Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic Books

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Updated August 8, 2025
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Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic Books

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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 Eleanor
Paper Book
First published in 1985, The Handmaid's Tale is a novel of such power that the reader is unable to forget its images and its forecast. With more than two million copies in print, it is Margaret Atwood's most popular and compelling novel. Set in the near future, it describes life in what once was...
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
Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before. Guy Montag is a fireman....
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<...
Parable of the sower
Butler, Octavia E.
Paper Book
Forced to flee an America where anarchy and violence have completely taken over, empath Lauren Olamina--who can feel the pain of others and is crippled by it--becomes a prophet carrying the hope of a new world and a new faith christened "Earthseed". A stirring portrait of 21st-century America by the...
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...
American war
El Akkad, Omar
Paper Book
Shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize A Globe and Mail Best Book A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Quill & Quire Best Book of 2017 An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second...
Upright women wanted
Gailey, Sarah
Paper Book
FIGHT THE STATE. BE A LIBRARIAN. A 2021 Hugo and Locus Award Finalist * A 2020 ALA Booklist Top 10 SFF Pick * A Booklist Editor's Choice Pick * Named a Best Book of 2020 (NPR, New York Public Library, Booklist, Bustle, Den of Geek) "A breezy, rousing...
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
Hill, Joe.
Paper Book
From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling post-apocalyptic thriller about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle...
Never let me go
Ishiguro, Kazuo
Paper Book
From the Booker Prize-winning author ofThe Remains of the DayandWhen We Were Orphans, comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human. Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the...
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
Audiobook
The stand
King, Stephen
Paper Book
#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
WINNER OF THE ASIAN AMERICAN AWARD FOR LITERATURE IN ADULT FICTION * LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE 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...
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
An audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame and ambition set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, from the author of three highly acclaimed previous novels. One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of...
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 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...
Nineteen eighty-four
Orwell, George
Paper Book
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens...
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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