times, featuring dinosaurs, early humans, and epic survival tales. Discover top reads now.
Book
The Land of Painted Caves
by Jean M. Auel
The highly anticipated sixth book of Jean Auel's Earth's Children® series, The Land of Painted Caves, is the culmination fans have been waiting for. Continuing the story of Ayla and Jondalar, Auel combines her brilliant narrative skills and appealing characters with a remarkable re-creation of the way life was lived more than 25,000 years ago. The Land of Painted Caves is an exquisite achievement by one of the world's most beloved authors.
Book
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.
Book
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.
Book
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.
Book
The Plains of Passage
by Jean M. Auel
Jean M. Auel’s enthralling Earth’s Children® series has become a literary phenomenon, beloved by readers around the world. In a brilliant novel as vividly authentic and entertaining as those that came before, Jean M. Auel returns us to the earliest days of humankind and to the captivating adventures of the courageous woman called Ayla. With her companion, Jondalar, Ayla sets out on her most dangerous and daring journey--away from the welcoming hearths of the Mammoth Hunters and into the unknown. Their odyssey spans a beautiful but sparsely populated and treacherous continent, the windswept grasslands of Ice Age Europe, casting the pair among strangers. Some will be intrigued by Ayla and Jondalar, with their many innovative skills, including the taming of wild horses and a wolf; others will avoid them, threatened by what they cannot understand; and some will threaten them. But Ayla, with no memory of her own people, and Jondalar, with a hunger to return to his, are impelled by their own deep drives to continue their trek across the spectacular heart of an unmapped world to find that place they can both call home.
Book
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.
Book
People of the Bear Mother
by T. D. Austin
A gifted artist, Little Bear descends into the depths of the Great Cave guided by the oldest shaman of her people. She's to paint a new image portraying her tribe's most significant myth, and do so where nothing has been painted for countless generations. But before she enters the deepest chamber of the cave, she must be initiated. Little Bear agrees, despite her fear of the old shaman, her own reservations and her mother's opposition. Ill-prepared for such an experience, will Little Bear reject truths revealed by lovers, great teachers and the animal-art of the cave? Is this journey into the abyss destined to change every aspect of her life and all the subsequent lifetimes her soul will live? With a deft hand, T. D. Austin sends readers on a riveting, page-turning adventure that builds to an exciting and unexpected climax. A must read. The author was inspired by reading Jean Clottes' book detailing the excavation of the 30,000-year-old Chauvet Cave. Austin intuitively understood what the layout and colors of the images painted in this cave meant in the lives of these hunting peoples and what these ancient messages can mean in our lives today. Born and raised in Utah, Austin now lives in southern California.
Book
Tribal Instincts
by Saan As-Silm Orion
A solar flare envelopes the Valley, passing through the settlement and changing its people forever. Raj, the quiet, fearless leader, and his family live separately from their tribe beside a tall cliff face. Over the coming New Moons, Raj and his family begin changing, developing great speed, strength and enhanced senses. And with the New Moons come new cravings. They begin to long for the flesh of the animals they have sought to protect for countless generations. Forced to leave their tribe for their horrific behavior, the family starts out on its own, only to grow more animal-like themselves as the New Moons pass. And Raj's grandson, Sal, begins hearing the Voice, which sets him on the path of darkness. It's not until after a long sleep that Raj realizes what he and his family have become...vampires. Saan Orion resides in Brisbane, Queensland Australia where she works as an administration officer and lives with her supportive husband, her two cats, three dogs and three birds. She is currently working on her second and third book. Publisher's Web site: http: //www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TribalInstinctsDarkBlood.htm
Book
Great Sky Woman
by Steven Barnes
The epic story of how primitive humans, without words or machines, set in motion civilization’s long, winding journey to the present. Thirty thousand years ago, in the heart of the African continent and in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, lived the Ibandi, who for generations nurtured their ancient traditions, and met survival’ s daily struggle with quiet faith in their gods. T’Cori, an abandoned girl, and Frog Hopping, a boy possessing a gift that is also a curse, are two of the Ibandi’s chosen ones. Though they live in different encampments, Frog and T’Cori are linked through the mysterious medicine woman known as Stillshadow, who has sensed in them a destiny apart from others’. Through the years, and on their separate paths, T’Cori’s and Frog’s fates entwine as an inevitable disaster approaches from the south—from the very god they worship. For as long as there have been mountain, sky, and savannah, there has been a home for the Ibandi. Now, in the face of an enemy beyond anything spoken of even in legend, they must ask their god face-to-face: Do we remain or do we depart?
Book
The Chosen
by Shirley G. East
The Lord loves the American people. The Lord was at September 11, and so was Jesus. It was a holy war. You saw the war on earth, but you did not see the war in heaven. How did the Lord bring the twin towers to the ground from the top down, and why? I dreamed the Lord Almighty took Washington DC. What may happen if prayer is not revised and put back in schools and public places like those that he commanded in his words of instructions? No man puts himself above the Lord and causes his people to stray from him for the Lord God loves his children and; his words endure forever and ever. Amen.
Book
Zan-Gah
by Allan Richard Shickman
The hero, Zan-Gah seeks his lost twin in a savage prehistoric world, encountering suffering, captivity, conflict, love, and triumph. In three years, Zan-Gah passes from an uncertain boyhood to a tried and proven manhood and a position of leadership among his people. Themes: survival, cultures, gender roles, psychological trauma, nature's wonders and terrors.
Book
People of the Nightland
by W. Michael Gear
Two tribes living near the Great Lakes react differently to flooding caused by melting glaciers during the waning of an Ice Age.
Book
The Kin
by Peter Dickinson
It is two hundred thousand years ago. A small group of children are cut off from their Kin, the Moonhawks, when they are driven from their Good Place by violent strangers. While searching for a new Good Place, they face the parched desert, an active volcano, a canyon flood, man-eating lions, and other Kins they've never seen before. These young Moonhawks are brave, clever, and warmhearted, and all three traits are crucial to their survival. Told from four points-of-view, with tales of the Kins' creation interspersed throughout, this epic novel humanizes early man and illuminates the beginning of language, the development of skills, and the organization of society. Winner of a Printz Honor for The Ropemaker, Peter Dickinson has won most of the major British writing awards (some of them twice). With The Kin, he more than lives up to his honored reputation.
Book
Daughter of Kura
by Debra Austin
In the matriarchal society of Kura, women select mates every Fall at the Bonding from among the men who journey there from other villages. One woman will make a choice that will eventually undermine the whole cultural foundation of Kura. Set 500000 years ago in Africa.
Book
11,000 Years Lost
by Peni R. Griffin
Fascinated with the archaeological dig that is going on near her Texas home, eleven-year-old Esther magically travels back in time to the Pleistocene era and discovers first-hand how people lived at that time. Includes a list of sources and author's notes.
Book
Shadow Valley
by Steven Barnes
Following a mountain explosion, young Sky Woman of the divided Ibandi tribe journeys across the dry savannah to find a valley that can sustain, and possibly reunite, her people.
Book
Guardians of the Tall Stones
by Moyra Caldecott
When an impostor priest threatens her family's way of life, Kyra must rely on her emerging psychic powers and call upon the protection of the gods within the forbidden, sacred stone circle.