Dystopian Fiction Women

With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother. She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends.

The year is 2041, and it's a dangerous time to be a woman driving across the United States alone. Deadly storms and uncontrollable wildfires are pummeling the country while political tensions are rising. But Kelly's on the road anyway; she desperately needs to get back to her daughter, who she left seven years ago for a cause that she's no longer sure she believes in.

Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her - a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda. The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.

Women rule in Women's Country. Women live apart from men, sheltering the remains of civilization. They have cut themselves off with walls and by ordinance from marauding males. Waging war is all men are good for. Men are allowed to fight their barbaric battles among themselves, garrison against garrison. For the sake of his pride, each boy child ritualistically rejects his mother when he comes of age to be a warrior. But all the secrets of civilization are strictly the possession of women.

In 1967, four female scientists worked together to build the world’s first time machine. But just as they are about to debut their creation, one of them suffers a breakdown, putting the whole project - and future of time travel - in jeopardy. To protect their invention, one member is exiled from the team - erasing her contributions from history. Fifty years later, time travel is a big business. Twenty-something Ruby Rebello knows her beloved grandmother Granny Bee was one of the pioneers, though no one will tell her more.

A mysterious murder in a dystopian future leads a novice investigator to question what she's learned about the foundation of her population-controlled society. Decades after economic and environmental collapse destroys much of civilization in the United States, the Coast Road region isn't just surviving but thriving by some accounts, building something new on the ruins of what came before.

Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter grows more distant by the day. Marsh is convinced she’s missed her chance at everything—romance, professional fulfillment, and adventure—and is desperate for a do-over. She can’t believe her luck when she’s selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present lives.

Josephine Thomas has heard every conceivable theory about her mother's disappearance. That she was kidnapped. Murdered. That she took on a new identity to start a new family. That she was a witch. This is the most worrying charge because in a world where witches are real, peculiar behavior raises suspicions and a woman—especially a Black woman—can find herself on trial for witchcraft.

Justin Cord, the unincorporated man, is dead, betrayed, and his legacy of rebellion and individual freedom is in danger. General Black is the great hope of the military, but she cannot wage war from behind the president's desk. So there must be a new president, anointed by Black, to hold the desk job, and who better than the only woman resurrected from Justin Cord's past era, the scientist who created his resurrection device, the only born unincorporated woman?

It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. To young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival - until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgiveable crime. Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree....

A century after environmental and economic collapse, the people of the Coast Road have rebuilt their own sort of civilization. Enid of Haven is an investigator who, with her new partner, Teeg, is called on to mediate a dispute between households over an old building in a far-flung settlement at the edge of Coast Road territory. The investigators' decision seems straightforward - and then the body of a young woman turns up in the nearby marshland. Enid wants to find out who killed her, even as Teeg argues the murder isn't their problem.

Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and '90s San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it's officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird. While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and metatextual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility.

A little more than a century from now, our world has been utterly transformed. After years of slowly overtaking the continent, rising floodwaters have obliterated America’s great coastal cities and then its heartland, leaving nothing but an archipelago of mountaintop colonies surrounded by a deep expanse of open water. Stubbornly independent Myra and her precocious seven-year-old daughter, Pearl, fish from their small boat, the Bird, visiting dry land only to trade for supplies and information in the few remaining outposts of civilization.

Her life is a cross between Mad Max and the Hunger Games. All that matters is her right fist. It all goes back to the three rules of the pit. Sharpen your wits. Watch your back. And don’t fall in love. Must she kill her werewolf lover in a winner-takes-all battle to save her brother from a vampire brothel?

A fun family vacation turns into an apocalyptic nightmare when a couple and their young son find themselves trapped in the Irish countryside during an international crisis. With all contact outside the country gone, all electricity and all non-horse-powered vehicles useless, and desperate bands of outlaws roaming the Emerald Isle, the time has come for one soft American family to reach deep within for the reserve of brains and courage to survive.

After emerging from a coma, Faye Wills opens her eyes to complete darkness and the feeling of being trapped. Soon she discovers she is in no less than a nightmare world and awakens in the worst place imaginable. She is one of thousands of bodies in a makeshift mass grave that was once a football stadium. Left for dead. There are no signs of life and the only sound she hears is the buzzing of flies that follow the stench of death.

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.

January Day is a detective on the verge of self-destruction, ready to give up on ever finding her brother’s killers. But when she finally unearths a lead and tracks them down, she uncovers a truth that changes everything. Her reality is only one of innumerable others designed by architects. Not only this, but it is a failure and nominated for deletion. If she wants to save herself, her reality, and the lives of countless others in an ever-expanding multiverse, she must first believe she, her reality, and those who live in it deserve to be saved at all.

Centuries after the Cutoff, the secluded island of Sansara has perfected the roles of women. All girls attend the Institute where they are ranked, judged, and trained, and their paths are chosen for them. Elora’s destiny is to rise to the top. Rose wants to make her family proud. Odette dreams of happiness. But in a society that eats women alive, even dreams can turn out to be bitter fruit. All are trapped in a system that values their appearances, not who they are. Will they be crushed by the machine that oppresses them, or will they dare to break free and live on their own terms?

As Antonia Conti continues to make waves in London’s criminal underworld with her fearless investigative work, Rick Grainger, a star reporter for a rival newspaper, brings her a lead nobody else will touch—for good reason. The story reveals corruption at the highest level of government, and she quickly discovers that the people involved will do anything to bury it. And just when Antonia thinks she’s won her battle, Grainger disappears. Can she and her old friend DI Russell Chapman uncover the connection with her investigation and bring Grainger’s abductors to justice?