Showing titles in Dystopian

Annie is 37 weeks pregnant, standing in IKEA, finally about to take home the crib she should have bought months ago. That’s when it happens – the long-anticipated Cascadia Earthquake, dismantling Portland and the entire Pacific Northwest in a matter of minutes. Propulsive, disruptive, funny, terrifying, Tilt is a novel about how the foundations of our lives are built and shaken. About a woman trying to walk back to the husband she’s long been pushing away. About put-off dreams and inevitability and what makes us keep moving forward.

For dinosaurs, it was a big rock. For humans: Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). When the Earth is hit by the greatest CME in recorded history (several times larger than the Carrington Event of 1859), the combined societies of the planet's most developed nations struggle to adapt to a life thrust back into the Dark Ages. In the United States, the military scrambles to speed the nation's recovery on multiple fronts including putting down riots, establishing relief camps, delivering medical aid, and bringing communication and travel back on line. Just as a real foothold is established in retaking the skies (utilizing existing commercial aircraft supplemented by military resources and ground control systems), a mysterious virus takes hold of the population, spreading globally over the very flight routes that the survivors fought so hard to rebuild.

Sara Sidorova lies dying. As she hovers between life and death, she receives a visitation from Amba, the tiger god who will devour creation if he is released from the chains that bind him. Amba gives Sara Sidorova an extraordinary gift: a glimpse into the future. Years later, her granddaughter Irenda will grow up in a wartorn country where survival means obedience. When a devastating attack robs her of her mother, she travels to Hrana City. There, her grandmother agrees to teach her the ultimate secret: how to tame death. But it won't be easy…

Jean McClellan spends her time in almost complete silence, limited to just 100 words a day. Any more, and a thousand volts of electricity will course through her veins. Now the new government is in power, everything has changed. But only if you’re a woman. Almost overnight, bank accounts are frozen, passports are taken away and 70 million women lose their jobs. Even more terrifyingly, young girls are no longer taught to read or write.

Alex Hawk has returned victorious from Drakana. He is a hero in Kragdon-ah and he and his daughters have decided to stay there forever. An effort is afoot to unite the far-flung tribes of Kragdon-ah and Alex's daughters Amy and Sanda are recruited to cross the wide land to help make that happen. Alex is forced to take another journey across the wilds of Kragdon-ah, encountering more fantastic creatures, new enemies, and old allies.

An all-American diner appears overnight in a remote British field. It's brightly lit, warm and inviting but it has no power, no water, no connection to the real world. It's like a memory made flesh - a nostalgic flight of fancy. More and more objects materialise: toys, fairground rides, pets and other treasured mementos of the past. And the deaths quickly follow. Something is bringing these memories to life, then stifling innocent people with their own joy. This is a weapon like no other. But nobody knows who created it, or why.

When Olivia Blunt's quiet morning at a local diner is interrupted by a national alert, her world is thrown into chaos. An EMP attack leaves the country without power, communication, or a way to defend itself. Olivia receives a desperate call from her father, urging her to flee to their secluded cabin in New Mexico. With her stepmother Willow by her side, Olivia must navigate a landscape of fear, looting, and uncertainty.

This is the way the world ends. On a warm summer night in New York City, the apocalypse begins. Within days, the deadly Medusa virus is sweeping the globe like a wildfire, pushing humanity to the brink of extinction. As civilization crumbles around him, survivor Adam Fisher will discover a flicker of hope that will send him on a quest through a ruined American landscape.

In the coastal resort of Margate, hotels lie empty and sun-faded ‘For Sale’ signs line the streets. The sea is higher - it’s higher everywhere - and those who can are moving inland. A young girl called Chance, however, is just arriving. Chance’s family is one of many offered a cash grant to move out of London - and so she, her mother, Jas, and brother JD relocate to the seaside, just as the country edges towards vertiginous change.

