29 Best Dystopian Books

Now privateers rather than criminals, the Redshift Runners protect Earth and its colonies from pirates …

Until trade routes are attacked by the unmanned fleets of the Prestige, the former protectors of ancient Earth. Though the deadly raids threaten the stability Deadeye and Talon have sacrificed so much to achieve, they discover its true
purpose: an operation code-named Termination Vector, which has targeted the Runners for destruction.

Old enemies reappear in a bid for power, abusing the very technology that has allowed humanity to settle the stars. Deadeye and his shipmates must gather their allies to confront the marauding fleets in a battle for the future of the Orion Spur.

But the cost might be more than they can bear.

War is coming to the Wild Lands …

One month after the defeat of a rogue group of terrorists, the United States struggles to maintain control over the New Frontier. The untamed sector of America simmers as opportunists, criminals, and marauders wait to fill the void
left behind. An extremist faction of the Navajo Nation called the Rattlesnakes have waited years for this moment. Their leader launches their first, brutal attack on a water treatment and power facility in Colorado.

The message is clear to Colorado Sheriff Lindsey Plymouth and her foreign allies working to keep peace: a new enemy has risen up. Lindsey enlists Raven Spears to track the Rattlesnakes and bring their leader to justice before they can strike
again. As the trail gets hot, Raven realizes this is just one of many assaults the Rattlesnakes have planned to conquer the New Frontier.

With violence spilling over the borders, America’s foreign allies begin to question the cost to their own forces and start to withdraw. Lindsey and the Colorado Rangers scramble to find new allies, but it will take more than a few friends to
hold back the growing Rattlesnake army. If they fail to defeat this new evil, it will devour the New Frontier.

Book two of the next great fantasy LitRPG series by Seth Ring, author of Nova Terra. Explore a world whose secrets have been buried under decades of war.

Mixing slice-of-life with epic fantasy action, mystery, magic, cultivation, and a broken game system that seems determined to make everything as hard as possible for the already overpowered protagonist, this LitRPG/GameLit series is perfect for readers who enjoy exploring rich worlds and complex characters.

A war is here, and it’s unlike any that came before …

Humanity has much to rebuild in the aftermath of the star snakes. But before they can even get started, the Waymakers return, bringing their interstellar war with them. With the Waymakers and Glimmers battling it out across the solar system,
humanity is caught in the middle. Colonies are put under lockdown. Any ship caught flying is destroyed.

Millions starve. Even more die in the attacks. With humanity on the verge of annihilation, old enemies unite and prepare for war.

If humanity is to survive, we must beat not one but two technologically superior races. It’ll take a crazy plan and someone even crazier to carry it out. And that makes it exactly the kind of job for Captain Jack Hale and his crew aboard the Cabron.

It’s Harlock: Space Pirate meets The Expanse in Book 3 of this pulse-pounding Military Sci-Fi series from Rachel Aukes, the bestselling author of Black Sheep, Rebel’s Run, and 100 Days in Deadland.

A world on the precipice of the apocalypse. A secret forged in the flames of war.

A chance to start over.

For John Sutton, only one of those three things matters.

Retired from a decade of brutal war, he wants nothing more than a quiet pastoral life while he does his best to stem the steady increase of his Doom Points before they hit 100, signaling the start of the end.

He’s been given a small farm on the outskirts of the empire as a thanks for his service, but no matter how far he travels, it’s impossible to escape the war’s devastating effects on the world.

Bandits, suspicious townsfolk, a mysterious pair of siblings, and a secret that lurks in the mountains all threaten John’s peace. It will take all of his considerable power to keep from burning everything to the ground.

From the embers of a burned America rises new hope … and a new threat.

Two years after an attack brought down the electrical grid across the United States, the recovery effort is well underway. A new network of armored trains carry supplies and industrial equipment crucial to rebuilding the country.

But along the rails, one area of America is still mired in darkness, violence, and danger. Some call it the Badlands. Others the Wild West. The government simply refers to it as the New Frontier.

