Best Dystopian Books

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A National Book Award FinalistA PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end. Twenty...
Featured in 17 articles
Twelve-year-old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind this fragile community....
Featured in 16 articles
Before The Testaments, there was The Handmaids Tale: an instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction (New York Times).The Handmaids Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was...
Featured in 16 articles
WINNING MEANS FAME AND FORTUNE.LOSING MEANS CERTAIN DEATH.THE HUNGER GAMES HAVE BEGUN. . . .In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and once girl between ...
Featured in 15 articles
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Rainn WilsonThe searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive.A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, ...
Featured in 14 articles
In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to sal...
Featured in 13 articles
Librarian note: This is a later printing of ISBN 0-307-27543-4 with a slightly different cover than the one used on the first printing. As Goodreads does not allow for more that one record per ISBN a record for the first printing was added without the ISBN.Told with P. D. James’s trademark suspense, insightful characterization, and riveting storyte...
Featured in 13 articles
Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of ...
Featured in 12 articles
In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that...
Featured in 10 articles
Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of an...
Featured in 10 articles
Legend by Marie Lu
Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Divergent by Veronica Roth
Unwind by Neal Shusterman
The Maze Runner by James Dashner
World War Z by Max Brooks
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Severance by Ling Ma
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
The Selection by Kiera Cass
The Passage by Justin Cronin
The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau
Wool by Hugh Howey
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. le Guin
The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Year One by Nora Roberts
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
One Second After by William R. Forstchen
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
Scythe by Neal Shusterman
The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. le Guin
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
This Perfect Day by Ira Levin
Secondborn by Amy A. Bartol
Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix
On The Beach by Nevil Shute
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
Borne by Jeff Vandermeer
It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
The Postman by David Brin
The List by Patricia Forde
On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee
Watchmen by Alan Moore
Divergent / Insurgent / Allegiant / Four 4 Volumes by Veronica Roth
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
The Girl Who Dared to Think by Bella Forrest
The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
The Reckoners Series by Brandon Sanderson
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
Angelfall by Susan Ee
The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
Y by Brian K. Vaughan
Recruitment by K. A. Riley
Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
The V Girl by Mya Robarts
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
The Plague by Albert Camus
Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi
Brilliance by Marcus Sakey
Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack
The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner
Children of Eden by Joey Graceffa
Configured by Jenetta L Penner
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
City of Bohane by Kevin Barry
Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton
Freakling by Lana Krumwiede
The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya
Want by Cindy Pon
Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill
The Iron Heel by Jack London
Jennifer Government by Max Barry
The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson
Diverse Energies by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Big Lie by Julie Mayhew
The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin