Apocalyptic & Dystopian bestsellers

If you enjoyed Station Eleven (Television Tie-in), then you’ll love How High We Go in the Dark.

“I must admit, i wasn’t thrilled about ANOTHER virus book. But this isn't ANOTHER virus book at all, instead it is a deep dive into what happens to humans when they’re pushed against a wall, all told 39 Minutes at a time. This one’s a driveway listen for sure.”

Angie, The Country Bookshop

To Paradise

“Expansive, wholly original, and utterly engrossing, To Paradise is a masterpiece. Fans of Yanagihara’s A Little Life will find themselves making a little more room in their hearts for this marvelous, emotional, and brilliant story.”

Christine Bollow, Loyalty Bookstores

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick

In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance.

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices.... Read more »

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. Now an... Read more »

Había una vez … A girl named Petra Peña, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. But Petra’s world is ending. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children—among them Petra and her family—have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the... Read more »

The Deep

“This book is haunting in the best possible way. I felt so keenly for Yetu, for the Wajinru and their histories, it gave me chills. Daveed Dig's narration was a well-matched piece in an already incredible project. I'm so glad this little novella came to be written so that I might share it.”

Jane, Rediscovered Books

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“Never have we needed Becky Chambers' "hopepunk," sci-fi self-care visions of the future more than now. Part hilarious odd-couple road-trip, part soulful parable for a lost and battered world, A Psalm for the Wild-Built brings all the warmth, comfort, and elusive wisdom of a steaming mug of tea poured by someone who loves you. Take a deep breath, relax your shoulders, and drink it all in.”

Megan, Underground Books

From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a remarkable vision of climate change over the coming decades. 

The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but... Read more »

The Memory Police

“On the island, things regularly disappear en masse. Boats. Roses. Birds. Calendars. The people of the island are expected to gather and destroy any remaining evidence of these disappearances, and with it, their memories. The narrator refers to "killing two creatures with one stone" long after the island's birds are disappeared--even the word itself is gone from her consciousness. But a small minority of people are still able to remember, and it is the job of the Memory Police to track those people down. The fragile, spare prose haunts you with many questions: Can humanity survive without memories? Without nostalgia? Without a material culture? This elegiac glimpse into the heart of authoritarianism will linger in your own memory for a long time to come.”

Rachel, The Book Table

Essun's missing daughter grows more powerful every day, and her choices may destroy the world in this "magnificent" Hugo Award winner and NYT Notable Book. (NPR)

The season of endings grows darker, as civilization fades into the long cold night.

Essun -- once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger -- has found shelter, but not her daughter. Instead... Read more »

“Onyebuchi sets fire to the boundary between fiction and reality, and brings a crumbling city and an all too plausible future to vibrant life. Riveting, disturbing, and rendered in masterful detail.”—Leigh Bardugo

In his adult novel debut, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and NAACP Image Award finalist and ALA Alex and New England Book Award winner Tochi...

Ready Player One

“If you are at all into video games or the 1980's you are going to love Ready Player One. In a future where people often prefer to live in virtual reality than the real world, the man who invented The Oasis is one of the most famous people in the world. Inside the Oasis you can travel from planet to planet, go to school and live out your wildest dreams. But when he dies and leaves his fortune to whoever can find his "easter egg" hidden inside The Oasis - the challenge begins. I'm not even a huge fan of video games and thought this book was a lot of fun. I listened to the audio book read by Wil Wheaton which was great.”

Madison, Ballast Book Co.

