Books with category 🌓 Dystopia
Displaying books 1-48 of 362 in total

It Can't Happen Here

2035

by Sinclair Lewis

It Can't Happen Here is a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. Written during the Great Depression when America was largely oblivious to Hitler's aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a President who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, rampant promiscuity, crime, and a liberal press.

This novel remains uniquely important, a shockingly prescient story that's as fresh and contemporary as today's news.

Coldwire

2025

by Chloe Gong

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Chloe Gong comes the start of a daring new dystopian series where humanity has moved to virtual reality to flee their deteriorating world, following two young soldiers who must depend on unlikely allies in their fight for survival.

The future is loading


To escape rising seas and rampant epidemics, most of society lives “upcountry” in glistening virtual reality, while those who can’t afford the subscription are forced to remain in crumbling “downcountry.”

But upcountry isn’t perfect. A cold war rages between two powerful nations, Medaluo and Atahua—and no one suffers for it more than the Medan orphans in Atahua. Their enrollment at Nile Military Academy is mandatory. Either serve as a soldier or risk being labelled a spy.

Eirale graduated the academy and joined NileCorp’s private forces downcountry, exactly as she was supposed to. Then Atahua’s most wanted anarchist frames her for assassinating a government official, and she’s given a choice: cooperate with him to search for a dangerous program in Medaluo or go down for treason.

Meanwhile, Lia is finishing her last year upcountry at Nile Military Academy. Paired with her academic nemesis for their final assignment, Lia is determined to beat him for valedictorian and prove her worth. But there may be far more at stake when their task to infiltrate Medaluo and track down an Atahuan traitor goes wrong


Though Eirale and Lia tear through Medaluo on different planes of reality, the two start to suspect they are puzzle pieces in a larger conspiracy—and the closer they get to the truth, the closer their worlds come to a shattering collision.

Watch Me

2025

by Tahereh Mafi

Lose yourself in this exhilarating return to the #1 global bestselling Shatter Me universe, the first book in a new series set ten years after the fall of The Reestablishment.

James Anderson had a plan. Or half of one. All that matters is that he managed to do what his older brother, the famous Aaron Warner Anderson, never did: infiltrate Ark Island, the last refuge of The Reestablishment. In the past decade, no outsider has breached the stronghold of the authoritarian regime, but James is in. In a prison cell, sure, but as far as James is concerned, a win is a win.

It’s been ten years since the fall of The Reestablishment. Ten years since the notorious duo—Juliette Ferrars and Aaron Warner Anderson—led a worldwide rebellion and established the New Republic of the West. But after a decade of unsettling quiet, The Reestablishment is ready to make a devastating move, and they have the perfect person for the job.

Rosabelle Wolff had a plan. She always has a plan. On Ark Island, where constant surveillance is packaged as security, even emotions must be experienced with caution. A trained assassin, her every movement is monitored by synthetic intelligence—and when she’s given an order to kill, she never hesitates.

Brimming with pulse-pounding action and torturous romance, Watch Me is an explosive journey through a dystopian landscape where enemies-to-lovers has never felt more impossible. Step into a beloved and breathtaking world that demands an answer to a desperate question—Who are we when no one is watching?

Sunrise on the Reaping

2025

by Suzanne Collins

When you've been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.


Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.


When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town.


As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

The Dream Hotel

2025

by Laila Lalami

The Dream Hotel is a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most—her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.

The Unworthy

The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.

Hum

2024

by Helen Phillips

Hum is an extraordinary novel by the National Book Award–longlisted author Helen Phillips. It tells the story of a wife and mother named May, who, after losing her job to artificial intelligence, undergoes a radical procedure that makes her invisible to surveillance systems.

The narrative follows her as she invests in a brief escape to the Botanical Garden, a sanctuary of natural beauty, hoping it will heal her family's reliance on technology. However, the supposed tranquility is short-lived as her family's safety is compromised.

Hum is a riveting work of speculative fiction, examining themes of marriage, motherhood, and identity against a backdrop of environmental decay and rapid technological progress. It presents a world filled with both dystopian and utopian elements, compelling readers to confront the unsettling realities of our times.

