Apocalyptic & Dystopian bestsellers

If you enjoyed Black Sun, then you’ll love How High We Go in the Dark.

“I think I've already found my favorite release for 2022! This dystopian multi perspective scifi book is expertly woven. We jump through time and from character to character experiencing a terrifying pandemic and end of days. Though reading about a pandemic in midst of pandemic seems daunting, Nagamatsu managed to create a heartfelt and intriguing saga that manages to elicit all of your emotions in a short 256 pages. In audiobook format, a different narrator takes on each chapter but little mentions keep each additional perspective rooted to each other and the full cast brings you on a mind-blowing journey. I don't know how he does it but by the end, Nagamatsu somehow ties everything up in a truly magical and breathtaking way that has you questioning if he is the next, great voice of our generation.”

Kimi, Buttonwood Books and Toys

Sea of Tranquility

“Incredibly crafted mystery through time & space that attempts to answer if we exist in a simulation, or the reality that we have always accepted.”

James, Bookstore1Sarasota

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

The School for Good Mothers

“There’s no room for human fallibility in the dystopia of Jessamine Chan’s debut novel, so when Frida Liu — overwhelmed, sleep deprived, and desperate for a moment of reprieve — has a lapse in judgment as a mother, the consequences are swift and dire. Frida’s journey is a harrowing one, and the world she inhabits — where resources that could be used to support people are instead used to monitor, isolate, and punish them — hardly feels far-fetched. A tense, engrossing tale that stings with parental love and longing.”

Tove, Powell's Books

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 »

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

“Just as wonderful and as tender as A Psalm for the Wild-Built. A sweet and earthy cup of tea to warm the soul. New and old characters to giggle with, cry with, and just flat out fall in love with. A book that I will return to again and again.”

Allie Bisset, Third Street 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 »

Moon of the Crusted Snow

“Highly recommend this audiobook of Moon Of The Crusted Snow. Narrator Billy Merasty brings Rice's characters to life and enriches the traditional Anishinaabe stories with his lyrical storytelling voice. The story itself, of a Canadian Anishinaabe band forced to contend with a new reality when the power goes out and deliveries halt to their Reserve just as winter sets in, is gripping and shockingly realistic and a damning take on reservation life. Evan Whitesky—father, husband, and one of the young leaders—has been learning traditional ways so he's better equipped to hunt and forage than other members of the band who've come to rely on video games and other modern trappings for survival and entertainment. Just as it becomes clear that the power outage is widespread and likely the result of some catastrophic event, a menacing stranger arrives, threatening the band's unity and possibly its very survival. Completely immersive.”

Susan, Belmont Books

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

Ready Player One

“When it comes to listening to an audio book, I have to be drawn to the narrator’s voice almost if not more than the actual story. The way a narrator speaks really makes or breaks a story for me. Wil Wheaton made this story for me! He brought new life to a story I was already in love with. Wheaton made Wade Watts come to life, and was able to bring out the obsessiveness in Wade’s voice when it came to Halliday and 80’s pop-culture. Wheaton is the only person that could ever be Wade Watts for me. This is one audio book that I know I will go back to again and again.”

Victoria, Mysterious Galaxy Books

The Book of M

“Peng Shepherd’s The Book of M is as mysterious as it is fantastical. Beginning in India before spreading worldwide, almost like a magical epidemic, people are suddenly losing their shadows. For those that do, it always follows that they begin to forget. Whether slowly or rapidly, the forgetting always befalls those who have become “shadowless.” And in this new world of forgetting and mis-remembering, the natural world also goes under a metamorphosis: giant “death kites” patrol the skies, the Statue of Liberty terrorizes all of New York, and wolves begin to speak like humans. All this and more befalls the world amid the landscape of lost memories. Chilling, heart-warming, thrilling, and mesmerizing are all the ways I would describe The Book of M. Narrators James Fouhey and Emily Woo Zeller do wonderfully for the audio book adaption. Emily is touching as the first-person narration of female character Max, while James’ handling of the third-person narrations of the rest of the cast is a remarkable feat.”

Nicholas, Mysterious Galaxy Books

“This book is, simply put, a modern classic. If you read it, you'll never forget it. Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting.” —Stephen King

From the bestselling author of Ohio, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity.

In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is... Read more »

Leech

“Absolute praise for the narrator Abigail Thorn! She brought this book to life with her varying range and talent thrown into the narration. I tried to find every excuse to listen to the audiobook. This book was dark, twisty, with just the smallest smidge of body horror. There was so much care in each word placed on the page; many of which will stick with you. Like come on, a parasite taking over humans, a doctor desperately trying to find answers, and a gothic setting.”

Armilene, Rediscovered Books

The Last Cuentista

“Twelve year old Petra Peña has always dreamed of becoming a Cuentista (a storyteller). When she wakes up from 500 years in cryosleep to a community of brainwashed people, Petra is different; she still has her memories from Earth, and she is full of stories from the past...The Last Cuentista demonstrates the importance of learning from ancestors' stories to shape the future, illustrating the dangers of homogeneity and the beautiful imperfection of being human.”

Emma, Content

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 original series on HBO Max. Over one... Read more »

#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 »

A furious debut novel from Andrew Joseph White about embracing the monster within and unleashing its power against your oppressors. Perfect for fans of Gideon the Ninth and Annihilation.

Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s... 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

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 »

In Cory Doctorow’s wildly successful novel Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarilydetained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack onSan Francisco—an experience that led him to become a leader of the wholemovement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against thetyrannical security state.

A...

A mind-expanding, cheerfully dystopian new novel by Yoko Tawada, winner of the National Book Award

Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as "the land of sushi." Hiruko, its former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her... Read more »

Lakewood

“Lena just lost her grandmother, her mother has health problems and to top of off they are having financial problems. Lena takes a mysterious job in hopes help her mother and to pay off bills. Lakewood takes you into a dark world of medical testing where human rights are disregarded. This whole story felt more than real and makes you question how far you would go for to help your family.”

