The City (Sarah Lyons Fleming) Books in Order

The City series returns to Brooklyn at street level, telling a different side of the same apocalypse that knocks out the rest of Sarah Lyons Fleming's world. Where Cascadia gives you forests and farms, these books trap you in a crowded city that is falling apart tower by tower.

The story begins with Sylvie Rossi, a fiercely independent woman who has worked hard to keep other people at arm's length. Her one exception is her best friend, Grace, which is why they are together in a hospital when the virus reaches its breaking point. When a nurse offers them a way out and a place to hide, Sylvie is forced into an instant community she never planned on joining.

Running alongside her story is Eric Forrest's journey into the city. Eric is a risk taker whose only real plan is to get past military blockades and collapsing neighborhoods so he can find his missing sister. Every mile toward Brooklyn makes that mission look less realistic, but turning back has never been his style.

In Mordacious and Peripeteia, those threads weave together in a makeshift stronghold in Sunset Park. The survivors build routines, scavenge food, and try to carve out some comfort while zombies roam the streets below. They have to navigate fraying tempers inside their own walls, power plays from nearby groups, and the painful question of how much risk is worth taking to rescue the people they love.

By the time you reach Instauration, the fight has shifted. Sunset Park is gone, key people are missing, and Sylvie, Eric, and the rest have crossed the water to a new Safe Zone that is safer on paper than it feels in practice. There they plan, grieve, argue, and eventually decide whether reclaiming their old neighborhood is worth the blood it will cost.

These books lean into close quarters tension. Supplies are limited, the city itself is a maze, and there is no real way to walk away from conflict when you live in a handful of shared rooms. Alongside zombie attacks and daring runs through the streets, you get messy friendships, slow burn romance, found family bonds, and the kind of small jokes people make when they are terrified.

Although The City trilogy connects to Until the End of the World and the Cascadia series, you can read it as a standalone arc about what it means to build a home in the least hospitable place imaginable. Start with Mordacious for the hospital breakout and first Safe Zone, continue with Peripeteia for the struggle to keep that community together, and finish with Instauration when the survivors decide whether to rebuild or let the city go.