Dystopian Literary Fiction

In this kaleidoscopic voyage through the past, present, and future of the United States, a young girl uncovers a secret society, a middle-aged man searches for his lost first love, a group of teens invent a role-playing game, protests threaten to topple the government, and an eccentric lawyer and his young Vietnamese protégée re-open a dormant case.

Cole Pateras is the fastidious and calculating firstborn son in the most powerful family left on a burned-out planet. When there is haunting news of someone from his past, Cole begins to question the character he plays and his role in the empire that reigns over the remnants of humanity.

London 2030. When a postman knocks on his door, the news he delivers will cause 70-year-old Anthony Pablo Rubens to reflect on all the many sadnesses and joys of the past, while he begins to prepare for the surprises of the future. The past still revolves around the moment in the summer of 1984 when young Anthony first realized he had fallen in love.

Avi Hirsch has always known his daughter was different. But when others with incredible, otherworldly gifts reveal themselves to the world, Avi realizes that her oddness is something more - that she is something more. With this, he has a terrifying revelation: Emmeline is now entering a society where her unique abilities unfairly mark her as a potential threat. And even though he is her father, Avi cannot keep her safe forever.

Welcome to The Egg, an off-campus geodesic dome where David Fuffman and his crew of alienated Princeton students train for what might be the end of days: America is in a perpetual state of war, climate disasters create a global state of emergency, and scientists believe time itself may be collapsing. Funded by the charismatic Mathias Blue and fueled by performance enhancers and psychedelic drugs, a student revolution incubates at The Egg, inspired by the superheroes that dominate American culture. The arrival of Haley Roth - an impassioned heroine with a dark secret - propels David and Mathias to expand their movement across college campuses nationwide.

Over the course of a single night in 2052, a homeless man named Cuthbert Handley sets out on an astonishing quest: to release the animals of the London Zoo. When he was a young boy, Cuthbert's grandmother had told him he inherited a magical ability to communicate with the animal world - a gift she called the Wonderments. Ever since his older brother's death in childhood, Cuthbert has heard voices.

In the aftermath of a devastating plague, a fearless young heroine embarks on a dangerous and surprising journey to save her world in this brilliantly inventive thriller.

Raised in a privileged community of wealthy survivalists on an idyllic, self-sustaining Oregon ranch, Marlo has always been insulated. The outside world, which the ranchers call “the Disaster”, is a casualty of ravaging climate change, a troubled landscape on the brink of catastrophe. For as long as Marlo can remember, the unknown that lies beyond the borders of her utopia has been a curious obsession. But just as she plans her escape into the chaos of the real world, a charismatic new resident gives her a compelling reason to stay.

Jeff is dying. Haunted by memories and grappling with the shame of his desires, he runs away to remote Scotland with a piece of experimental tech that allows him to enter the mind of someone in the past. Instructed to use it only three times, Jeff - self-indulgent, isolated and deteriorating - ignores this advice.

American War meets Into the Wild in Brian Hart’s epic saga of one man’s struggle to survive a hostile world - tracing his path from a self-destructive, skateboarding youth in the '90s to the near future as he journeys across a desolate, militia-controlled American West to find his missing family.

All Jamie Allenby ever wanted was space. Even though she wasn't forced to emigrate from Earth, she willingly left the overpopulated, claustrophobic planet. And when a long relationship devolved into silence and suffocating sadness, she found work on a frontier world on the edges of civilization. Then the virus hit. Now Jamie finds herself dreadfully alone, with all that's left of the dead. Until a garbled message from Earth gives her hope that someone from her past might still be alive.

One afternoon, not long after Kelly Thorndike has moved back to his hometown of Baltimore, an African American man he doesn't recognize calls out to him. To Kelly's shock, the man identifies himself as Martin, who was one of Kelly's closest friends in high school - and, before his disappearance nearly 20 years before, skinny, white, and Jewish. Martin then tells an astonishing story: he's had a plastic surgeon perform 'racial reassignment surgery.'

Inez wanders a post-pandemic world, strangely immune to disease, making her living by volunteering as a test subject. She is hired to provide genetic material to a grief-stricken, affluent mother, who lost all four of her daughters within four short weeks. This experimental genetic work is policed by a hazy network of governmental ethics committees, and threatened by the Knights of Life, religious zealots who raze the rural farms where much of this experimentation is done.

I am Aislyn. These are the sad facts of my world. Any child born in the Republic who is unscheduled, imperfect, or inconvenient is labeled an Unnecessary. Their only hope is to be rescued by a Protector, one of 26 girls trained to infiltrate the Republic and get them safely back to the Territory. These girls are chosen because they are strong, smart, and heroic. They train for years in medicine, technology, physical agility, and espionage. They never choose girls like me. Except...they did.

In a future America that feels increasingly familiar, you are your credit score. Extreme wealth inequality has created a class of have-nothings: Subprimes. Their bad credit ratings make them unemployable. Jobless and without assets, they've walked out on mortgages, been foreclosed upon, or can no longer afford fixed addresses. Fugitives who must keep moving to avoid arrest, they wander the globally warmed American wasteland.

In Oceania, one of three totalitarian states that rule the world, Big Brother is watching. The Thought Police are listening. Reality is defined by the Party. And in London, at the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith’s job is to rewrite history. His dream, however, is to rebel. Winston is beginning to think for himself. In defiance of the State, he falls into a criminal love affair with his coworker Julia. But it isn’t until he joins the Brotherhood, an underground network of revolutionaries, that Winston discovers how high the cost of freedom may be.

Blending the piercing humor of Alexandra Kleeman and the jagged satire of Black Mirror, an audacious, eerily prescient debut novel that chronicles the rise and fall of a massive high-rise housing complex, and the lives it affected before - and after - its demise. Standing nearly 500 stories tall, Los Verticalés once bustled with life and excitement. Now this marvel of modern architecture and nontraditional urban planning has collapsed into a pile of rubble known as the Heap.

This novel centers on the "It's me" telephone scam - often targeting the elderly - that has escalated in Japan in recent years. Typically, the caller identifies himself only by saying, "Hey, it's me", and goes on to claim in great distress that he's been in an accident or lost some money with which he was entrusted at work, etc., and needs funds wired to his account right away. ME's narrator is a nondescript young Tokyoite named Hitoshi Nagano.

Three teenagers are traveling northeast in a navy blue Ford pickup. Turi fled his abusive family at the border to see the beautiful New England landscape he’s always dreamed about. Arnulfo is undocumented and wants only to find someplace safe and quiet. Molly seeks a new life far away from her nowhere Missouri town. Turi and Arnulfo are best friends. Molly and Turi are falling in love. But for all their innocence, violence follows the trio at every turn.

Iris Prince is starting over. After years of drifting apart, she and her husband are going through a surprisingly drama-free divorce. She’s moved to a new house in a new neighborhood, and has plans for gardening, coffee clubs, and spending more time with her nine-year-old daughter Melanie. It feels like her life is finally exactly what she wants it to be. Then, one beautiful morning, she looks outside her kitchen window—and sees that a wall has appeared in her front yard overnight. Where did it come from? What does it mean? And why does it seem to keep growing?