The Girl in Red

Three months after a pandemic called the Crisis has gutted the population, twenty-year-old Cordelia, who answers only to Red, walks hundreds of miles through wild country. Her goal is her grandmother's off-grid home. She is on foot and on her own, and the route is full of hazards.

Red has watched a lot of horror films and has made herself into a prepper. She knows what gets the unprepared killed when civilisation falls, and she plans to put every lesson she has absorbed to work. Sickness and wild animals are real threats on the road, but men are worse: they look at a woman travelling alone and see someone to prey on.

This is a postapocalyptic thriller with a horror streak, built as a reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood. The wolf of the old tale is replaced by something more human. The book alternates between two time frames. Before follows the collapse of Red's family as the Crisis spreads, while After follows her solitary trek through the woods.

Expect a tense, survival-driven read that keeps its focus on one woman and the choices she makes when nobody is coming to help. The dual structure lets the loss behind her sit alongside the danger ahead.