Hollow Kingdom

“You wouldn't think a foul-mouthed, wise-cracking crow named S. T. (short for Shit Turd) would be a great companion at the end of the world, but honestly? I couldn't imagine another living being to spend the apocalypse with. Buxton amazingly captures the natural world as the humans have devolved into zombie-like creatures, and given us the narrator we deserve. On top of that, Robert Petkoff is the absolute perfect reader to take us on this journey. Side-splittingly hilarious as well as a thoughtful warning against technology, this unique book is one readers (or listeners!) won't be able to put down. ”

Melissa, Watermark Books

Two girls on opposite sides of a war discover they're fighting for a common purpose?and falling for each other?in Zoe Hana Mikuta's high-octane debut Gearbreakers, perfect for fans of Pacific Rim, Pierce Brown's Red Rising Saga, and Marie Lu's Legend series. We went past praying to deities and started to build them instead... The shadow of... Read more »

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made... Read more »

Severance

“A disaffected young woman just scraping by in the big city. A rag-tag group of survivors on a journey through a post-apocalyptic landscape. These are familiar tropes in contemporary fiction (albeit not usually in the same novel). But with Ling Ma's steely-eyed, wry treatment, they grow into something far more complex. In an alternate 2011, Shen Fever, a global pandemic, causes "a fatal loss of consciousness" in those infected. "The Fevered" forget to eat or drink or sleep, but instead get caught in a seeming zombie-like loop of muscle memory: a housewife sets the table for dinner over and over again; a taxi driver drives around the city until he runs out of gas; a young woman tries on all of the clothes in her closet in an endless loop. This post-apocalyptic world is woven with flashbacks of pandemic-survivor Candace Chen's pre-apocalypse life in New York, where a job she doesn't even like becomes the anchor of her identity such that she will seemingly do anything in order to continue to do it, even after she's the last survivor at her company. The question that lingers: is the rote repetition of our lives the very essence of who we are? And how far will we go to preserve that facade of living? Severance is a beautifully spare and wryly funny novel, by a huge new talent. ”

Rachel, The Book Table

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The thrilling sequel to the beloved worldwide bestseller Ready Player One, the near-future adventure that inspired the blockbuster Steven Spielberg film.
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST • “The game is on again. . . . A great mix of exciting fantasy and threatening fact.”—The Wall... Read more »

Humanity will finally be saved or destroyed in the shattering conclusion to the post-apocalyptic and highly acclaimed NYT bestselling trilogy that won the Hugo Award three years in a row.

The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.

Essun has inherited the power of... Read more »

If you enjoyed The Overstory, then you’ll love Appleseed.

“One of the signs of a good book is when you find yourself thinking about it often, well after you finish it. Matt Bell’s Appleseed is one of those books. The novel steers the reader through three plots: a story of Johnny Appleseed set two hundred years ago, a tale of a civilization on the brink of ecological disaster fifty years from now, and a story of an inhospitable Earth one thousand years in the future. Each tale is a strange and riveting journey on its own, encompassing a vast swath of human narrative, from Greek myth, the Bible, and Grimm’s fairy tales to early American folklore, but the stories become even more fascinating as Bell starts to pull them together into one epic tale of humanity’s relationship with the planet. I loved Appleseed because it's a strange and beautiful book and it made me think about humanity's relationship to the Earth. Especially for people who like both sci-fi and literary fiction. ”

Elizabeth, The Snail on the Wall

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years.

What would happen if the world were ending?

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against...

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death.

And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky... Read more »

Winner of the Audiophile Magazine Earphones Award.

The classic collaboration from the internationally bestselling authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, soon to be an original series starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant.

"Good Omens . . . is something like what would have happened if Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and Don DeLillo had...

Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow."-- Scott Sigler Pierce Brown' s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender' s Game by Orson Scott Card. " I live for the dream that my children will be born free," she says. " That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father... Read more »

The Resisters

“I finished The Resisters in a day. I don’t know how a book can be so devastating yet so miraculously wonderful at the same time. I was completely captivated by the family whose story Jen tells. The world she creates — set in near-future AutoAmerica — is so believable an outcome of what we see around us today that it feels as much prescient as imagined. A sort of cautionary tale, The Resisters is not only a book to love, it’s a book that’s important. I’m in awe.”