This Great Hemisphere

From the award-winning and bestselling author of Black Buck, This Great Hemisphere is a speculative novel about a young woman—invisible by birth and relegated to second-class citizenship—who sets off on a mission to find her older brother, whom she had presumed dead but who is now the primary suspect in a high-profile political murder.

Despite the odds, Sweetmint, a young invisible woman, has done everything right her entire life—school, university, and now a highly sought-after apprenticeship with the Northwestern Hemisphere’s premier inventor, a non-invisible man belonging to the Dominant Population who is as eccentric as he is enigmatic. But the world she has fought so hard to build after the disappearance of her older brother comes crashing down when authorities claim that not only is he well and alive, he’s also the main suspect in the murder of the Chief Executive of the Northwestern Hemisphere.

A manhunt ensues, and Sweetmint, armed with courage, intellect, and unwavering love for her brother, sets off on a mission to find him before it’s too late. With five days until the hemisphere’s big election, Sweetmint must dodge a relentless law officer who’s determined to maintain order and an ambitious politician with sights set on becoming the next Chief Executive by any means necessary.

With the captivating worldbuilding of N. K. Jemisin’s novels and blazing defiance of Naomi Alderman’s work, This Great Hemisphere is a novel that brilliantly illustrates the degree to which reality can be shaped by non-truths and vicious manipulations, while shining a light on our ability to surprise ourselves when we stop giving in to the narratives others have written for us.

Pink Slime

Pink Slime is a harrowing, intimate novel about a woman and the people who depend on her as the world around them teeters on the edge—marking an award-winning Latin American author's US debut. In a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, a woman tries to understand why her world is falling apart. An algae bloom has poisoned the previously pristine air that blows in from the sea. Inland, a secretive corporation churns out the only food anyone can afford—a revolting pink paste, made of an unknown substance.

In the short, desperate breaks between deadly windstorms, our narrator stubbornly tends to her few remaining relationships: with her difficult but vulnerable mother; with the ex-husband for whom she still harbors feelings; with the boy she nannies, whose parents sent him away even as terrible threats loomed. Yet as conditions outside deteriorate further, her commitment to remaining in place only grows—even if staying means being left behind. An evocative elegy for a safe, clean world, Pink Slime is buoyed by humor and its narrator's resiliency. This unforgettable novel explores the place where love, responsibility, and self-preservation converge, and the beauty and fragility of our most intimate relationships.

The Last Murder at the End of the World

2024

by Stuart Turton

Solve the murder to save what's left of the world.

Outside the island there is the world destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched. On the island it is idyllic. 122 villagers and 3 scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.

Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And they learn the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay.

If the murder isn't solved within 92 hours, the fog will smother the island – and everyone on it.

But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer – and they don't even know it


The outstanding new high concept murder mystery from the Sunday Times bestselling and Costa Book Award winning author of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. An ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, an audacious solution. Available to pre order NOW.

I Cheerfully Refuse

2024

by Leif Enger

I Cheerfully Refuse is a career-defining tour-de-force from New York Times bestselling, award-winning novelist Leif Enger. Set in a not-too-distant America, it is the tale of Rainy, a bereaved and pursued musician embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife.

An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, Rainy seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society.

Amidst the Gulliver-like challenges of life at sea and no safe landings, Rainy is lifted by physical beauty, surprising humor, generous strangers, and an unexpected companion in a young girl who comes aboard. As his innate guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy's private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his strengthening wake.

The Morningside

2024

by Téa Obreht

From the critically beloved, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife and Inland, Téa Obreht presents a magical novel of mothers and daughters, displacement and belonging, and myths both old and new.

There’s the world you can see. And then there’s the one you can’t. Welcome to The Morningside.

After being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-so-distant-future, Silvia and her mother finally settle at The Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in a place called Island City where Silvia’s aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past, and because the once-vibrant city she lives in is now half-underwater.

Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's lonely and impoverished reality.

Enchanted by Ena’s stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building: She has her own elevator entrance and leaves only to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning.