Retired Marine Sergeant Sam “Raven” Spears makes a living tracking down people and treasures in this lawless void. When raiders target a supply train in the New Frontier, Colorado Sheriff Lindsey Plymouth asks Raven to work with ex-Navy SEAL
Calvin Jackson to secure the train’s vital cargo. All is going to plan until one fateful disaster changes everything.

As the trail heats up to find those responsible, a mysterious virus starts spreading across the New Frontier. Raven soon realizes the two events might be connected.

If he doesn’t find the insidious forces behind this conspiracy, the entire country will go up in flames.

Listener Note: New Frontier is a brand-new series set in the bestselling Trackers universe by Nicholas Sansbury Smith. For listeners of Trackers, this spin-off written with Anthony J. Melchiorri takes place two years after the end of Trackers
4. While Trackers was an EMP/war story about the destruction of the power grid in America and the chaos that followed, New Frontier is a story about the aftermath. For new listeners, you can dive into New Frontier without reading the four Trackers books.

With the mystery of the world deepening, John Sutton is running out of time.

The apocalypse is approaching as his Doom Points tick up and John is finding it harder and harder to keep it together. His deepening knowledge of magic seems to be helping but as a hidden society creeps out of the shadows, intent on
throwing the world into chaos, it may not be enough.

The only good news seems to be the new crops springing up on his farm.

Balancing his growing relationship with Ellie and the increasing productivity of the farm with the impending destruction of everything he fought for, John has no choice but to step back into the limelight, whether he wants to or not.

With shades of The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, and Game of Thrones, debut author Pierce Brown’s genre-defying epic Red Rising hit the ground running and wasted no time becoming a sensation. Golden Son continues the stunning saga of Darrow, a rebel forged by tragedy, battling to lead his oppressed people to freedom from the overlords of a brutal elitist future built on lies. Now fully embedded among the Gold ruling class, Darrow continues his work to bring down Society from within. A life-or-death tale of vengeance with an unforgettable hero at its heart, Golden Son guarantees Pierce Brown’s continuing status as one of fiction’s most exciting new voices.

Leyla McQueen has finally reunited with her father after breaking him out of Broadmoor–the illegal government prison–but his freedom comes at a terrible cost. As Leyla celebrates his return, she must grapple with the pain of losing Ari. Now separated from the boy who has her heart and labeled the nation’s number-one enemy, Leyla must risk illegal travel through unchartered waters in her quest for the truth behind her father’s arrest. Across Britain, the fallout from Leyla’s actions has escalated tensions between Anthropoid and non-Anthropoid communities, bringing them to an all-time high. And, as Leyla and her friends fight to uncover the startling truths about their world, she discovers her own shocking past–and the horrifying secrets behind her father’s abduction and arrest. But as these long-buried truths finally begin to surface, so, too, do the authorities’ terrible future plans. And if ever-pervasive fear prevents the people from taking a stand now, the abyss could stay in the dark forever.

Earth is dying…

Cities and landscapes that have not yet been destroyed by crashed spaceships and orbiting debris are being devastated by radiation and localized changes in the laws of physics near the alien ship remnants.

While extraterrestrial spaceships divide and exploit the solar system among themselves, Europe desperately tries to preserve it’s chances of survival for the remnants of humanity.

They have a pawn in hand that they must play. When they finally do, an opportunity opens up that humanity must immediately seize…but at what cost?

Book 2 in Bestseller Joshua T. Calvert’s next Science Fiction epic. A story of survival, invasion, and war that’s perfect for fans of Jay Allan, Joshua Dalzelle, and S.M. Anderson.

Collected here for the first time is every piece of short fiction from New York Times Bestseller Mira Grant’s acclaimed Newsflesh series, with two new never-before published novellas and all eight short works available for the first time in print.

We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, a man-made virus taking over bodies and minds, filling them with one, unstoppable command. . . FEED.

Mira Grant creates a chilling portrait of an America paralyzed with fear. No one leaves their houses and entire swaths of the country have been abandoned. And only the brave, the determined, or the very stupid, venture out into the wild.

