Dystopian Literary Fiction

Quincy is the most popular celebrity in the world. It’s the near future and times have changed. She decides to disappear from the limelight and ends up residing in a community for the cast offs of society, haphazardly run by a rogue priest and his psychiatrist lover. Almost immediately Quincy takes charge, and the residents aren’t happy, neither are their benefactors. But the priest is relieved and soon he and his lover depart, leaving Quincy to take over. It’s a strange time and even stranger place, and new people arrive, people Quincy has never thought about much less encountered in...

It’s the hottest winter on record, but Raymond’s demanding, bedridden mother doesn’t mind. She likes it warm. Lately, however, control over the thermostat has become a nasty struggle. And each morning that she’s still alive is a suffocating new challenge for Raymond. How high can the mercury climb before he boils over?

Lucien moves to Los Angeles to be with his grandmother as she undergoes an experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s using the new drug, Memoroxin. An emerging photographer, he’s also running from the sudden death of his mother, a well-known artist whose legacy haunts him. Sophie has just landed the lead in the upcoming performance of La Sylphide with the Los Angeles Ballet Company. She still waitresses at the Chateau Marmont during her off-hours, witnessing the recreational use of Memoroxin - or Mem - among the Hollywood elite.

רפובליקת גלעד מציעה לשֶלְפְרֶד אופציה אחת בלבד: ללדת ילדים. אם לא תעשה זאת, היא צפויה, כמו כל מתנגדי המשטר, להיתלות על החומה או להישלח אל אחת המושבות ולמות שם מוות אטי ממחלת קרינה. אבל גם תנאי חיים דכאניים אינם יכולים למחוק את התשוקה המינית - לא שלה עצמה ולא של שני הגברים שעתידהּ תלוי בהם. סיפורה של שפחה, חזון מבריק של אמריקה במאה ה-21, כתוב באירוניה מזעזעת ונותן ביטוי מלא לכישרונה האדיר של מרגרט אטווד, לשנינותה ולכושר ההבחנה החודר שלה. זהו תרגיל מופלא במדע בדיוני כמו גם סיפור מוסר כן במיוחד.

Four children live on an island that serves as the repository for all the world’s garbage. Trash arrives, the children sort it, and then they feed it to a herd of insatiable pigs: a perfect system. But when a barrel washes ashore with a boy inside, the children must decide whether he is more of the world’s detritus, meant to be fed to the pigs, or whether he is one of them.

As the human population continues to decline, most people travel south to maintain a semblance of the life they know. Entire cities are abandoned. But following a senseless act of violence, one man travels north, toward forgotten lands. Is it possible for a loving husband and father, surrounded by reminders of mankind's impending extinction, to reclaim what he lost?

From the acclaimed PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize-winning author of A Naked Singularity, a shockingly hilarious novel that tackles, with equal aplomb, both America’s most popular sport and its criminal justice system. From Paterson, New Jersey, to Rikers Island to the streets of New York, Sergio de la Pava’s Lost Empress introduces listeners to a cast of characters unlike any other in modern fiction: dreamers and exiles, immigrants and night-shift workers, a lonely pastor and others on the fringes of society - each with their own impact on the fragile universe they navigate.

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.

After the Last War destroyed most of the world, survivors form a new society in four self-sustaining cities in the Mojave Desert. Everything is carefully planned and controlled: the seasons, the weather - and the residents. To prevent mankind from destroying each other again, its citizens undergo a memory wipe every four years in a process called tabula rasa, a blank slate, to remove learned prejudices. With each new cycle, they begin again with new names, jobs, homes, and lives. No memories. No attachments. No wars.

Lea Kirino is a “Lifer”, which means that a roll of the genetic dice has given her the potential to live forever - if she does everything right. And Lea is an overachiever. She’s a successful trader on the New York exchange - where instead of stocks, human organs are now bought and sold - she has a beautiful apartment, and a fiancé who rivals her in genetic perfection. And with the right balance of HealthTech™, rigorous juicing, and low-impact exercise, she might never die. But Lea’s perfect life is turned upside down when she spots her estranged father on a crowded sidewalk.