Silvia’s mission to unravel the truth about this woman’s life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything. Startling, inventive, and profoundly moving, The Morningside is a novel about the stories we tell—and the stories we refuse to tell—to make sense of where we came from and who we hope we might become.

Your Utopia: Stories

Your Utopia: Stories, by internationally acclaimed author Bora Chung, and brilliantly translated from Korean by Anton Hur, is a collection that explores themes of loss and discovery, idealism and dystopia, death and immortality. Chung's unique blend of terrors and wry humor creates a compelling tapestry of narratives that challenge the reader's perspective on the future and the human condition.

In "The Center for Immortality Research," a low-level employee is caught in the crossfire of a gala event gone awry, under the watchful eyes of celebrity benefactors obsessed with eternal life. Meanwhile, "One More Kiss, Dear" reveals a heartwarming yet unconventional bond between an AI-elevator and a resident of the apartment complex. Lastly, "Seeds" offers a glimpse into a world ravaged by capitalism and the resiliency of nature against the backdrop of genetic modification and corporate dominance.

Chung's writing is multifaceted—haunting, humorous, and at times, gross and terrifying. Yet, it leaves readers yearning for more of her unique voice that captures the essence of our deepest fears and desires.

If you're searching for a literary experience that transcends boundaries and offers a window into a world both strange and familiar, Your Utopia: Stories is an essential read.

The Future

2023

by Naomi Alderman

Naomi Alderman, the bestselling, award-winning author of The Power, delivers a dazzling tour de force with The Future. This novel is a thrilling tale where a handful of friends plot a daring heist to save the world from the tech giants whose greed threatens life as we know it.

When Martha Einkorn fled her father's isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. Surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry, Martha must confront technological prophecies and apocalyptic warnings that once seemed like mere parables.

Meanwhile, across the world, Lai Zhen, an internet-famous survivalist, finds herself fleeing from an assassin in a mall in Singapore. As she's cornered and desperate, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone, guiding her escape. The origins of this software and its ultimate purpose become the burning questions that could define their very survival.

Martha and Zhen's worlds are on a collision course, setting off an explosive chain of events. While a few billionaires assure their own safety, leading the world to destruction, Martha's relentless drive and Zhen's insatiable curiosity might just lead to something beautiful or the cataclysmic end of civilization.

By turns thrilling, hilarious, tender, and always piercingly brilliant, The Future unfolds at breakneck speed, highlighting the corrupting power of the few and the courage required to stand up to them. The future is coming. The Future is here.

Julia

2023

by Sandra Newman

Julia: A Novel is an imaginative, feminist, and brilliantly relevant-to-today retelling of Orwell's 1984, from the point of view of Winston Smith's lover, Julia, by critically acclaimed novelist Sandra Newman. Julia Worthing is a mechanic, working in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. It's 1984, and Britain (now called Airstrip One) has long been absorbed into the larger trans-Atlantic nation of Oceania.

Oceania has been at war for as long as anyone can remember, and is ruled by an ultra-totalitarian Party, whose leader is a quasi-mythical figure called Big Brother. In short, everything about this world is as it is in Orwell's 1984. All her life, Julia has known only Oceania, and, until she meets Winston Smith, she has never imagined anything else.

Seventy-five years after Orwell finished writing his iconic novel, Sandra Newman has tackled the world of Big Brother in a truly convincing way, offering a dramatically different, feminist narrative that is true to and stands alongside the original. For the millions of readers who have been brought up with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, here, finally, is a provocative, vital and utterly satisfying companion novel.

Land of Milk and Honey

2023

by C Pam Zhang

Land of Milk and Honey is a rapturous and revelatory novel from the award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold. It tells the story of a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world.

Amidst a backdrop where smog has spread and food crops are rapidly disappearing, a chef flees her dying career in a bleak city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony, a place seemingly untouched by the world's troubles. Here, the sky is once again clear, and rare ingredients are in abundance.

Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have created a lush new existence for the global elite, rekindling the chef's senses to the joys of taste, touch, and her own body. In this realm filled with hidden splendors and a cool, seductive violence, the chef experiences a thrilling dissolution of her boundaries.