Contents:
Countdown
Everglades
Sand Diego 2014
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus
All the Pretty Little Horses
Coming to You Live


More from Mira Grant:

Newsflesh
Feed
Deadline
Blackout
Feedback

Rise

Livvy Foster has a new heart, home, and a place in the powerful halls of House Windhook. The fall of Sliver was only the beginning of a civil war that sees angels from across the sky challenge each other to lead a world in which the past and the future are connected by a storm crafted from time, ambition, and power.

When House Selinus attempts to bend the light of days in order to become the supreme power in an apocalyptic future, they confront a goddess who is older than time itself–and she’ll stop at nothing to get the one soul who escaped her deadly grasp: Livvy.

With deceit, war, and love swirling in the clouds above the shattered world that was once Livvy’s home, she’ll be asked to do something a girl with a broken heart never thought possible.Fight for Windhook. Fight for her world.

Take wing with Livvy, one heartbeat at a time.

Captain Jack Hale and his crew of ragtag scavengers live by a code. They do the job, get paid, and keep their heads down.

Salvaging a distant section of the asteroid belt seemed like the perfect job. But when he and his crew stumble across a mining camp filled with dead bodies, their plans for a quick payday quickly go out the airlock. Especially when they find a
scared little girl who knows the truth about the massacre.

When Captain Hale refuses to turn over the survivor to those behind the slaughter, he and his crew become outlaws. Fugitives in a system controlled by an alien AI.

The odds are against him, but Captain Hale has an ace up his sleeve, or rather, in his blood. The secret might just give him an edge to beat Sol Corps at their own game, though exposing it will draw out an old and even more dangerous enemy.

The sins of his past may just be what saves the future for all mankind.

Kyle Washaki “Wash” Williams thought his life couldn’t get any more complicated. Then the aliens showed up …

After his mom died from cancer, Wash gave up his girlfriend and his dream of being a career Army officer to stay home and take care of his father, a former Special Forces soldier stricken with PTSD. Wash works three jobs just to pay the
bills, and one of them is at the ranch of the man who’s engaged to his exgirlfriend, Jimmy Bonner.

Sound rough? He thought so too … until a portal to a hell-world of giant, insectoid aliens opens behind the ranch house, sucking Wash and Jimmy into the nightmare domain of the Hive Mind, a monstrous, underground blob of brain tissue that
stretches across multiple planets through the Gate System.

It exists only to spread itself across the universe. And its next target is Earth.

Will Wash be able to defend the planet from conquest by a swarm of giant alien insects? And will Jimmy be able to put aside his rivalry with Wash to fight for Earth, or will he decide that an alien horde is the perfect tool to dispose of his old enemy?

The answer lies on the other side … of the Gates of Hell.

Survive. Build his Swarm. Dominate.

Think you’ve had a bad day at work? Marcus definitely takes the cake.

First, he had a horrible customer during his shift. Then he got fired by his boss. And after that, he got shot to death during a robbery. To top it all off, he awakened within the body of a weak and strange creature in a fantasy world full of deadly monsters.

And that’s just Monday!

Now Marcus will have to find a way to survive as a Vex Queen, but to do so his own bravery and determination are not enough. He needs to build a Hive that will protect him and the monsters are only the first of many threats to come…

Experience the start of a LitRPG-lite adventure with a unique, Real-Time Strategy twist. Follow Marcus’s struggle to survive while also keeping his humanity as he leads a hive-minded race and builds an army in a hostile fantasy world full of goblins, knights, magic and dragons!

THE WAR FOR REALITY HAS BEGUN!

It’s been ten years since the Confederation defeated the Nimic fleet and Zefir-Five has been destroyed, but the fight for peace in the galaxy is far from over.

Lt. Commander Johnny Rangers undertakes a special assignment in Gravity City, the galaxy’s capital, as an equalizer for the Gravity City Police Force, and finds himself fighting a new war against criminal elements, mutinous robots, and thugs led by the elusive criminal mastermind known as Dickey Jets.

When Rangers encounters a cybernetic orphan in an alleyway who is being hunted by the city’s most powerful people and mega-corporations, he finds himself in the biggest fight of his life yet.