The Resistance still fights the invaders, but they are nothing more than an annoyance to the Illyri, an alien race of superior technology and military strength. When caught, the young rebels are conscripted. Part soldiers, part hostages, they join the Brigades, sent to fight at the edges of the growing Illyri Empire.

After months of disturbing behavior, Gardner Quinn has vanished. Her older sister Fredericka is desperate to find her, but Fred is also pregnant - miraculously so, in a near-future America struggling with infertility. So she entrusts the job to their brother, Carter. Carter, young but jaded, is in need of an assignment. Just home from war, his search for his sister is a welcome distraction from mysterious physical symptoms he can’t ignore...and his slightly-more-than recreational drinking. Carter’s efforts to find Gardner lead him into a dangerous underground.

As a child, Linda Russell was left to raise herself in a 20-acre walled-off property in rural Washington. The woods were her home, and for 12 years she lived oblivious to a stark and terrible truth: Her mother had birthed her only to replace another daughter who died in a tragic accident years before. Then one day Linda witnesses something she wasn’t meant to see.

“What does ‘allegiance’ mean?” the New Teacher asked, hand over her heart. In this classic and chilling tale about an elementary school classroom in post-war occupied America, James Clavell brings to light the vulnerability of children and the power educators have to shape and change young minds. Originally written in the Cold War era, Clavell’s extraordinary and enduringly relevant allegory on the impressionability of the human mind is still read in schools around the globe today, and is a call to every person to keep questioning and keep learning.

Theo Miller knows the value of human life - to the very last penny. Working in the Criminal Audit Office, he assesses each crime that crosses his desk and makes sure the correct debt to society is paid in full. But when his ex-lover is killed, it's different. This is one death he can't let become merely an entry on a balance sheet.

Ambre Caldero vit dans un mobil-home au milieu des bois. Sa mère n'est jamais là, préférant fuir. Son beau-père ne s'intéresse qu'au bowling. Mais elle a la lecture. Chaque page est une petite victoire sur la réalité, chaque roman, une nouvelle vie qui lui redonne de l'espoir. Lorsque Ambre comprend qu'elle est la seule à s'intéresser aux étranges disparitions qui frappent Carson Mills, son meilleur allié devient son pire ennemi.

Sam fa la guardia carceraria. Non per scelta ma quasi per caso, dopo aver fallito l’addestramento militare. Vive giornate tutte uguali, con una vena violenta che cerca di tenere sotto controllo e una depressione non diagnosticata. Ma un’occasione inaspettata lo conduce a Clearwell, una struttura di quarantena nel nord degli Stati Uniti. È stata costruita di recente, per ospitare gli individui di cui tutti parlano di continuo alla radio, in tv, sui social: i cosiddetti profeti.

Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you children. A blue ticket grants you freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And, once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back. But what if the life you're given is the wrong one? Blue Ticket is a devastating enquiry into free will and the fraught space of motherhood.

In Neuamerika leben die Menschen nach dem Gesetz der Natur. Auch Gaia Marinos muss sich diesen Regeln beugen. Versteckt in den Wäldern lebt sie das Leben einer Aussätzigen und hat den anderen doch eines voraus: In einer Welt ohne schriftliche Aufzeichnungen kann sie lesen. Als sie in Gefangenschaft gerät, rettet ihr diese Fähigkeit das Leben. Gaia macht es sich zur Aufgabe, die letzten Bücher der Erde zu finden, doch als diese Mission zu scheitern droht, muss sie sich entscheiden.

America, 2049: Summer temperatures are intolerably high, the fossil fuel industry has shut down, and humans are implanted with a ‘Flick’ at birth, which allows them to remain perpetually online. The top echelons of society live in Floating Cities off the coast, while people on the mainland struggle to survive. For Rose, working as a hostess in the city’s elite club feels like her best hope for a better future.