She soon finds herself at the heart of a shocking endeavor to transform the world far beyond culinary delights. Land of Milk and Honey is a sensuous and surprising tale, joyful yet bitingly sharp. It's a daringly imaginative journey through desire and deception, privilege and faith, survival, and the roles we assume. Above all, it is an ode to food, to unbridled delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own voracious appetite.

Prophet Song

2023

by Paul Lynch

Prophet Song is a fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internationally award-winning author.


On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.


Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.


How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?


Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.

Outside

2023

by Shalini Boland

The future is divided by Perimeters: high-security gated communities where life goes on as normal. If you’re inside, you’re lucky. If you’re outside, life expectancy takes a nose dive.

Riley is fortunate to have been born on the right side of the fence. But her life of privilege comes crashing down when someone breaks through and murders her sister. She forsakes her own safety to go in search of the killer. Luc decides to go with her; otherwise, she’ll be dead before she’s past the security gate. But what awaits her outside is more unbelievable than she ever expected.

Cut to the present day, where Eleanor's world is falling apart. This time next year, civilisation won't be quite so civilised...

The Bee Sting

2023

by Paul Murray

The Bee Sting, by Paul Murray, is an exuberantly entertaining novel that delves into the lives of the Barnes family as they navigate a world on the brink of collapse. At the heart of their misfortunes is Dickie, whose once-thriving car business is now failing, leading him to obsessively build an apocalypse-proof bunker. His wife, Imelda, sells her jewelry on eBay and flirts with the idea of an affair, while their teenage daughter, Cass, is on a path of self-destruction. The youngest, PJ, contemplates running away from home.

The narrative poses a poignant question: if you could rewrite this family's story, how far back would you need to go? Could it be Imelda's wedding day, marred by a bee sting? A car accident preceding Cass's birth? Or even further back, to a summer day with Dickie and his father? The Bee Sting is both a portrait of post-crash Ireland and a tragicomic family saga, offering a dazzling exploration of the challenges in striving to be good in a world that's falling apart.

Chain Gang All Stars

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own.

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.

Clay's Ark

An innocent family, carjacked on a desolate highway, is abducted to a bizarre new world. A world being born in the Californian desert. They discover Earth has been invaded by an alien microorganism. The deadly entity attacks like a virus, but survivors of the disease genetically bond with it, developing amazing powers, near-immortality, unnatural desires - and a need to spread the contagion and create a secret colony of the transformed. Now the meaning of "survival" changes. For the babies born in the colony are clearly, undeniably, not human...

In a violent near-future, Asa Elias Doyle and her companions encounter an alien life form so heinous and destructive, they exile themselves in the desert so as not to contaminate other humans. To resist the compulsion to infect others is mental agony, but to succumb is to relinquish humanity and free will. Desperate, they kidnap a doctor and his two daughters as they cross the wasteland--and endanger the world.

In an alternate America marked by volatile class warfare, Blake Maslin is traveling with his teenage twin daughters when their car is ambushed. Their attackers appear sickly yet possess inhuman strength, and they transport Blake's family to an isolated compound. There, the three captives discover that the compound's residents have a highly contagious alien disease that has mutated their DNA to make them powerful, dangerous, and compelled to infect others. If Blake and his daughters do not escape, they will be infected with a virus that will either kill them outright or transform them into outcasts whose very existence is a threat to the world around them. In the following hours, Blake and his daughters each must make a vital choice: risk everything to escape and warn the rest of the world, or accept their new reality -- as well as the uncertain fate of the human race.

Wayward

2022

by Blake Crouch

Welcome to Wayward Pines, population 461. Nestled amidst picture-perfect mountains, the idyllic town is a modern-day Eden... except for the electrified fence and razor wire, snipers scoping everything 24/7, and the relentless surveillance tracking each word and gesture.

None of the residents know how they got here. They are told where to work, how to live, and who to marry. Some believe they are dead. Others think they’re trapped in an unfathomable experiment. Everyone secretly dreams of leaving, but those who dare face a terrifying surprise.

