Young Adult Dystopian Fiction

Henry Long doesn't have a heart. Since the Tragedies, he doesn't have much: just an annoying low-watt buzz from his makeshift transplant, skinny arms, and a dusty library attic from which he charts the slow progress of reconstruction in the Green Zone, the last habitable neighborhood of his troubled coastal city. While his parents work on making the Green Zone independent from a federal government that appears to have abandoned them, Henry himself feels increasingly left on his own.

In 2364, eighteen-year-old Liv Newman dreams of a future beyond her lower-class life in the Metro. As a Proxy, she uses the neurochip in her brain to sell memories to wealthy clients. Maybe a few illegally, but money equals freedom. So when a customer offers her a ludicrous sum to go on an assignment in no-man’s-land, Liv accepts. Now she just has to survive.

There are old wounds in the forgotten places of the world, and some are soaked in blood. Jacob and his allies flee into the Deadlands after the fall of Ancora. Charles, the enigmatic smith, hopes to find answers in the desert city of Bollwerk that could prevent a war. Their enemies are many, and here Jacob will learn the cost of life in the Deadlands.

London has been destroyed in a blitz of bombs and disease. The only ones who have survived are children, among them Gwen Darling and her siblings, Joanna and Mikey. They spend their nights scavenging and their days avoiding the ruthless Marauders - the German army led by Captain Hanz Otto Oswald Kretschmer.

The year is 2172. Climate change and nuclear disasters have rendered much of earth unlivable. Only the lucky ones have escaped to space colonies in the sky. In a war-torn Nigeria, battles are fought using flying, deadly mechs, and soldiers are outfitted with bionic limbs and artificial organs meant to protect them from the harsh, radiation-heavy climate. Across the nation, as the years-long civil war wages on, survival becomes the only way of life. Two sisters, Onyii and Ify, dream of more.

At the end of the twenty-first century, climate change and famine almost ended humanity—until the discovery of the Klujns, a barbaric, humanoid species with strangely colored eyes and even stranger abilities. Their crystal claws and bones fertilize barren soil, and their tender meat is a super-protein. Klujns are both humans’ saviors and natural-born enemies, meant to be hunted and used.

The government has accelerated their super soldier program. Their new Virtual Reality system is the perfect tool to train soldiers for the coming war. There is a shortage of enlisted men and women that possess the "talent". Everyone from athletes to professional gamers must be sorted and vetted. Humanity is on the line. Lucius is one of those lucky few selected to participate in Codename: Freedom, a new game that promises to push Virtual Reality to the ultimate level.

After barely escaping the Mission alive, Gene and Sissy face an impossible task: staying alive long enough to stop an entire world bent on their destruction. Bound on a train heading into the unknown with the surviving Mission girls, Gene, Sissy, David, and Epap must stick together and use everything they have to protect each other and their only hope: the cure that will turn the bloodthirsty creatures around them into humans again.

In a near-future where a virtual currency of digital content fuels a fame-hungry society, a brand-new experiment that combines social media and reality TV has been greenlit. Voted on, and contestants are sent to a maximum-security reform camp on an island where they can have no contact with the outside world. To lose means prison. But to win is to be free. The most popular young offender with the most upvotes by the end is given both a second chance in society and a cash prize.

As a slave in the war-weary kingdom of Faelen, 17-year-old Nym isn’t merely devoid of rights, her Elemental kind are only born male and always killed at birth - meaning, she shouldn’t even exist. Standing on the auction block beneath smoke-drenched mountains, Nym faces her 15th sell. But when her hood is removed and her storm-summoning killing curse revealed, Nym is snatched up by a court advisor and given a choice: be trained as the weapon Faelen needs to win the war or be killed.

Two years after a global pandemic, 20 survivors (most of them children) have relocated from their Coastal Maine island full of sad memories to a mansion on a small, neighboring island where they have school and farm chores. When Gabe and his dog, Mud, find Relle Douglas alone in the woods on the mainland, they take the strange new girl across the channel to live with them.

Scyth and the followers of the Sleeping Gods have lost the Holy War. The new gods, who call themselves the True Gods, celebrate, unaware that the Sleepers have one more temple left. But how long until they find out? After all, Scyth's enemy Mogwai, once the strongest player on the planet, knows about Kharinza. The Supreme Legate of the Destroying Plague thirsts for vengeance and is eager to regain his former positions, becoming stronger every day, while Scyth, deprived of his invulnerability, has lost his former advantages.

What are you supposed to do when the whole world joins forces against you? Give up, find some hole to duck into, and beg for your life to be spared? But even despite how obvious the answer to that question might be, many an adult had been dashed on the rocks 12-year-old Tailyn Vlashich was supposed to climb. Ahead of him lay a secret laboratory belonging to the ancients; behind was a horde headed by his sworn enemy. But through it all, Tailyn had those who loved him, those who believed in him, and that support was enough to carry him to the ends of the Earth.

The Yellowstone super-volcano nearly wiped out the human race. Now, almost a year after the eruption, the survivors seem determined to finish the job. Communities wage war on each other, gangs of cannibals roam the countryside, and what little government survived the eruption has collapsed completely. The ham radio has gone silent. Sickness, cold, and starvation are the survivors' constant companions. When it becomes apparent that their home is no longer safe and adults are not facing the stark realities, Alex and Darla must create a community that can survive the ongoing disaster....

With death only a heartbeat away, Gene and the remaining humans must find a way to survive long enough to escape the hungry predators chasing them through the night. But they’re not the only things following Gene. He’s haunted by Ashley June who he left behind, and his burgeoning feelings for Sissy, the human girl at his side. Their escape takes them to a refuge of humans living high in the mountains. Gene and his friends think they’re finally safe, but not everything here is as it seems. And before long, Gene must ask himself if the new world they’ve entered is just as evil as the one they left behind.

Striking out into the wasteland with nothing but her baby sister, a handful of supplies, and a rumor to guide her, sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone survives only to be captured by the people of Sylum, a dystopian society where women rule the men who drastically outnumber them, and a kiss is a crime. In order to see her sister again, Gaia must submit to their strict social code, but how can she deny her sense of justice, her curiosity, and everything in her heart that makes her whole?

There is no such thing as happily ever after. Everything Charlotte Winston thought she knew has been thrown out the window. From the moment she opens her eyes, the world she remembered ceases to exist, and in its place is a post-apocalyptic realm filled with unimaginable dangers. And one very smoking hot guy who has an uncanny ability to make her blood sing, then boil in a blink of an eye.

It’s 2788 and only the "handicapped" live on Earth. Eighteen-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can't travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She's an ape, a throwback, but this is one ape girl who won't give in.

Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It enthralled and devastated listeners with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event - an asteroid hitting the moon, setting off a tailspin of horrific climate changes. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of 17-year-old Puerto Rican Alex Morales.

With Everland and Umberland both destroyed, the survivors have taken refuge in a small village tucked within the shadows of the Bloodred Queen's castle. Doc has found an actual cure for the Horologia virus, while Gwen, Pete, and Alyssa begin plotting the assassination of the queen with the help of Gail, an excellent huntress. But killing the queen won't be enough. The world has been destroyed and its needs a ruler to set things right again. A ruler who is good, kind, and fair. Someone like the former king of Germany. But he's dead...or is he?