Meanwhile, many of Gravity City’s youth have been recruited into an underground cyber-cult that worship a Khovalt artifact capable of altering and replicating reality called the Sleepwalker.

Book 2 of the Gravity City Series by CJ Valin and Artie Cabrera. Space will never be the same after this rip-roaring adventure across the stars!

The “king of hardcore action” (Brad Thor, New York Times bestselling author) and New York Times and #1 international bestselling author weaves a breathless thriller starring Jack West, Jr. that’s “a clever mix of history, mythology, and geography” (Associated Press).

A shadow world behind the real world…

When Jack West, Jr. won the Great Games, he threw the four legendary kingdoms into turmoil.

A world with its own history, rules and prisons…

Now these dark forces are coming after Jack…in ruthless fashion.

That is reaching into our world–explosively…

With the end of all things rapidly approaching, Jack must find the Three Secret Cities, three incredible lost cities of legend.

It’s an impossible task by any reckoning, but Jack must do it while he is being hunted…by the greatest hunters in history.

With Matthew Reilly’s signature “wave after wave of nonstop action” (Booklist), The Three Secret Cities is an electrifying rollercoaster ride of a thriller.

Discover this internationally bestselling, National Book Award–winning young adult classic about what it means to be human with an updated, reimagined cover!

Matt Alacrán wasn’t born. He was harvested.

His DNA came from El Patrón, the drug-lord ruler of the country of Opium. Most people hate and fear clones like Matt—except for El Patrón. El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself.

As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters, and realizes escape is his only chance to survive. But escape from the Alacr√°n Estate is no guarantee of freedom.

With the future of the Great Library in doubt, the unforgettable characters from Ink and Bone must decide if it’s worth saving in this thrilling adventure in the New York Times bestselling series. The corrupt leadership of the Great Library has fallen. But with the Archivist plotting his return to power, and the Library under siege from outside empires and kingdoms, its future is uncertain. Jess Brightwell and his friends must come together as never before, to forge a new future for the Great Library . . . or see everything it stood for crumble.

The new, thrilling novel featuring Jack West, Jr., from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Matthew Reilly.

Jack West, Jr. and his family are living contentedly on their remote farm when their lives are abruptly shattered. Jack is brutally kidnapped and he awakens in an underground cell to find a masked attacker with a knife charging at him. It seems he has been chosen–along with a dozen other elite soldiers–to compete in a series of deadly challenges designed to fulfill an ancient ritual. With the fate of the Earth at stake, he will have to traverse diabolical mazes, fight cruel assassins, and face unimaginable horrors that will test him like he has never been tested before. In the process, he will discover the mysterious and powerful group of individuals behind it all: the four legendary kingdoms. He might also discover that he is not the only hero in this place….

The action-packed, thrilling sequel to Ryan Graudin’s Wolf by Wolf.

There would be blood.

Blood for blood.

Blood to pay.

An entire world of it.

For the resistance in 1950s Germany, the war may be over, but the fight has just begun.

Death camp survivor Yael, who has the power to skinshift, is on the run: The world has just seen her shoot and kill Hitler. But the truth of what happened is far more complicated, and its consequences are deadly. Yael and her unlikely comrades dive into enemy territory to try to turn the tide against the New Order, and there is no alternative but to see their mission through to the end, whatever the cost.

But in the midst of the chaos, Yael’s past and future collide when she comes face-to-face with a ghost from her past, and a spark with a fellow rider begins to grow into something more. Dark secrets reveal dark truths, and one question hangs over them all–how far can you go for the ones you love?

This gripping, thought-provoking conclusion to Wolf by Wolf will grab readers by the throat with its cinematic writing, fast-paced action, and relentless twists.

“Wild and gorgeous, vivid and consuming. I loved it! I can’t wait for the sequel.”–Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, on Wolf by Wolf

Continue with book three in the Original series. Fans are calling this trilogy, “The best books to read after The Hunger Games and Divergent!” From Rachel McClellan, the USA Today bestselling author who brought you the Devil series, comes a new dystopian series that fans can’t stop talking about.