Ethan Burke has seen the world beyond. He’s sheriff, and one of the few who knows the truth—Wayward Pines isn’t just a town. And what lies on the other side of the fence is a nightmare beyond anyone’s imagining.

As sheriff, Ethan Burke is tasked with enforcing the town’s laws, and he’s one of the few entrusted with the truth—even though, for all his knowledge, he’s as much a prisoner of Wayward Pines as anyone else. But when a murder investigation draws him deeper into the town’s inner workings, Ethan learns that its past is darker than even he suspected—and finds himself faced with an impossible choice.

Nona the Ninth

2022

by Tamsyn Muir

Her city is under siege. The zombies are coming back. And all Nona wants is a birthday party.

In many ways, Nona is like other people. She lives with her family, has a job at her local school, and loves walks on the beach and meeting new dogs. But Nona is not like other people. Six months ago she woke up in a stranger's body, and she's afraid she might have to give it back.

The whole city is falling to pieces. A monstrous blue sphere hangs on the horizon, ready to tear the planet apart. Blood of Eden forces have surrounded the last Cohort facility and wait for the Emperor Undying to come calling. Their leaders want Nona to be the weapon that will save them from the Nine Houses. Nona would prefer to live an ordinary life with the people she loves, with Pyrrha and Camilla and Palamedes, but she also knows that nothing lasts forever.

And each night, Nona dreams of a woman with a skull-painted face...

Maya of the Inbetween

2022

by Sita Bennett

Dystopia, Utopia, and the realm of Gỗds intersect through the inter-dimensional SĂ«eing's of one girl, Maya; The Inbetween. Humanity's channel between life and death.


Natural disasters have devastated planet Earth and all remaining life is contained in one City. A City of iron and technology where the citizens are safe but they are not free. Until recently, MAYA lived there in hiding, painting visions of a vibrant valley where nature still thrives. She's a Sëer, a Mystic, a Feeler... and a Rebel.


Life imitates art when she sees the man she paints—a young, bright-eyed German officer, BJÖRN—who tells her the world she's been painting is real, and he's determined to find it.


In a race against the Control and a quest for truth and freedom, they escape the City and cross dimensions to seek the help of a sophisticated race of beings—keepers of the Earth's sacred mysteries—to save it from total self-destruction.

The Foundation Pit

2022

by Andrei Platonov

The Foundation Pit portrays a group of workmen and local bureaucrats engaged in digging the foundation pit for what is to become a grand 'general' building where all the town's inhabitants will live happily and 'in silence.'

Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose.

In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled relations with literary officialdom, the work's ideological and political background, and key critical responses since the work's first publication in the West in 1973.

How High We Go in the Dark

In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.

Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resilience of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.

Zazen

2021

by Vanessa Veselka

Somewhere in Della’s consumptive, industrial wasteland of a city, a bomb goes off. It is not the first, and will not be the last. Reactions to the attacks are polarized. Police activity intensifies. Della’s revolutionary parents welcome the upheaval but are trapped within their own insular beliefs.

Her activist restaurant co-workers, who would rather change their identities than the world around them, resume a shallow rebellion of hair-dye, sex parties, and self-absorption. As those bombs keep inching closer, thudding deep and real between the sounds of katydids fluttering in the still of the city night, the destruction begins to excite her.

What begins as terror threats called in to greasy bro-bars across the block boils over into a desperate plot, intoxicating and captivating Della and leaving her little chance for escape. Zazen unfolds as a search for clarity soured by irresolution and catastrophe, yet made vital by the thin, wild veins of imagination run through each escalating moment, tensing and relaxing, unfurling and ensnaring.

Vanessa Veselka renders Della and her world with beautiful, frightening, and phantasmagorically intelligent accuracy, crafting from their shattered constitutions a perversely perfect mirror for our own selves and state.

Z for Zachariah

Is anyone out there?

Ann Burden is sixteen years old and completely alone. The world as she once knew it is gone, ravaged by a nuclear war that has taken everyone from her. For the past year, she has lived in a remote valley with no evidence of any other survivors.