Carole Horne, Harvard Book Store

Emmy Award-winning actress Tatiana Maslany narrates a brand-new special edition recording of the first audiobook in the worldwide bestselling trilogy from Suzanne Collins! 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 keeps the districts in... Read more »

Of Blood and Bone

“The time has come for an awakening, and it will not come without pain. The world has been brought down by a virus and it awaits redemption, which only the One can deliver. Fallon Swift is nearly 13 and will soon enter into a time of challenge like none other. She must learn to fight, to gain wisdom, and to understand her future. Will she become the woman she is meant to be before the world outside her farm closes in around her? Of Blood and Bone is both entertaining and insightful, so make yourself cozy, grab a cup of tea, and brace yourself for a good ride.”

Linda Bond, Auntie's Bookstore

Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She’s always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories. Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he’s been cast from home. He’s found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake. Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists.... Read more »

From #1 bestselling author Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson comes the final of three Skyward series novellas, each told from the perspective of a different member of the team back on Detritus. Listen to Jorgen's story along with Cytonic.

With the government of Detritus in disarray because of Superiority treachery, and with Spensa still away... Read more »

Blackstone Audio presents a new recording of this immensely popular book.

George Orwell depicts a gray, totalitarian world dominated by Big Brother and its vast network of agents, including the Thought Police, a world in which news is manufactured according to the authorities’ will and people live tepid lives by rote.

Winston Smith, the hero with...

From #1 bestselling author Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson comes the first of three Skyward series novellas, each told from the perspective of a different member of the team back on Detritus. Read FM's story between Starsight and Cytonic.

When a planet-destroying Delver suddenly appears in the sky of Detritus and vanishes just as suddenly,... Read more »

A haunting, provocative novel, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs is a fictional autobiography in an alternate twentieth century that chronicles one woman’s unusual life, including the price she pays to survive and the cost her choices hold for the society she is trying to save.

Born at the end of the old world, Miriam grows up during The Great...

In this stunning bestseller praised as "our era's Handmaid's Tale," a fierce new power has emerged—and only women have it (Washington Post). 

In The Power, the world is a recognizable place: there's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American... Read more »

From #1 bestselling author Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson comes the second of three Skyward series novellas, each told from the perspective of a different member of the team back on Detritus. Read Alanik's story between Starsight and Cytonic.

“Don’t trust their lies. Don’t trust their false peace.” That is the warning that Alanik of the... Read more »

A bestselling dystopian novel that tackles surveillance, privacy and the frightening intrusions of technology in our lives—a “compulsively readable parable for the 21st century” (Vanity Fair). 

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime.... Read more »

“A modern horror masterpiece.” —Carmen Maria Machado, bestselling author of In the Dream House

“Keeps up a relentless velocity while just being plain fun as hell.” —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

"Felker-Martin’s horror chops are top-notch ... A ballsy post-apocalyptic tale." —Publishers Weekly

Beth and Fran spend their days traveling...

Into the Drowning Deep

“In Into the Drowning Deep, Mira Grant has conjured up scary mermaids living in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. An expedition sets out to learn if mermaids truly exist and to uncover the fate of a previous expedition. The new crew is being recorded for a documentary, with the hope it will prove mermaids are real and clear the network of wrongdoing. Both Tory, whose sister was killed on the first expedition, and Jillian, who has been teaching about mermaids for years, are going out on the state-of-the-art ship; however, that ship has one major flaw. You will not look at The Little Mermaid the same way again!”

Jason Kennedy, Boswell Book Company

"The End of Men is a fiercely intelligent page-turner, an eerily prescient novel, at once thoughtful and highly emotive." --Paula Hawkins, #1 internationally bestselling author of The Girl on the Train

Set in a world where a virus stalks our male population, The End of Men is an electrifying and unforgettable debut from a remarkable new talent... Read more »

The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses... Read more »

Named a Book You Need to Read in 2021 by Harper’s Bazaar

A “moving, astounding, and totally unsettling” (Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author) literary debut following two patients in recovery after an experimental memory drug warps their lives.