Gun violence, climate change and unemployment have ravaged the United States beyond recognition. Amidst the wreckage, an online retail giant named Cloud reigns supreme. Cloud brands itself not just as an online storefront but as a global saviour. Yet, beneath the sunny exterior lurks something far more sinister. Paxton never thought he’d be working security for the company that ruined his life, much less that he’d be moving into one of their sprawling live-work facilities. But compared to what’s left outside, perhaps Cloud isn’t so bad.

The year is 2050. Ava and her girlfriend live in what's left of Brooklyn, and though they love each other, it's hard to find happiness while the effects of climate change rapidly eclipse their world. Soon, it won't be safe outside at all. The only people guaranteed survival are the ones whose applications are accepted to The Inside Project, a series of weather-safe, city-sized structures around the world.

Dr Cliff Miyashiro arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue his recently deceased daughter’s research, only to discover a virus, newly unearthed from melting permafrost. The plague unleashed reshapes life on earth for generations. Yet even while struggling to counter this destructive force, humanity stubbornly persists in myriad moving and ever inventive ways. From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead, this story follows a cast of intricately linked characters spanning hundreds of years as humanity endeavours to restore the delicate balance of the world.

Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of 20th-century literature—a chilling and still-provocative look at a postapocalyptic future.

Three months after an EMP attack destroys the US power grid, starvation and disease have killed millions. With the end of winter finally in sight, the town of Fall Creek, Michigan balances on the precipice of collapse. They have suffered and sacrificed. But to forge a future worth living, they will have to face the darkness within themselves. Each must decide - will they retain their humanity or choose survival at any cost?

There is a huge, bold black streak in the sky. Branches appear out of nowhere over North America, Southern Europe, and Central Africa. People who live beneath The Rift can see it. But scientists worldwide are distressed - their equipment cannot pick up any type of signal from it. The rift appears to consist of nothing. Literally. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Most people are curious but not overly concerned. The phenomenon seems to pose no danger. It is just there. Then something jolts the most hardened naysayers, and surpasses the worst nightmares of the world's greatest scientists.

Set against the backdrop of the isolated forests north of New Hampshire's White Mountains, while camping on family land, Tom and Lori Thornton (and their dog, Buck) find themselves in a sudden SHTF scenario. No cellular service. Dangerous roads. Limited supplies. And far more questions than answers. After the shocking murder of Tom's uncle by a band of looters, the couple's already faltering marriage reaches the breaking point amid the chaos. Trust and loyalties are challenged, old friendships are put to the test, and immediate answers and solutions elude them.

The Emerald Lake Asylum is not a place most desire to go. Nineteen-year-old Skylenna, however, made a promise that she must keep. Once hired, she has only one purpose—prove to the council that barbaric treatments, such as waterboarding, scalding baths, and beatings, are no longer the answer. But that all takes pause when she meets the source of terror in the asylum. A patient with a split personality—on one side, he’s the bloodthirsty genius Dessin. On the other, a hidden persona that is buried deep in his subconscious.

The forces of evil are weakening as the conspiracy which set a civil war in motion is exposed. Those in the dark recesses of power face their greatest test as do the prepared men and women who will do anything to save their homeland. But is it enough to stitch together a nation torn apart.

In Scotland, in the not too distant future, Elaine, a partially sighted woman in her 60s, enters an exit facility. Down on her uppers, she is in search of a swift, free, and dignified death so that she can preserve her last remaining asset–a small flat–for her daughter to inherit. But once Elaine has checked in and finds her “Exit” delayed, the enforced wait leads her to question her choice and, more importantly, the state’s motives.

Following her dazzling five-novel portrait of our age, the ‘Seasonal’ sequence, Ali Smith returns with the first of two novels which belong together but can be read independently. Gliff – a Scots or Northern word for a glimpse, a shock, a glance - will not only tell its own story but also contain within it a hidden story, to be revealed only in a second novel, Glyph – from the Greek, meaning a mark, carving or symbol -- to be published a year later.