
Top 30 Dystopian Books
Dystopian books paint a gripping, cautionary portrait of the future—where control tightens, environments crumble, or society stalls. These are sharp, unsettling tales that spark reflection as they race toward tense, heart-pounding climaxes.
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⭐ Book Club Top Pick ⭐
The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand
An original short story anthology based on master storyteller Stephen King’s #1 New York Times bestselling classic The Stand!
Since its initial publication in 1978, The Stand has been considered Stephen King’s seminal masterpiece of apocalyptic fiction, with millions of copies sold and adapted twice for television. Although there are other extraordinary works exploring the unraveling of human society, none have been as influential as this iconic novel—generations of writers have been impacted by its dark yet ultimately hopeful vision of the end and new beginning of civilization, and its stunning array of characters.
Now for the first time, Stephen King has fully authorized a return to the harrowing world of The Stand through this original short story anthology as presented by award-winning authors and editors Christopher Golden and Brian Keene. Bringing together some of today’s greatest and most visionary writers, The End of the World As We Know It features unforgettable, all-new stories set during and after (and some perhaps long after) the events of The Stand—brilliant, terrifying, and painfully human tales that will resonate with readers everywhere as an essential companion to the classic, bestselling novel.
The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey
After a very different outcome to WWII than the one history recorded, 1979 England is a country ruled by a government whose aims have sinister underpinnings and alliances.
In the Hampshire countryside, 13-year-old triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents at the Captain Scott Home for Boys, where every day they must take medicine to protect themselves from a mysterious illness to which many of their friends have succumbed. The lucky ones who recover are allowed to move to Margate, a seaside resort of mythical proportions.
In nearby Exeter, 13-year-old Nancy lives a secluded life with her parents, who dote on her but never let her leave the house.
As the triplets’ lives begin to intersect with Nancy’s, bringing to light a horrifying truth about their origins and their likely fate, the children must unite to escape – and survive.
The Sovereign by Jamie McGuire
In their city-state of Hyperion Proper, conformity isn’t forced—it’s earned. Adversity has been eliminated, crime is nonexistent, and on their thirtieth birthday, every Sovereign citizen receives a custom-designed partner—a Supplicant—engineered for devotion, built to meet their every want and need.
For Isara Poeima, that partner is Maxim: flawless, breathtaking, irrevocably hers. She’s dreamed of him her entire life, spent nearly a year perfecting him, and now she’s moments away from finally seeing him in person, hearing his voice, feeling her hand in his.
What she doesn’t know—and what Hyperion is desperate to conceal—is that humans weren’t meant to experience life without adversity. Ease may comfort the body, but it emaciates the soul.
In a society polished by prescribed excellence, deviation is quietly discouraged and curiosity walks the edge of treason—both burdens Isara and Maxim quietly carry. But when even a single spark of doubt can threaten the system, her bond with an anomalous Supplicant like Maxim becomes something far more than love: a sanctuary, and a rebellion.
Outside the safety of Hyperion’s wall, a war is brewing—and Maxim and Isara are fated to ignite it, whether they will it or not.
Local Heavens by K.M. Fajardo
A corporate hacker. An elusive billionaire. A society trying to survive the American Nightmare.
New York City, 2075. Filipino American Nick Carraway has just moved to the heart of the fractured New Americas, where he’s struck by the city’s contradictions—shining corporate towers casting bleak shadows over the slums of a crumbling middle class.
When Nick meets alluring, new-money Jay Gatsby, he falls for Gatsby’s frank charm and confident aura. But in a city where the wealthy flaunt tech-enhanced bodies to cheat death, surfaces aren’t all they seem—and as a corporate-sanctioned cyberspace hacker, Nick knows that no secret can stay buried forever. He’s the reason they don’t. And his latest assignment? Investigate Gatsby himself.
As Nick becomes entangled in the dark affairs of the elite—and the devastating fallout of their actions on the city’s most vulnerable—he must reckon with the limits of compassion and accountability across class and status. What takes precedence: Love or truth? Heart or soul?
Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei
In Earth's not too distant future, seas consume coastal cities, highways disintegrate underwater, and mutant fish lurk in pirate-controlled depths. Skipper, a skilled sailor and the youngest of three sisters, earns money skimming and reselling plastic from the ocean to care for her ailing grandmother.
But then her eldest sister, Nora, goes missing. Nora left home a decade ago in pursuit of a cure for failing crops all over the world. When Skipper and her other sister, Carmen, receive a cryptic plea for help, they must put aside their differences and set out across the sea to find―and save―her. As they voyage through a dying world both beautiful and strange, encountering other travelers along the way, they learn more about their sister's work and the corporations that want what she discovered.
