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 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
Now a Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. The Handmaid's Tale is an instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from "the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction" (New York Times) The Handmaid's Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its...
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 : the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns ...
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<...
Parable of the sower
Butler, Octavia E.
Paper Book
A New York Times Book of the Year · Nebula Award nominee · Featuring an introduction by Gloria Steinem From the pioneering New York Times bestselling science fiction author of Kindred. The radically speculative odyssey of a...
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
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 warehouse : a novel
Hart, Rob (Fiction writer)
Audiobook
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
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
King, Stephen.
Paper Book
In the year 2025, the best men don’t run for President, they run for their lives…. Ben Richards is out of work and out of luck. His eighteen-month-old daughter is sick, and neither Ben nor his wife can afford to take her to a doctor. For a man with no cash and no...
The stand : a novel
King, Stephen
CD
This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of...
Awake in the floating city : a novel
Kwan, Susanna
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE ASIAN AMERICAN AWARD FOR LITERATURE IN ADULT FICTION * FINALIST FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL 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...
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.
Paper Book
In a wasteland born of rage and fear, populated by monstrous creatures and marauding armies, earth's last survivors have been drawn into the final battle between good and evil, that will decide the fate of humanity.
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...
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: *...
Gliff
Smith, Ali
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD * THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE * From a literary master, a moving and genre-bending story about our era-spanning search for meaning and knowing An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between...
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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