Dystopian Literary Fiction

The last thing Willa needs is another reason to die. Then a man falls from the sky. He has no memory. No supplies. And no explanation for why the Veil Lights shimmer differently whenever he’s near. The Veil Lights have hung silent in the sky for generations. Until the night he appeared. Willa has survived this broken world by trusting no one. Helping him may be the most dangerous mistake she’s ever made. Because the settlement has already decided what should be done with him. Leave him behind—or run. Now Willa and the stranger are on the move, hunted across a dying landscape where ...

A city is hit by a sudden and strange epidemic of "white blindness", which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there social conventions quickly crumble and the struggle for survival brings out the worst in people.

In a world where death has been solved, meaning is the real casualty. By the mid-22nd century, humanity no longer fears extinction. Consciousness can be recorded, stored, and restored from vast underground archives known as the Repositories. Resurrection is hailed as civilization’s greatest triumph—proof that nothing truly valuable need ever be lost. But not everyone is worth saving. Ilya Kade is a maintenance technician deep beneath the earth, tasked with preserving the stored minds of humanity’s “Essential” citizens. Officially classified as Nonessential, Ilya has no backup, no ...

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver's enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 - "Q" is for "question mark". A world that bears a question....

After a staged terrorist attack kills the President and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all-controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred is a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name.

Vitus Adamson is falling apart. As a pre-deceased private investigator, he takes the prescription Atroxipine hourly to keep his undead body upright and functioning. Whenever he is injured, he seeks Niko, a bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes and a way with corpses, to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients posing his most dangerous job yet appear at his door looking for their lost son.

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on...

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.

Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of 20th-century literature—a chilling and still-provocative look at a postapocalyptic future.

After a violent coup in the United States overthrows the Constitution and ushers in a new government regime, the Republic of Gilead imposes subservient roles on all women. Offred, now a Handmaid tasked with the singular role of procreation in the childless household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost everything, even her own name.

Dive into the incisive mind of George Orwell through his most powerful novels, ground-breaking reportage, and unforgettable essays. This collection brings together Orwell’s sharp political insight, moral clarity, and unmatched storytelling, offering listeners a panoramic view of a writer whose work continues to resonate across generations.

AT THE END OF THE WORLD THEY PUT HIM IN A LINE AND TOLD HIM NOTHING. Ezra Hale wakes in a desert among millions of strangers, a rack of weapons at his back and a dust-born force coming on the horizon. When the killing starts he runs, up into the mountains and out again into another country: a hidden green basin, a stone bridge climbing into the sky, a ruined fortress on a floating island of rock. More survivors stagger in from the wastes. An engineer who turns landscape into walls. A soldier who trains the desperate to kill. A priest whose faith cracks under the weight of the dead. A knife-...

Set amid the rolling hills and the sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex, this disquieting novel depicts an England in which bland conformity is the terrifying order of the day. Violent gangs roam the country, destroying art and culture and brutalizing those who resist the purge. As the menacing "They" creep ever closer, a loosely connected band of dissidents attempt to evade the chilling mobs, but it's only a matter of time until their luck runs out. Kay Dick's They is an uncanny and prescient vision of a world hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual.

A "suspenseful, atmospheric tale. . .punctured by a gut-punch twist" (Entertainment Weekly), A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World is a story of survival, courage and hope amid the ruins of our world. My name's Griz. I've never been to school, I've never had friends, and in my whole life...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE The Testaments is a modern masterpiece, a powerful novel that can be read on its own or as a companion to Margaret Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale. More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the...

In a future where mental health is treated like public infrastructure, suffering is no longer sacred—it’s a problem to be solved. Eli Navarro is a technician for Aftercare, a neural support protocol that gently modulates emotion, softens traumatic memories, and helps citizens return to stable, productive lives. The system works. Violence is rare. People are kinder. Longer-lived. And when pain strikes, relief is only a session away. But Eli has begun to notice something unsettling. Some patients heal too cleanly. Their grief resolves without residue. Their language grows flatter, their ...

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE An outsider who can travel between worlds discovers a secret that threatens the very fabric of the multiverse in this stunning debut, a powerful examination of identity, privilege, and belonging. WINNER OF THE COMPTON CROOK AWARD FINALIST...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A thrilling finale to a trilogy that will stand as one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction.”—Stephen King You followed The Passage. You faced The Twelve. Now enter The City of Mirrors for the final reckoning. As the bestselling epic...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE of the TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR by THE NEW YORK TIMES * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY * SLATE* THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER * Also named one of the BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by Vanity Fair, Time, NPR, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, Self, Vogue, The New Yorker, BBC, Vulture, and many...

With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again.