But the farther they go, the more uncertain their mission becomes: What dangerous attention did Nora attract, and how well do they really know their sister―or each other? Thus begins an epic journey spanning oceans and continents and a wistful rumination on sisterhood, friendship, and ecological disaster.
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
In a near-future Kolkata, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.
Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom.
With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.
Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler
In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power.
Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.
As the Federation and the West both start to crumble, Lilia, the brilliant scientist whose invention may be central to bringing down the seemingly immortal President, goes on the run, trying to break out from a near-impenetrable web of Federation surveillance.
Her fate is bound up with a worldwide group of others fighting against the global status quo: Palmer, the man Lilia left behind in London, desperate to solve the mystery of her disappearance; Zoya, a veteran activist imprisoned in the taiga, whose book has inspired a revolutionary movement; Nikolai, the President’s personal physician, who has been forced into more and more harrowing decisions as he navigates the Federation’s palace politics; and Nurlan, the hapless parliamentary staffer whose attempt to save his Republic goes terribly awry. And then there is Krotov, head of the Federation’s security services, whose plots, agents, and assassins are everywhere.
The Compound by Aisling Rawle
Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show.
To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door.
Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart?
As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation.
When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur.
If Lily makes it to the end, she’ll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams—but what will she have to do to win?
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, ‘A Corona for Vivien’. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery.
2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, ‘A Corona for Vivian’. How wild and full of risk their lives were, thinks Thomas, as he pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem’s discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.
What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
Best of All Worlds by Kenneth Oppel
Xavier Oaks doesn't particularly want to go to the cabin with his dad and his dad's pregnant new wife, Nia. But family obligations are family obligations, and it's only for a short time.
So he leaves his mom, his brother, and his other friends behind for a week in the woods. Only... one morning he wakes up and the house isn’t where it was before. It's like it's been lifted and placed... somewhere else.
When Xavier, his dad, and Nia go explore, they find they are inside a dome, trapped. And there's no one else around...
Until, three years later, another family arrives.
Is there any escape? Is there a reason they are stuck where they are? Different people have different answers -- and those different answers inexorably lead to tension, strife, and sacrifice.
The Things We Leave Behind by Clare Furniss
In the near future, in a world that could be, but is not quite, ours, sixteen-year-old Clem is happy.
Celebrating her birthday surrounded by friends, family and a warm summer evening, there’s nothing that could ruin this day.
But by morning, everything has changed . . . After years of a growing totalitarian regime, civil unrest in London has reached an all-time high, and it’s no longer safe to stay in the city.
Fleeing with nothing but her half-sister Billie, a notebook filled with stories and memories of home, Clem must make the treacherous journey to Edinburgh, first by road and then by boat.
What waits for the sisters on the other side – the start of a new life, or a mirror held up to the past?
The Duty by Claire Vale
First they named it: The Fertility Plague. Next they categorized it: An extinction level event.
The last naturally conceived child was born over a century ago. The Fertility Plague stripped us of the ability to conceive. Then it stripped our freedom.
Born inside the walls of Capra, I’ve spent my life preparing to be a wife, homemaker and mother. Graduation means marriage and fulfilling my role in society. Girls who don’t graduate are removed. Life isn’t perfect, but the alternative is unacceptable.
This is the Eastern Coalition. This is what’s left of civilization and the future of the human race. This is me, a girl trapped between duty and rebellion and a darkly beautiful boy. But I’m also a Sister of Capra, and when we rise in rebellion, we will light this world on fire.
You Could Be So Pretty by Holly Bourne
“The Doctrine exists to make us believe we are less than, so we don’t have the strength to overthrow everything. Masking, and Ceremonies, and Chosen Ones – how we’re all groomed to worry constantly about what we look like – it’s a deliberate pressure. It’s designed to keep us down. To limit us. Divide us. Masks…Beauty…it’s all about weakening and dividing us.”
Belle Gentle follows the rules of The Doctrine to the letter and is so close to Having It All. She’s the highest Pretty in school, A Chosen One in her spare time, and she’s about to win The Ceremony and fulfil her destiny. So why does she feel so suffocated by her perfect life?
Joni Miller is an Objectionable and hated by everyone for her repulsive looks. But Joni doesn’t care. She just needs to win the Scholarship to The Education, so she get the power to overthrow The Doctrine and wake everyone up. The only person standing in her way is the prettiest girl in school.