But the smoke from a distant campfire shatters Ann's solitude. Someone else is still alive and making his way toward the valley. Who is this man? What does he want? Can he be trusted?

Both excited and terrified, Ann soon realizes there may be worse things than being the last person on Earth.

Stand on Zanzibar

2021

by John Brunner

Norman Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically—it’s about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he’s about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him.

These two men’s lives weave through one of science fiction’s most praised novels. Written in a way that echoes John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. Trilogy, Stand on Zanzibar is a cross-section of a world overpopulated by the billions. Where society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers, mass-marketed psychedelic drugs, and mundane uses of genetic engineering.

Though written in 1968, it speaks of a near future, and is frighteningly prescient and intensely powerful.

Klara and the Sun

2021

by Kazuo Ishiguro

From the best-selling author of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, a stunning new novel—his first since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature—about the wondrous, mysterious nature of the human heart.

Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

In its award citation in 2017, the Nobel committee described Ishiguro's books as "novels of great emotional force" and said he has "uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".

Noughts & Crosses

Sephy is a Cross \'97 a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a Nought \'97 a \'93colourless\'94 member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses. The two have been friends since early childhood, but that\'s as far as it can go. In their world, Noughts and Crosses simply don\'t mix.

Against a background of prejudice and distrust, intensely highlighted by violent terrorist activity, a romance builds between Sephy and Callum \'97 a romance that is to lead both of them into terrible danger. Can they possibly find a way to be together?

Captured

2020

by Erica Stevens

Blood Slave. Captured and taken from her beloved family and woods, Aria's biggest fear is not the imminent death facing her, but that she will be chosen as a blood slave for a member of the ruling vampire race. No matter what becomes of her, Aria knows she must keep her identity hidden from the monsters imprisoning her. She has already been branded a member of the rebellion, but the vampires do not know the true depth of her involvement, and they must never find out.

Though hoping for death, Aria’s world is turned upside down when a vampire named Braith steps forward to claim her. He delays her execution, but Aria knows it’s only a matter of time before he drains her and destroys her. Especially once she learns his true identity as a prince within the royal family—the same royal family that started the war that ultimately brought down humankind, reducing them to nothing more than servants and slaves.

Aria is determined to hate the prince, determined not to give in to him in any way, but his strange kindness and surprising gentleness astonish her. Torn between her loyalties to the rebellion and her growing love for her greatest enemy, Aria struggles to decide between everything she has ever known and a love she never dreamed of finding.

The Incal

John Difool, a low-class detective in a degenerate dystopian world, finds his life turned upside down when he discovers an ancient, mystical artifact called The Incal. Difool's adventures will bring him into conflict with the galaxy's greatest warrior, the Metabaron, and will pit him against the awesome powers of the Technopope.

These encounters and many more make up a tale of comic and cosmic proportions that has Difool fighting for not only his very survival, but also the survival of the entire universe.

Tender Is the Flesh

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal.

Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

The Four Fingers of Death

2020

by Rick Moody

Montese Crandall is a downtrodden writer whose rare collection of baseball cards won't sustain him, financially or emotionally, through the grave illness of his wife. Luckily, he swindles himself a job churning out a novelization of the 2025 remake of a 1963 horror classic, The Crawling Hand.

Crandall tells of the United States, in a bid to regain global eminence, launching its doomed manned mission to the desolation of Mars. Three space pods with nine Americans on board travel three months, expecting to spend three years as the planet's first colonists. When a secret mission to retrieve a flesh-eating bacterium for use in bio-warfare is uncovered, mayhem ensues.

Only a lonely human arm (missing its middle finger) returns to Earth, crash-landing in the vast Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The arm may hold the secret to reanimation or it may simply be an infectious killing machine. In the ensuing days, it crawls through the heartbroken wasteland of a civilization at its breaking point, economically and culturally—a dystopia of lowlife, emigration from America, and laughable lifestyle alternatives.

The Four Fingers of Death is a stunningly inventive, sometimes hilarious, monumental novel. It will delight admirers of comic masterpieces like Slaughterhouse-Five, The Crying of Lot 49, and Catch-22.

