Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic Books

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Updated July 2, 2025
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Chain-gang all-stars
Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR * FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION * A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from...
The handmaid's tale
Atwood, Margaret
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from "the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction" (The New York Times) * The sixth and final season of the award-winning Hulu series starring Elisabeth Moss is now streaming ...
The water knife
Bacigalupi, Paolo.
Paper Book
Paolo Bacigalupi, New York Times-Bestselling author and National Book Award Finalist, dives once again onto our uncertain future with his first thriller for adults since his multi-award winning debut phenomenon The Windup Girl.   In the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona,...
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
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "Prepare to be entranced by this addictively readable oral history of the great war between humans and zombies."--Entertainment Weekly   We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by...
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<...
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;...
American war
El Akkad, Omar
Paper Book
"Powerful . . . As haunting a postapocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy [created] in The Road, and as devastating a look as the fallout that national events have on an American family as Philip Roth did in The Plot Against America. . . . Omar El Akkad's debut novel,...
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 warehouse : a novel
Hart, Rob (Fiction writer)
Paper Book
Cloud isn't just a place to work. It's a place to live. And when you're here, you'll never want to leave."A thrilling story of corporate espionage at the highest level . . . and a powerful cautionary tale about technology, runaway capitalism, and the nightmare...
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...
The fireman : a novel
Hill, Joe
Paper Book
#1 New York Times Bestseller From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to...
Never let me go
Ishiguro, Kazuo
Paper Book
From the acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, a moving new novel that subtly reimagines our world and time in a haunting story of friendship and love. As a child, Kathy–now thirty-one years old–lived at Hailsham, a private...
The long walk : a novel
King, Stephen
Audiobook
Unabridged CDs, 8 CDs, 10 hours Read by TBA On the first day of May, 100 teenage boys meet for a race known as "The Long Walk". If you break the rules, you get three warnings. If you exceed your limit, what happens is absolutely terrifying. .
The running man
King, Stephen
Paper Book
In the reality TV show The Running Man, the only objective is to stay alive. This "slam-bang action suspense" (Gilbert Cruz, Vulture) from Stephen King is now a major motion picture coming from Paramount on November 7, 2025. Ben Richards has no...
The stand : a novel
King, Stephen
Ebook
#1 BESTSELLER * NOW A PARAMOUNT+ LIMITED SERIES * Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting--and eerily plausible--as when it was first published. One of The...
Awake in the floating city : a novel
Kwan, Susanna
Paper Book
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM PEOPLE MAGAZINE * An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for--two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to...
American rapture
Leede, CJ
Paper Book
The instant USA Today bestseller from CJ Leede, author of Maeve Fly--a scorching and sweeping new novel about the end of the world as we know it. "A blistering, feverish ride through a uniquely American apocalypse."--Chuck Wendig, New York Times...
Station eleven
Mandel, Emily St. John
Paper Book
This Anniversary Edition of Station Eleven, a finalist for the National Book Award and named a Best Book of the Twenty-First Century by the New York Times, celebrates ten years of this now iconic novel with a new color illustration and a guide to "The Mandelverse" A...
Swan Song
McCammon, Robert R.
Ebook
New York Times Bestseller: A young girl's visions offer the last hope in a postapocalyptic wasteland in this "grand and disturbing adventure" (Dean Koontz). A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick   Swan is a nine-year-old Kansas girl following...
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 darkly beautiful, eerie, hypnotic novel about two elderly sisters living alone at the edge of the world. In a place and time unknown, two elderly sisters live in a walled garden, secluded from the outside world. Evelyn and Lily have only ever known each other. What was...
The memory police
Ogawa, Yo?ko
Paper Book
*** 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST *** *** LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE AND THE 2020 TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD *** *** NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR *** A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the...
1984 : a novel
Orwell, George
Paper Book
Written 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever... This 75th Anniversary Edition includes: *...
Wanderers : a novel
Wendig, Chuck
Paper Book
A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world's last hope. From the mind of Chuck Wendig comes "a magnum opus . . . a story about survival that's not just about you and me, but all of us, together" (Kirkus Reviews,...
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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