With Max and Colt taken by the Institute, Sage is desperate to get them back. So when the leader of the West resistance shows up and offers her a deal she can’t refuse, she eagerly accepts. Finally, she is in a position where she can exact revenge on Ebony and the Institute, while also saving the people she loves. But the deal she made came with a steep price, and now she only has so much time to fulfill her end of the bargain.

Surviving in space was the easy part …
I’m not alone anymore.
I’ve made it down from the solitude of the station, all the way to an incredible underground bunker complex.
Thousands of humanity’s best minds are by my side.
I’m surrounded by secret cutting-edge technologies that almost defy belief.
Too bad none of that is a match for what I’m up against now.
Because in just three days, the final stage of Ignacio Zola’s demented plan to reach a new world will eliminate all life on Earth–unless I can pull off a miracle.
The stakes couldn’t be any higher. The odds couldn’t be any longer.
I’m the man who uncovered Zola’s plan. And now, I’m the only man who can stop him.
This fight started in space and brought me deep below Earth’s surface.
But that’s nothing compared to what comes next …

Their war. Our extinction.

The catastrophe of P3X-888 becomes a question of fate for all mankind. The enemy rises and strikes the all-destructive final blow, even before it was understood on Earth what the war is about.

In the midst of a standoff that has been going on for millennia, Nikos and Jacek stumble into a conflict far greater than they could have ever imagined. Meanwhile, the leadership back home is still clueless and unaware that mankind’s doom has long since begun.

Book 3 in Bestseller Joshua T. Calvert’s next Science Fiction epic. A story of survival, invasion, and war that’s perfect for fans of Jay Allan, Joshua Dalzelle, and S.M. Anderson.

Gabriella “Gusty” Gomez lost her mother, and now she’s losing her home.

Gutsy and her friends, along with Benny Imura and his crew, have just survived a massive attack on New Alamo by the Night Army–a mix of mindless shambling los muertos and sentient half-zombie
ravagers. She’s also reeling from the revelation that the residents of her town were the lab rats of the biological testing facility linked to creating the most dangerous zom, the Raggedy Man, who controls
all of the living dead.

And the first raid was only a test. The real Night Army is coming, and this time, it’ll be a handful of survivors … against seven billion zombies.

In this thrilling second book in the Broken Lands series, the companion to the Rot & Ruin series, our heroes must confront immeasurable unknowns for a chance to move forward.

A daring rescue. Interstellar war. Reality-shattering conspiracy …

In the midst of fighting a reignited war with the deadly Nimic, Lt. Commander Johnny Rangers of the Confederation of Aligned Planets is dragged into a rescue mission by mysterious agent Koya Nyrus.

With his best friend’s life at stake, he finds himself on a restricted world full of secrets that could alter the course of the war. Meanwhile, Rangers’ father, Inspector Frank Branza of the Gravity City Police Force, sets out to uncover a vast conspiracy with plans to affect the very fabric of reality.

Little do the estranged father and son realize they’re on the same deadly path that will change the galaxy forever.

Don’t miss the start of the Gravity City series by CJ Valin and Artie Cabrera.

Space will never be the same after this rip-roaring adventure across the stars!

Includes the original Gravity City series theme song, “The Seven Titans,” composed by author Artie Cabrera

Mason Stark has a problem with minding his own business. This worked to his advantage when he stole back his world from the alien Tremist. Now Mason is called upon to use that very curiosity as a spy at the Tremist school for soldiers. At least his best friend, Merrin, daughter of the Tremist king, is there to keep an eye on him. Mason’s bound to find trouble, but with the Tremist working on a secret weapon, trouble may come looking for him instead.

In this stellar follow-up to The Planet Thieves, Dan Krokos imbues The Black Stars with all the tension and action that made his first middle-grade novel a gripping tale.

Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”– Scott Sigler Pierce Brown’ s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’ s Game by Orson Scott Card. ” I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. ” That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.” ” I live for you,” I say sadly. Eo kisses my cheek. ” Then you must live for more.” Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow– and Reds like him– are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class. Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’ s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’ s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.