Imagine Me

2020

by Tahereh Mafi

The explosive finale to the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Shatter Me series.

Juliette Ferrars. Ella Sommers. Which is the truth and which is the lie?

Now that Ella knows who Juliette is and what she was created for, things have only become more complicated. As she struggles to understand the past that haunts her and looks to a future more uncertain than ever, the lines between right and wrong—between Ella and Juliette—blur. And with old enemies looming, her destiny may not be her own to control.

The day of reckoning for the Reestablishment is coming. But she may not get to choose what side she fights on.

High-Rise

2020

by J.G. Ballard

When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on "enemy" floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.

Galaxy Pirates

In a distant future, mankind discovers they're not alone in this universe.

Aliens arrive, and the Earth gets engulfed in space wars, where humans turn out helpless and defenseless, regardless of their nuclear and biological weapons. One of the strongest and most aggressive species of aliens - Reptiloids - turn Planet Earth into their slave-trading colony. Soon, the population of humans drastically decreases, bringing them to the verge of extinction.

Gods, deities, fate, light - everything seems to have forsaken them.

Violet Hawthorne is one of the few surviving humans, sold as a slave. The nineteen-year-old girl works in a pub on Planet Irahor of the Radenoids (the species that created humans millennia ago). She is treated worse than an animal and laments about her cruel fate. Yet, unlike other humans, Violet has not given up on hope - she knows that somewhere across the stars roams a man who can reverse the course of fate - the Young Captain of the Galaxy Pirates.

Violet dreams to find this legendary man and enter his crew of audacious pirates fighting against the cruel world, in the hope of getting their help to save her planet and people.

The Testaments

2019

by Margaret Atwood

The Testaments, Margaret Atwood's highly anticipated sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, unfolds the darkly compelling story of Gilead more than fifteen years after Offred's ambiguous end. With The Testaments, Atwood opens the innermost workings of Gilead and brings the iconic story to a dramatic conclusion through the voices of three female narrators.

Two of the narrators, Daisy and Agnes, have grown up as part of the first generation in the new order of Gilead. They are joined by a third voice, Aunt Lydia, who wields power through the ruthless accumulation and deployment of secrets. Each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.

As the regime of Gilead begins to rot from within, these three women's lives converge in a potentially explosive manner. The Testaments answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades, offering a harrowing and exhilarating exploration of resistance against oppression.

Darkdawn

2019

by Jay Kristoff

The epic conclusion to the internationally bestselling Nevernight Chronicle from New York Times bestselling author Jay Kristoff.

The greatest games in Godsgrave’s history have ended with the most audacious murders in the history of the Itreyan Republic. Mia Corvere, gladiatii, escaped slave and infamous assassin, is on the run.

Pursued by Blades of the Red Church and soldiers of the Luminatii legion, she may never escape the City of Bridges and Bones alive. Her mentor Mercurio is now in the clutches of her enemies. Her own family wishes her dead. And her nemesis, Consul Julius Scaeva, stands but a breath from total dominance over the Republic.

But beneath the city, a dark secret awaits. Together with her lover Ashlinn, brother Jonnen and a mysterious benefactor returned from beyond the veil of death, she must undertake a perilous journey across the Republic, seeking the final answer to the riddle of her life.

Truedark approaches. Night is falling on the Republic for perhaps the final time. Can Mia survive in a world where even daylight must die?

Wanderers

2019

by Chuck Wendig

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other "shepherds" who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

For as the sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America, the real danger may not be the epidemic but the fear of it. With society collapsing all around them—and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them—the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

Children of Dune

2019

by Frank Herbert

Book three in Frank Herbert's magnificent Dune Chronicles—one of the most significant sagas in the history of literary science fiction.

The Children of Dune are twin siblings Leto and Ghanima Atreides, whose father, the Emperor Paul Muad'Dib, disappeared in the desert wastelands of Arrakis nine years ago. Like their father, the twins possess supernormal abilities—making them valuable to their manipulative aunt Alia, who rules the Empire in the name of House Atreides.

