Maybe a little off base, but to me, Dean Koontz’s two novels “Fear Nothing” and its sequel “Seize the Night” bring up the same sort of feeling or mood to me as “The Stand” even though they are way different in many ways.
But, I actually enjoyed them more than King’s book. And I usually don’t care a lot for Koontz.
One other thing. The first book is on a far smaller scale than the holocast that King’s book in set in. The second is…well, on a larger scale (maybe only potentially, but it’s one of those “I’ve got a baaaad feeling about how this is gonna turn out” things, and I think is closer to “The Stand.”
Some of my acquantances loved the books, and a few didn’t really care for them, so I’d suggest you try to read some excerpts before purchasing. Just because I loved them doesn;t mean you will or that they invoke the same types of feeling in you as “The Stand” did.
I was going to mention those two, but the virus in Fear Nothing is so slow moving (it’s implied all of the main characters are infected at the end of the first book and they don’t even show any symptons through the entire book 2) that I’m not sure it counts as a plague book.
I just want Koontz to finish the damn trilogy. You’ve had ten years man, give us something!
Remote chance of this, but… Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand?
More certain- The Lord of the Rings, Davis Grubb’s Night of the Hunter (the movie was a VERY close adaptation), perhaps James BeauSeigneur’s Christ Clone Trilogy.
On The Beach by Nevil Shute. The movie was almost as good as the book.
The Last Ship by William Brinkley. Not as easy a read as The Stand, but well worth it.
I was going to come in and say Lucifer’s Hammer. I read both that and The Stand at around the same time and I remember liking them in the same way. As to it being dated, I couldn’t say. It’s been a long time since I read it.
I liked The Postman (much better than the movie) but his later books were much better.
Apologies for going off-topic to respond to you, but:
I agree with what you said in the spoiler-box. It is different, but kinda-sorta a similar “feel” to the novel. I don’t have the words to really expres the differences.
I am a fan of King’s earlier work and I also enjoy Clive Barker a lot. Weaveworld, Imajica, The Great and Secret Show were all entertaining and if you like thick books these should satisfy. He also has a ton of short stories and some smaller novels like The Hellbound Heart (Which became the movie Hellraiser). I didn’t like the Damnation game or Galilee however and haven’t read much of his newer stuff. Barker has a great (sometimes disturbed) imagination with less cheese than Stephen King.
If it’s King books you are looking for, I’d recommend any collection of his short stories and also The Bachman books.
I you like the apocalyptic, end of the world aspect of The Stand, try Alas Babylon by Pat Frank. Set during the Cold War, it’s a bit dated but very, very readable.
And I third the recommendation for Robert MacCammon. With Stephen King, try his earlier works first; they were better edited and more tightly paced. Once he got famous, I felt like he got a bit self-indulgent.
Wow, lots of suggestions. I picked up World War Z last night, along with (and I’m not sure how I came across this, but whatever) Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. King’s Duma Key looks interesting, I may get it next.
Keep the recommendations coming as I’ll get through those two pretty quick; we sold our house and can’t move into the new place for three weeks, so we’re staying with my in-laws, where the television networks of choice are Fox News, Lifetime Movie Network, back to Fox News, and - if I’m lucky - NBC for Wheel of Fortune. I’ll be upstairs reading, thanks anyway.
Old Man’s War is an awesome awesome book. The series as a whole has a pretty decent following around here and the fourth book is coming out this summer.
I would recommend The Talisman and its sequel The Black House by the King. I agree with the rest: Dark Tower series i loved so much, until the last three parts. I had to finish it, because i can’t leave an unfinished story, although i nearly gagged.
If only i could find the damn Duma Key copy in the local stores.
AfterAge by Yvonne Navarro follows the idea of “anyone killed by a vampire comes back as a vampire” to its logical conclusion. Two years after the first vampire appeared, virtually everyone has turned into a hungry vampire because there’s only a handful of human survivors left.
Midnight Mass by F. Paul Wilson, another vampire-based end-of-the-world novel. Shows a vampire army overrunning the United States and the formation of a human resistance movement.
The Harvest by Robert Charles Wilson, an unusual end-of-the-world novel where everyone disappearing is not necessarily a bad thing.
I 43rd the recommendation of Swan Song. And you might like Amazon.com by Jose Sarmagao. A virus mutates and causes world-wide blindness (except for one person) and the book follows the efforts to contain the virus and the ensuing panic. This one really, really creeped me out–just trying to imagine what that would be like.