Political Thrillers Science Fiction

In an alternate 2009, the United States has been a second-rate power for a quarter of a century, ever since Argentina’s victory in the Falkland’s War thanks to their development of “psychopigments.” Created as weapons, these colorful chemicals can produce almost any human emotion upon contact, and they have been embraced in the US as both pharmaceutical cure-alls and popular recreational drugs. Black market traders illegally sell everything from Blackberry Purple (which causes terror) to Sunshine Yellow (which delivers happiness).

The United States has just launched the most powerful weapon in history - a missilelaunching satellite called "Thor's Hammer" that can strike anywhere on the planet in seconds. The world's other major superpowers, Russia and China, are rocked by America's development, and they scramble to respond by gaining control of the seas.

Nuclear attacks wipe out city centers. Russian warships infest the Atlantic. Chinese tanks roll out of Baltimore's ports with their sights set on Mount Weather—the bunker protecting the acting US President and what's left of the tattered military command. Lieutenant Commander Joey Washington has information about the attack that might turn the tide of battle, but can she deliver it to the underground stronghold before the tanks come crashing in?

They call it Hell Day - a world war that lasted less than 24 hours. Nations unleashed weapons that destroyed more than a century’s worth of technology. Electrical grids cannot generate power. Communications and computers cannot run. And the remnants of the US government cannot be depended upon. Those who survived must live as their ancestors did, off a land ruled by the whims of nature. Onetime congressional representative Victoria Emerson has become the new leader of the small town of Ortho, West Virginia.

On a Friday afternoon before Labor Day, Americans are getting ready for the holiday weekend, completely unaware of a long-planned terrorist plot about to be launched against the country. Kyle Tait is settling in for his flight home to Montana when a single nuclear bomb is detonated 300 miles above the heart of America.

Jerry Jenkins is famed for having co-authored the #1 New York Times best-selling Left Behind series with Tim LaHaye. In his awe-inspiring series of prequels to Left Behind, Jenkins reveals the shocking revelations that lead our world to the rapture. In the dark years following World War III—after the rise of an oppressive new world government that strictly imposes a worldwide ban on the practice of religion—the underground Christian network slowly begins to gain momentum.

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States is an exciting piece of "speculative fiction." The novel posits that there was a nuclear attack against the US on March 21, 2020 by North Korea, and that a national bipartisan commission was created to investigate what and how it happened. It's pretty scary stuff.

DANS UN MONDE FRAGILISÉ PAR LES PANDÉMIES, ON AVAIT D'ABORD SACRIFIÉ LES VIEUX. Écrit en 2015, avant la pandémie du coronavirus, Les vieux ne parlent plus est une dystopie où l'État prend petit à petit en main la fin de vie des personnes âgées. La promesse ? Une vie digne et paisible dans un cadre idyllique. Mais la réalité est tout autre... puisque l'État se débarrasse discrètement des plus fragiles. Charismatique et talentueux, Alexandre Geoffroy est un avocat à qui tout réussit : les femmes, les voitures, les relations.

What Paige Campbell saw when she opened a door into 70 years from now scared the hell out of her. She and her Tangent colleagues brought their terrible discovery to the President and were met with a hail of automatic gunfire after leaving the White House. Only Paige survived.

Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines in 2016. In his first 18 months in office, 12,000 people were murdered on the streets, gunned down by police officers and vigilante citizens - all with his encouragement. Duterte is a serial womanizer and a self-confessed killer, who has called both Barack Obama and Pope Francis "sons of whores." He is on record as saying he does not "give a shit" about human rights. Yet he is beloved of the 16.6 million Filipinos who voted for him, seen as vulgar but honest, a breath of fresh air, and an iconoclastic, anti-imperialist rebel.

The year is 2052. Climate change has had a predictably devastating effect: Venice submerged, cyclones in Oklahoma, megafires in South America. Yet it could be much worse. Two decades earlier, the global protest movement known as the Upheavals helped break the planet’s fossil fuel dependency, and the subsequent Nuremberg-like Toronto Trials convicted the most powerful oil executives and lobbyists for crimes against the environment. Not all of them. A few executives escaped arrest and went into hiding, including pipeline mastermind Robert Cave.

Published in 1948, this cautionary tale follows a lone protagonist who struggles under the rule of a repressive totalitarian government. Set in a future version of England, called Airstrip One, the novel is famous for its imagined language that conjures a cruelly cynical authoritarian regime. One of the most popular novels in the English language, it is part political thriller and part science fiction, and it established the word Orwellian to describe official deception, unwarranted surveillance, and revisionist history by the state.

Dark State ups the ante on the already volatile situations laid out in the sleek techno-thriller Empire Games, the start to Stross' new story-line and a perfect entry point for new listeners, in The Merchant Princes series . In the near-future, the collision of two nuclear superpowers across timelines, one in the midst of a technological revolution and the other a hyper-police state, is imminent. In Commissioner Miriam Burgeson's timeline, her top level agents run a high risk extraction of a major political player.

Lieutenant James Shelley and his squad of US Army soldiers were on a quest for justice when they carried out the unauthorized mission known as First Light. They returned home to America to face a court-martial, determined to expose the corruption in the chain of command that compelled their actions. But in a country still reeling from the nuclear terrorism of Coma Day, the courtroom is just one battlefield of many.

An incredible historical truth stretching from Hitler’s infamous bunker in Berlin to the White House in Washington threatens the very heart and soul of American democracy.

The future of democracy is about to implode. After the last controversial global election, the global infomocracy that has ensured 30 years of world peace is fraying at the edges. As the new Supermajority government struggles to establish its legitimacy, agents of information across the globe strive to keep the peace and maintain the flows of data that feed the new world order.

With social unrest sweeping the country, Europe on the brink of war, and the US economy under siege by foreign nations, a new threat emerges. The nation is caught in the crosshairs of a power struggle between wealthy oligarchs and the political leaders who claim to have the country's best interests at heart.

As the nation slowly crumbles around her, Sierra Forester returns home for a wedding - and finds herself in the center of an FBI investigation. She discovers her university friends are not who she thought they were…and they’ve left her in a perilous predicament. A quiet, reclusive stranger has moved to the tiny Southeast Alaskan island she calls home. Can she trust him? Or anyone? Meanwhile, Russia and China have launched hybrid warfare against the United States. A sleepy administration is slow to respond. Will they wake up in time to save the country?

Newmerica was forged out of a violent coup that superimposed a socialist state over what had been the United States of America. For five years into their rule, the progressives have had their way in dismantling every aspect of American life. Out of the shadows, a new American president has been sworn in, threatening their grip on the nation. The Newmericans are unwilling to turn over the reins of power setting the stage for a conflict unlike any other.

When the rule of law fails, dishonest politicians get even dirtier. Shane and Julianna can’t compete with the debased dictators of Jackson County unless they are willing to bend a few rules of their own. Shane Black escaped the city by the skin of his teeth. But his well-stocked mountain retreat is now the target of a local despot who gained his power through bribes, payoffs, and shady politics. Mayor Hayes had few scruples before the collapse. Now that he’s the only law around, he’s down-right ornery. Road trips are always a bad idea in the apocalypse.