Facing treason and rebellion on two fronts, Alia's rule is not absolute. The displaced House Corrino is plotting to regain the throne while the fanatical Fremen are being provoked into open revolt by the enigmatic figure known only as The Preacher. Alia believes that by obtaining the secrets of the twins' prophetic visions, she can maintain control over her dynasty.

But Leto and Ghanima have their own plans for their visions—and their destinies....

Includes an introduction by Brian Herbert.

The Fever King

2019

by Victoria Lee

In the former United States, sixteen-year-old Noam Álvaro wakes up in a hospital bed, the sole survivor of the viral magic that killed his family and made him a technopath. His ability to control technology attracts the attention of the minister of defense and thrusts him into the magical elite of the nation of Carolinia.

The son of undocumented immigrants, Noam has spent his life fighting for the rights of refugees fleeing magical outbreaks—refugees Carolinia routinely deports with vicious efficiency. Sensing a way to make change, Noam accepts the minister’s offer to teach him the science behind his magic, secretly planning to use it against the government.

But then he meets the minister’s son—cruel, dangerous, and achingly beautiful—and the way forward becomes less clear. Caught between his purpose and his heart, Noam must decide who he can trust and how far he’s willing to go in pursuit of the greater good.

Judges: When The Light Lay Still

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 2038 A.D.

Ezekiel Jones was a cop, and proud of it—until his partner shot a kid and covered it up. Ezekiel testified against her, but the inquiry went nowhere, leaving everything he’d believed in ruins. He joined the new Judges programme the next day.

Moulded and shaped to be the first of the new breed of law-makers, Jones hits the streets again. But as a new weapon gets into the hands of radicals and the tension rises, both Jones and those he serves have to decide where their loyalties lie.

The City in the Middle of the Night

Would you give up everything to change the world?

Humanity clings to life on January – a colonized planet divided between permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other.

Two cities, built long ago in the meager temperate zone, serve as the last bastions of civilization – but life inside them is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside.

Sophie, a young student from the wrong side of Xiosphant city, is exiled into the dark after being part of a failed revolution. But she survives–with the help of a mysterious savior from beneath the ice.

Burdened with a dangerous, painful secret, Sophie and her ragtag group of exiles face the ultimate challenge – and they are running out of time.

Welcome to The City in the Middle of the Night.

The Mountain's Morning Song

2019

by William Graney

Time is Different Here

In the year 2052, a secret society hibernates in a small mountain town and guards the hidden mysteries contained in a nearby crystal cave. They know that a day of reckoning is approaching, but they believe it won't occur until well into the next century. Events in the United States, and around the world, cause an acceleration of the timeline, and the members of La Société de la FrontiÚre Ouverte must face an exodus from the earthly realm.

The only hope on the horizon for restoring the original prophecy comes from the Science Party's presidential candidate Angie Branson, but it will take an election day miracle for her to overtake the dominant Christian Law Party.

Down and Rising

The debut novel from award-winning filmmaker Rohith S. Katbamna, tells the powerful story of a brave few who venture for truth in the aftermath of a global uprising.

In the year 2027, society has fallen. Mass revolts and warring nations have claimed countless lives and destroyed vast lands. Forced into a dark slumber, the world now draws fewer breaths and hosts infinite graveyards.

In England, ten survivors who have journeyed many miles are on a path ready to converge. With histories soaked in the blood of betrayal, lies and deceit, one common thread binds them. The human instinct to seek a greater truth.

Over six days, these ten souls will come to find that the ruined world around them is reawakening. As a presence emerges, bringing with it a merciless intention to eliminate any and all beating bodies, this company of strangers will confront a series of hardships in a tale of underdogs, oppressors and the human condition.

Down and Rising is an immersive reading experience. An imaginative multi-story arc intricately woven together by striking imagery, reference materials and finely crafted characters.

The Power

2019

by Naomi Alderman

In The Power, the world is a recognizable place: there's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect.

Teenage girls now have immense physical power: they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets. From award-winning author Naomi Alderman, The Power is speculative fiction at its most ambitious and provocative, at once taking us on a thrilling journey to an alternate reality, and exposing our own world in bold and surprising ways.

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