Dark Seeds: Dystopian

Visit the dark side! This list includes dystopian visions both fictional and all too real. Plant a seed, read!

Updated May 17, 2026
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Anderson, M. T.
Paper Book
A Time Magazine 100 Best YA Books of All Time Selection The tour de force that set the gold standard for dystopian YA fiction -- in a compelling paperback edition. For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon -- a chance to...
Iron curtain : the crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956
Applebaum, Anne
Paper Book
In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. ...
Twilight of democracy : the seductive lure of authoritarianism
Applebaum, Anne
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." --Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are...
The handmaid's tale
Atwood, Margaret 1939-
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 ...
Cults like us : why doomsday thinking drives America
Borden, Jane
Paper Book
An "engrossing, unputdownable" (Amanda Montell, New York Times bestselling author) pop history that explains why the eccentric doomsday beliefs of our Puritan founders are still driving American culture today, contextualizes the current rise in far-right extremism as a natural...
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...
Escape from Camp 14 : one man's remarkable odyssey from North Korea to freedom in the West
Harden, Blaine.
Paper Book
A New York Times bestseller, the shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived. Blaine Harden's latest book, King of Spies, will be available from Viking in Fall 2017. North Korea is isolated and hungry,...
Catch-22
Heller, Joseph
Paper Book
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary. At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save...
Burn : a novel
Heller, Peter
Paper Book
From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars and The Last Ranger, a novel about two men--friends since boyhood--who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country racked by bewildering violence Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual...
Klara and the sun
Ishiguro, Kazuo 1954-
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is "an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a...
The long walk
King, Stephen
Paper Book
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...
Survival in Auschwitz : the Nazi assault on humanity
Levi, Primo.
Paper Book
The true and harrowing account of Primo Levi's experience at the German concentration camp of Auschwitz and his miraculous survival; hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as a "true work of art, this edition includes an exclusive conversation between the author and Philip Roth. ...
It can't happen here
Lewis, Sinclair
Paper Book
"The novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump's authoritarian appeal."--Salon It Can't Happen Here is the only one of Sinclair Lewis's later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. A cautionary tale about the...
Blue ticket : a novel
Mackintosh, Sophie
Paper Book
*BELLETRIST'S AUGUST 2020 BOOK PICK* "[Mackintosh's] writing is clear and sharp, with piercing moments of wisdom and insight that drive toward a pitch-perfect ending...Blue Ticket adds something new to the dystopian tradition set by Orwell's 1984 or Atwood's...
Station Eleven
Mandel, Emily St. John 1979-
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...
Poster girl
Roth, Veronica
Paper Book
"Poster Girl is a captivating story full of twists and turns--and no easy answers. I couldn't put this book down." --Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of Girl, Forgotten  From #1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth, a...
Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age of Disaster
Soboroff, Jacob
Paper Book
New York Times Bestseller and #1 Los Angeles Times Bestseller A "gripping, unshakeable firsthand account" (San Francisco Chronicle) of the firestorm that consumed Los Angeles, from the MS NOW reporter and New York Times bestselling author of...
American cults : cabals, corruption, and charismatic leaders
Willis, Jim
Paper Book
America has spawned hundreds of cults. Charismatic leaders periodically burst into the news for the most awful of reasons. We are awash with stories of brainwashed members' struggles to leave. Meet the messianic leaders, see the indoctrination and manipulation, look at their beliefs, and read the...

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