Lucien moves to Los Angeles to be with his grandmother as she undergoes an... Read more »

This third book in a major series by a bestselling science fiction author, Printz Award winner, and National Book Award finalist is the gripping story of the most provocative character from his acclaimed novels Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities.

Tool, a half-man/half-beast designed for combat, is capable of so much more than his creators had... Read more »

The thrilling second installment in New York Times bestselling author Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me series.

It should have taken Juliette a single touch to kill Warner. But his mysterious immunity to her deadly power has left her shaken, wondering why her ultimate defense mechanism failed against the person she most needs protection from.

She and Adam...

One exceptional boy journeys into the ashes of society to find the cure for a devastating plague in this riveting post-apocalyptic standalone set in the same world as the USA Today-bestselling The Girl With All the Gifts.

Once upon a time, in a land blighted by terror, there was a very clever boy.

The people thought the boy could save them, so... Read more »

Keeping to the shadows, the cold of the night wrapping tightly around me, I moved silently toward where we'd been told they were being kept. No one could be certain. Where is my love.

The 2012 adaptation of this classicdystopian novel is directed by Julian Roman Pölsler and stars internationallyrenowned actress Martina Gedeck.

“I can allow myself to write the truth;all the people for whom I have lied throughout my life are dead…” writes theheroine of Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall, a quiteordinary, unnamed middle-aged woman who...

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE • The Testaments is a modern masterpiece, a powerful novel that can be read on its own or as a companion to Margaret Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale.

More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on... Read more »

Wanderers

“Wanderers is the best science fiction book I have ever read.Wonderfully performed by the readers! A young girl walks out of her home for no reason, then a young man, a young mother, a businessman, soon the group has grown to hundreds. Why are these people who respond to nothing and can be stopped by nothing walking? Where are they going? Will everyone become of "sleepwalker"? Are they dangerous? In the chaos of racial, political and environmental conflict speculation and blame grows. Who will become a sheep, a shepherd, a wolf? It has all the moral ambiguity that leads you to question the world around you. The story is loaded with religious, environmental, race and political themes.You will not want to put this book down, there is suspense on every page! I already want to read it again!”

Ellen, Avid Bookshop

Rosewater

“Want mystery? A vision of near-future, post-alien occupation Earth? Afro-centric? Psychics? A relatable protagonist with a criminal past who is the only hope for saving human kind? How about some zombies and angels? A love story? Rosewater has it all, and somehow it all weaves together into an irresistible, absorbing tale. And the best news? It’s the first in a trilogy, so when it leaves you wanting more, your wish will come true.”

Jessica, Bookbug

With shades of The Hunger Games, Ender's Game, and Game of Thrones, debut author Pierce Brown's genre-defying epic Red Rising hit the ground running and wasted no time becoming a sensation. Golden Son continues the stunning saga of Darrow, a rebel forged by tragedy, battling to lead his oppressed people to freedom from the overlords of a brutal... Read more »

The Grace Year

“The Grace Year is a brutal, feminist gut-punch of a book that grips you tight and never lets go. Ugly crying will happen and readers are likely to get some serious lockjaw from gritting their teeth in suspense. Narrator Emily Shaffer nuanced performance of main character Tierney James is unforgettable, as she captures each little passive aggressive snipe, every accidental slip of the tongue, and all the fraught emotions that come with being a teenage girl. The comparisons to tense-reading favorites, The Handmaid's Tale and Lord of the Flies, are accurate and certainly well-earned.”

Amanda, Belmont Books

If you enjoyed Barn 8, then you’ll love Upright Women Wanted.

“Both of these lively audiobooks follow determined found families as they fight against injustice and learn to trust one another. You might cry during their heartfelt adventures, but you will definitely cheer.”

Mikayla, Green Apple Books