Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic Books

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Updated August 8, 2025
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Chain-Gang All-Stars
Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame
Paper Book
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR
The handmaid's tale
Atwood, Margaret
Paper Book
One of the most powerful and most widely read novels of our time in display-worthy hardcover: A gripping vision of our society radically overturned by a theocratic revolution--from "the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction" (The New York Times) The sixth and final season...
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
Paper Book
For use in schools and libraries only. A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners suddenly realizes their merit.
World War Z : an oral history of the zombie war
Brooks, Max.
Paper Book
Now a major motion picture The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and...
Red Rising
Brown, Pierce
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Pierce Brown's relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. "Red Rising ascends above a crowded dys­topian field."--USA Today<...
Parable of the sower
Butler, Octavia E.
Paper Book
This acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from an award-winning author "pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale" and includes a foreword by N. K. Jemisin (John Green, New York Times). When global climate change and economic crises lead to...
A psalm for the wild-built
Chambers, Becky
Paper Book
Winner of the Hugo Award! In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, bestselling Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk and Robot series, gives us hope for the future. It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools;...
Loneliness & Company : a novel
Dyroff, Charlee
Paper Book
"An inventive and perceptive story about human connection and being alive." - Emily Austin, author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead "Sharply etched and strangely propulsive" - Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy...
Upright women wanted
Gailey, Sarah
Paper Book
A 2021 Hugo Award Finalist! A 2021 Locus Award Finalist! A 2020 ALA Booklist Top 10 SF/F Pick! A Booklist Editor's Choice Pick! Book Riot's Best Books of 2020 So Far! Named a Best of 2020 Pick for NPR |...
The dog stars
Heller, Peter
Paper Book
"Leave it to Peter Heller to imagine a postapocalyptic world that contains as much loveliness as it does devastation. His hero, Hig, flies a 1956 Cessna (his dog as copilot) around what was once Colorado, chasing all the same things we chase in these pre-annihilation days: love, friendship, the...
Never let me go
Ishiguro, Kazuo
Paper Book
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER * From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes "a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist--a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic. One of The New York Times's 10...
The long walk : a novel
King, Stephen
Paper Book
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE The brilliant and chilling first novel Stephen King ever wrote tells the tale of the contestants of a diabolically cruel competition where 100 boys start the "long walk" and there is only one winner--the one that survives.
The running man
Bachman, Richard
Paper Book
The stand
King, Stephen
Paper Book
'THE STAND is a masterpiece' (Guardian) Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by virus and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published. First came the...
Awake in the floating city
Kwan, Susanna
Paper Book
For fans of Station Eleven or Birnam Wood a literary novel with a dystopian world as its setting and at its heart is a human story about compassion in times of great adversity. 'An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more...
Station eleven
Mandel, Emily St. John
Paper Book
One of The New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century 'Best novel. The big one . . . stands above all the others' - George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones Now an HBO Max original TV series The New York Times<...
The road
McCarthy, Cormac
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive that "only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle). One of...
The garden
Newman, Nick (Pseudonym)
Paper Book
A literary twist on The Secret Garden for fans of Shirley Jackson, Piranesi and Unsettled Ground 'Extraordinary... it already feels like a classic' Emerald Fennell, Oscar-winning director of SALTBURN 'Glitters with menace and mystery' Emma Stonex,...
The memory police
Ogawa, Yōko
Paper Book
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020, an enthralling Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance from one of Japan's greatest writers. 'Beautiful... Haunting' Sunday Times 'A dreamlike story of dystopia' Jia Tolentino __...
Nineteen eighty-four
Orwell, George
Paper Book
Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in what remains of a Britain ravaged by revolution. His every move is monitored by the Thought Police, who are responsible for detecting dissent against the Party and its leader, Big Brother-and eliminating it. When he meets Julia, Winston thinks he...
Gliff
Smith, Ali
Paper Book
O brave new world, that has such people in't. Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house. What does it mean? It's a truism of our time that it'll be the next...
Zone one : a novel
Whitehead, Colson
Paper Book
In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization under...

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