Dystopian Fiction Women

Cassie West licenses crimes for V.I.C.E, spending long hours convincing grieving families to allow her to sell their tragedies to the highest bidder. Life is hard and the cost of living high, but she and her husband Harris have never been happier. After years of trying, Cassie is finally pregnant. But leaving work late one evening, Cassie starts to worry. Harris isn't responding to texts or calls. Even worse, dozens of emergency drones seem to be heading in the same direction as she is: straight to their home.

A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: Garbage is currency. In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a “plucker", pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club's violent owner rules as unofficial mayor.

A thousand years into the future, a Black elite class reigns while the underclass toils at their feet. With her society’s future hanging in the balance, young Avi Jore enters into an arranged marriage. But the ceremony turns violent when the servants rebel and kill Avi’s father. In the aftermath of General Jore’s death, Avi and her sister Jade vie for power in a vicious contest. As the rightful heir, Avi has no choice but to defend what’s hers—at any cost. With her loyalties tested and her enemies closing in, Avi must rely on her sister Saige, who searches for allies outside the Union’s walls.

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.

Celeste Morton has eagerly awaited her passage to adulthood. Like every girl, she was born with a set of childhood markings - the freckles, moles, and birthmarks on her body that foretell her future and that of those around her - and with puberty will come a new set of predictions that will solidify her fate. The possibilities are tantalizing enough to outweigh her worry that the future she dreams of won’t be the one she’s fated to experience.

Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in an abandoned property in the middle of a desert. The Natural Way of Things is a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control and of what it means to hunt and be hunted. But most of all, it is the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.

The year is 2037, and on the tiny island of Isola, seven people have been selected to compete in a 48-hour test for a top-secret intelligence position with the totalitarian Union of Friendship. One of them is Anna Francis, a workaholic bureaucrat with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees and a secret that haunts her. Her assignment: to stage her own death and then to observe, from her hiding place inside the walls of the house, how the six other candidates react to the news that a murderer is among them.

In Belle and Joni's world, there are two options for girls: One, follow the rules of the Doctrine like Belle: apply your Mask, work hard to be crowned at the Ceremony, be a Pretty. Or two, fight the rules like Joni: leave your face bare, work hard to escape to the Education, be an Objectionable.

Author Clarissa Katsef is struggling to write her next book. She’s just snagged a brand new artist residency in an ultra-modern apartment, with a view of all of Paris, a dream for any novelist in search of tranquility. But since moving in, she has had the feeling of being watched. Is there reason to be paranoid? Or is her distraction and discomfort the result of her husband’s recent shocking betrayal? Or is that her beloved Paris lies altered outside her windows? A city that will never be quite the same, a city with a scar at its center?

Charlie Tannehill and her twin sister, Maggie, are just eight years old when an unfortunate scientific discovery upends their world—and the world order. The revelation? Extinction, encoded in every creature’s DNA. The expiration date for humans? Only four generations away. A decade later, unsure of what tomorrow holds, Charlie and Maggie enroll as counselors in a government-run human-husbandry program.

Wolfe is the bunker's resident pharmacist. While the inhabitants wait for the outside world to heal, she doles out ibuprofen, sanitary towels and Xanax—all under the watchful eye of the increasingly erratic and paranoid leader. But when the leader starts to ask things of Wolfe, favours she can hardly say no to, her world is thrown off its axis once again. Forming an unlikely alliance with the young Doctor Stirling, her troubled assistant Levitt and Canavan, Wolfe has to navigate the powder keg of life underground, knowing her every move is being watched.

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.

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?

Rylee Williams is looking forward to a fun-filled gap year before she heads East for college. An extended trip to Europe. Volunteering for her congregations Home Mission. Maybe even mentoring for her old high schools robotics team. Pregnancy was the last thing that she expected. Detained under the Unborn Child Protection Act and forced into the Wisconsin Individual Family Education program with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Rylee struggles to navigate in a world that has reduced her to a walking womb. Can this strong-willed mother-to-be reclaim her life . . . and her future?

Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in an abandoned property in the middle of a desert. The Natural Way of Things is a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, and of what it means to hunt and be hunted. But most of all, it is the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.

Although she’s legally an adult, 18-year-old Meryn Flint must live at home until her stepfather, Ray, finds her a husband. That’s the law. But when Ray kills her mother and Meryn must flee for her own safety, she quickly discovers there’s no safe place in the CSA for a woman on the run. Unless she’s willing to marry her former boyfriend—a man who’s already demonstrated his capacity for violence—she’ll be forced to live on the street. And that’s a dangerous option for a woman alone.

The constant threat of terrorism has left London under round-the-clock surveillance and in the tightening grip of privatised security firms. Journalist Antonia Conti suspects one such organisation—GRM—not only of being behind several women’s disappearances, but of financing the widespread violence it claims to fight. When a gang of hitmen use rampant state surveillance to track Antonia down, she narrowly escapes with her life. But then one of them turns up dead—covered in her DNA—and Antonia finds herself the prime suspect in his murder.

Melbourne, February 2100. Emma Cartwright has 28 days left to find work, otherwise she must report to the Productive Citizens Bureau and accept any vacancy, regardless of location, pay, or conditions. At 70, Emma could opt for voluntary euthanasia, but she has her student son Jack to support. After a chance meeting with the eccentric Cal Ritchie, founder of the clandestine group Citizens’ Voice and supporter of those fleeing repressive laws to live in bush camps, Emma is determined to escape her life of compliance.

In a country bent on controlling women’s bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom, a resistance has formed. An armed group of women known as the Hamiyat have made a name for themselves protecting those too weak to fight back. And now they are going on the offensive. Three women among its ranks must make the hardest choices of their lives.

When a series of disappearances throughout the city is linked to a prevalent line of implants called Eloise IV, forensic psychologist Kat Holinger is brought onboard to find the connection. Using a mysterious device called Eidetica to burrow into the archived memories of each implant’s abducted user, Kat and its creator Quentin Rhodes are launched into the peculiarities of the human mind.