Alexandra, Birdy's Bookstore

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 »

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 Martian meets Dark Matter in Edward Ashton's high concept science fiction thriller, in which Mickey7, an "expendable," refuses to let his replacement clone Mickey8 take his place.

Dying isn’t any fun…but at least it’s a living.

Mickey7 is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim....

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...

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...

The Gone World

“Shannon Moss is a member of Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS), but she is from a branch of the Navy few have ever heard of. Shannon is part of Naval Space Command, a clandestine organization that sails deep space and time. Shannon is on the hunt for a killer: NSC officer, Patrick Mursult, who seems to have been driven mad during his missions into deep space. But if a time traveling, deep space killer isn't enough tension for you, there is also a humanity-ending event that has been observed hundreds of years into the future: the arrival of the Terminus. The Terminus is an unknown entity that, put simply, ends all life on the planet in horrific fashion. Since the discovery of the Terminus, NSC has been trying to find a way to avoid its arrival and the subsequent end of humanity. The problem is that every time they travel to the future to observe the Terminus, it has arrived earlier and earlier. This means the clock is ticking doubly fast for Shannon Moss and the entirety of the human race. And her killer seems to be linked to the Terminus somehow. This is a time-traveling, sci-fi, horror, murder mystery for fans of Dark Matter and Annihilation. It's one of the best and strangest (and at times disturbing) rides I've been on in a while - and well worth the price of admission!”

Matthew, McLean & Eakin Booksellers

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 »

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

Feral Creatures

“Feral Creatures is dark, hilarious, and apocalyptic. It has all the same heart, tenderness, bizarre humor, and hilarity as Hollow Kingdom. This is a follow-up not to be missed!”

Michelle Malonzo, Changing Hands

Named a Best Science Fiction Book of 2022 by The New York Times

“Sharply, beautifully written.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Intriguing, frightening, witty, and humane.” —The Wall Street Journal

Black Mirror meets Severence in this thrilling speculative novel about a tech company that deletes unwanted memories, the consequences for those... Read more »

A "suspenseful, atmospheric tale. . .punctured by a gut-punch twist" (Entertainment Weekly), A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World is a story of survival, courage and hope amid the ruins of our world.

My name's Griz. I've never been to school, I've never had friends, and in my whole life I've not met enough people to play a game of football.... Read more »

The World Gives Way

“The World Gives Way gave me so many things: a crime novel, a science fiction epic, but also something that explores the beauties of love and the strive to survive through it all. This is an adventure that I won't be forgetting any time soon.”

Christian Vega, Astoria Bookshop

“If King had written a sequel to The Stand, it might look something like this monumental epic of a story.”—James Rollins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Kingdom of Bones

“As great as Wanderers was, Wayward is better.”—Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Road of Bones

Five years ago, ordinary Americans fell under the... Read more »

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 »

Red Rising thrilled readers and announced the presence of a talented new author. Golden Son changed the game and took the story of Darrow to the next level. Now comes the exhilarating conclusion to the Red Rising Trilogy: Morning Star. Read more »

A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize

Margaret Atwood’s new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it.

This is Margaret... Read more »

American War

“Omar El Akkad has delivered a stunning debut. He imagines a world in a not-too-distant future where Americans are at war with each other once again. The characters in this story are fully developed and individual, yet their histories - their stories - extend into the histories of all those displaced and affected by the forces of war. The title, American War, is a shape-shifter. At once, it means that America is again at war, but at times reflects the ways in which the true, actual wars that America has perpetrated on Earth have affected the lives of millions of people. This will be one of the most discussed books of the year, and I cannot wait to put it in the hands of all readers looking to be changed.”

Matt Keliher, SubText Bookstore

The chilling dystopian novel that influenced George Orwell while he was writing 1984, with a new introduction by Margaret Atwood and an essay by Ursula Le Guin

In a glass-enclosed city of perfectly straight lines, ruled over by an all-powerful “Benefactor,” the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState are regulated by spies and secret...

The Stone Sky: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! *
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... 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...

Ember is the only light in a dark world. But when its lamps begin to flicker, two friends must race to escape the dark. This highly acclaimed adventure series is a modern-day classic—with over 4 MILLION copies sold! 
 
The city of Ember was built as a last refuge for the human race. Two hundred years later, the great lamps that light the city are... Read more »

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016 and Philip K. Dick Award Winner

When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead.

In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth’s population—killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant—the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world...

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 »

Hollow Kingdom

“This is the zombie apocalypse like you’ve never seen it before! Things go sideways when S.T. the crow’s human, Big Jim, loses an eyeball. Jim’s worsening condition propels S.T. to leave the safety of domestic life, along with the simple, slobbering bloodhound, Dennis. Together they roam the ruins of Seattle, searching for purpose in this new, Cheeto-less world. While Hollow Kingdom mostly follows the foul-mouthed, human-loving crow, Buxton also takes the occasional detour to see how other animals are coping around the world. Not only is our corvid companion a profane delight, she also manages to effortlessly capture the aloof arrogance of a cat, the wise cadence of an elephant, and even the eternal serenity of trees. Hilarious and at times surprisingly poignant, Hollow Kingdom is a must-read for anyone with a sense of humor as black as a crow’s wing.”

Darcy, Mysterious Galaxy Books

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

Dept. of Speculation meets Black Mirror in this lyrical, speculative debut about a queer mother raising her daughter in an unjust surveillance state

In a United States not so unlike our own, the Department of Balance has adopted a radical new form of law enforcement: rather than incarceration, wrongdoers are given a second (and sometimes, third,...

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 »

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 »