Dystopian Comedy

Miles, a lead creative at a midsize virtual reality company known for its "original experiences," has engineered a new product called The Ghost Lover. Wildly popular from the outset, the "game" is simple: a user's simulated life is almost identical to their reality, except they're haunted by the ghost of an ex-lover. However, when a shift in the company's strategic vision puts The Ghost Lover at the center of a platform-wide controversy, Miles becomes the target of user outrage, and starts receiving a series of anonymous death threats.

In this darkly comic and surreal collection from celebrated author Alissa Nutting, misfit women scramble for agency in a series of uncanny circumstances. Throughout these breathtakingly creative 17 stories spread across time, space, and differing planes of reality, we encounter a host of women and girls in a wide range of unusual jobs. A space cargo deliverywoman enlists the help of her cybersex partner to release her mother from cryogenic prison.

In a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, large enough for only one resident at a time, citizens waiting to enter the country fall under the rule of the power-hungry and tyrannical Phil, setting off a chain of injustice and mass hysteria. An Animal Farm for the 21st century, this is an incendiary political satire of unprecedented imagination, spiky humor, and cautionary appreciation for the hysteric in everyone.

Angus is a reformed ne’er-do-well looking forward to the birth of his first child when he’s murdered by a man who is in love with his pregnant wife, Gracie. Having never believed in God, heaven or hell, Angus finds himself in the afterlife—a place that provides more questions than answers. As a worldwide pandemic finally reaches the shores of Australia, the afterlife starts to get very crowded and Angus finds a way to reconnect with his wife, Gracie, and maybe even seek revenge on his murderer.

Everyone knows NOT to discuss how to raise children. The Men of the North have been living in exile for centuries, raising their boys without the influence of women. Now an experiment will bring girls and boys together in a new school with children and teachers from each side of the border. But how can two teachers work together when they don't agree on anything? Sparks fly in this clash of cultures when Archer Rex objects to Kya Rae's meditation "shit" that will surely turn his boys into wusses. He wants the kids to learn how to hunt and fight instead. Contains mature themes.

From the acclaimed PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize-winning author of A Naked Singularity, a shockingly hilarious novel that tackles, with equal aplomb, both America’s most popular sport and its criminal justice system. From Paterson, New Jersey, to Rikers Island to the streets of New York, Sergio de la Pava’s Lost Empress introduces listeners to a cast of characters unlike any other in modern fiction: dreamers and exiles, immigrants and night-shift workers, a lonely pastor and others on the fringes of society - each with their own impact on the fragile universe they navigate.

Dave and Melanie thought an asteroid was going to destroy the planet. For a full seven weeks, so did everyone else on Earth. But then, it missed. Now, along with the rest of humanity, Dave and Melanie have to deal with the choices they made during “The Countdown” and figure out if there are any parts of their old life worth hanging on to after “The Miss”.

It is 2085, and Truckee Wallace, a factory worker in Crunchtown 407 (formerly Little Rock, Arkansas, before the secessions), has no grand ambitions besides maybe, possibly, losing his virginity someday. But when Truckee is thrust unexpectedly into the spotlight, he is tapped by the president for a sensitive political mission: to deliver a talking goat across the continent. The fate of the world depends upon it. The problem is - Truckee’s not sure it’s worth it.

In the near future, Berlin’s real estate is being flipped in the name of “sustainability”, only to make the city even more unaffordable; artists are employed by corporations as consultants, and the weather is acting strange. When Anja and Louis are offered a rent-free home on an artificial mountain - yet another eco-friendly initiative run by a corporation - they seize the opportunity, but it isn’t long before the experimental house begins malfunctioning.

National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson returns to future Earth in a sharply wrought satire of art and truth in the midst of colonization.

When the Internet suddenly stops working, society reels from the loss of flowing data and streaming entertainment. Addicts wander the streets talking to themselves in 140 characters or forcing cats to perform tricks for their amusement, while the truly desperate pin their requests for casual encounters on public bulletin boards. The economy tumbles and the government passes the draconian NET Recovery Act.

Aleya’s world starts to unravel after a café customer leaves behind a collection of short stories. Surprised and disturbed to discover that it has been dedicated to her, Aleya delves into the strange book. A mad scientist seeks to steal his son’s dreams. A struggling writer, skilled only at destruction, finds himself courted by Hollywood. A woman seeks to escape her body and live inside her dreams. Citizens panic when a new city block manifests out of nowhere. The more Aleya reads, the deeper she sinks into the mysterious writer’s work.

When gumshoe detective, Daxon Steele, finds he’s ankle deep in more than a chewed up wad, he quickly uncovers a sinister plot that sets out to exploit and destroy not just the skink-pushers who hide in the shadows of the Flatpack District, not just the poor guys, gals and others shaking their hips at Shooters & Hooters Club, but the entire population of Bryunsville. Will Dax overcome his prejudice and accept Gaz, a former stripper-bot, as his partner?

James Kingzett delivers a chilling depiction of a future overshadowed by "The New Dark" - an era marked by the collapse of energy transmission grids and power systems. As society teeters on the brink of chaos, Kingzett warns of the dangers inherent in our current energy landscape, advocating for a shift towards renewable sources such as geothermal energy. Using satire, storytelling, and some digs at the government, Kingzett creates a compelling story that exposes the need to change our centralized grid system or risk facing The New Dark.

Elderly criminals on the rampage? A crumbling ancestral home on the remote East Anglian marshes. Decaying aristocrats. A sex-fueled crime-wave....

Imagine a world where everyone knows everything about everybody. Where what a person "feels" and "truly believes" is protected under the law, while what is rational, even provable is condemned as heresy. A world where to question ignorance and intolerance is to commit a Crime against Faith. Imagine it. Or just wait until After the Flood.

With these 13 transfixing, ingenious stories, Ben Marcus gives us timely dystopian visions of alienation in a modern world - cosmically and comically apt. Never has existential catastrophe been so much fun.

When the head of a hovercycle club inexplicably calls in news of his own murder, Detective Simon Grave and his team are drawn in to Crab Cove's hovercycle underworld, a world of loyalty, betrayal, greed, and-yes-irony. As if murder weren't enough, the bombing of an election debate stage has the mayor pressing for a quick resolution to both crimes. It becomes increasingly clear that the crimes are connected, and that the solution will require the unraveling of an elaborate criminal scheme-and more.

Big Time is set in a not-too-distant future Australia, where the eastern states have become the world's newest autocracy—a place where pop music is propaganda, science is the enemy, nationalism trumps all, and moral indecency is punishable by indefinite detention. The novel opens as Julian Ferryman, bass player for the Acceptables, returns to Melbourne after a year overseas. He reconnects with his band as they prepare to record and tour their second album, and is given his first taste of a new designer drug, F, a powerful synthetic hallucinogen that gives users a glimpse of their own future.

In the shifting sands of the desert, near an unnamed metropolis, there is an institute where various fellows come to undertake projects of great significance. But when our sort-of hero, Percy Frobisher, arrives, surrounded by the simulated environment of the glass-enclosed dome of the Institute, his mind goes completely blank. When he spills something on his uniform - a major faux pas - he learns about a mysterious shop where you can take something, utter the command “same same,” and receive a replica even better than the original.