Set in a dystopian world, of normalised sexual violence, and where girls are expected to maintain impossible beauty standards of beauty, You Could Be So Pretty explores what happens when two enemies are thrown together. As Belle and Joni confront their prejudices, the reader is left asking themselves: Is this world really so far from our own?
Harvest Day by Tamar Sloan
The loss of bees was heralded as the sixth wave of extinction. Economies crashed. Ecosystems collapsed. Wars were waged as countless starved. Luckily, humans were able to alter bees’ genetic code to deal with the hazards of pesticides and disease.
Inadvertently making their venom fatal to humans.
River grew up in the Green Zone, a haven for those who are Immune. Bees are free to fly, pollinating their prolific crops. Echo was raised in the Dead Zone where bees are exterminated so vulnerable humans like her can live. Stealing from the heavily guarded Green Zone is a necessary part of survival.
River and Echo are both in their seventeenth year. They’re both about to have their immunity tested. And they’re both about to have their futures forever altered.
Ultimately, they’re about to become part of the final fight for human survival. Are bees really the enemy they need to defeat? Or is mankind a far greater threat…
Chosen by Shade Owens
One dose is all it takes to become immortal.
Every year, a lottery is held for the hard-working people of Lutum.
The prize? Eternal life.
And everyone wants it. Well, everyone except for seventeen-year-old Silverstasia Blackwood. She doesn't think it's fair that the rich get to live luxurious lives, while the people of Lutum are enslaved, forced to work hard every day to support the immortals.
When something unexpected happens during this year's annual lottery, Silver makes a bold move that surprises everyone.
Now, everything is about to change.
Followers by Megan Angelo
Orla Cadden is a budding novelist stuck in a dead-end job, writing clickbait about movie-star hookups and influencer yoga moves. Then Orla meets Floss—a striving, wannabe A-lister—who comes up with a plan for launching them both into the high-profile lives they dream about. So what if Orla and Floss’s methods are a little shady—and sometimes people get hurt? Their legions of followers can’t be wrong.
Thirty-five years later, in a closed California village where government-appointed celebrities live every moment of the day on camera, a woman named Marlow discovers a shattering secret about her past. Despite her massive popularity—twelve million loyal followers—Marlow dreams of fleeing the corporate sponsors who would do anything to keep her on-screen. When she learns that her whole family history is based on a lie, Marlow finally summons the courage to run in search of the truth, no matter the risks.
Followers traces the paths of Orla, Floss and Marlow as they wind through time toward each other, and toward a cataclysmic event that sends America into lasting upheaval. At turns wry and tender, bleak and hopeful, this darkly funny story reminds us that even if we obsess over famous people we’ll never meet, what we really crave is genuine human connection.
The Feral Sentence by Shade Owens
She came here a prisoner. She’ll leave a predator—if she leaves at all.
The other inmates? Murderers. Ruthless. Bloodthirsty. But Lydia? Her crime was an accident.
That doesn’t matter now.
Because this island is more than a prison. It’s a world without law, where civilization has crumbled and survival depends on one thing—choosing the right side. Clans rule the land. Alliances mean life or death. And the weak? They don’t last long.
Lydia has no idea what awaits her. But one thing is certain—if she wants to survive, she’ll have to become something else… A hunter. A fighter. A killer.
Or she’ll die like the rest.
Impostors by Scott Westerfeld
Frey and Rafi are inseparable . . . two edges of the same knife. But only one of them is ever seen in public.
Frey is Rafi's twin sister-and her body double. Their powerful father has many enemies, and the world has grown dangerous as the old order falls apart.
So while Rafi was raised to be the perfect daughter, Frey has been taught to kill. Her only purpose is to protect her sister, to sacrifice herself for Rafi if she must.
When her father sends Frey in Rafi's place as collateral in a precarious deal, she becomes the perfect impostor.
But Col, the son of a rival leader, is getting close enough to spot the killer inside her...
Recruitment by K.A. Riley
In the Valta, no matter what month you were born, everyone is assigned the same birthday. November 1st. It's the anniversary of the day when the government declared war on the Eastern Order.
The day you turn seventeen, the Recruiters come to take you away. And no one ever hears from you again. It's October 31st. Today, Kress is sixteen years old. Tomorrow, she'll be taken.
The good news? So will her best friend Cardyn, and Brohn, the handsome, enigmatic boy she's avoided all her life. The bad news? Recruitment isn't what any of them expected.
Weeks of training await. Military and psychological tests, escape rooms, hand-to-hand combat. The Recruits are told they're the key to winning the war. But with each day that passes, things begin to make less sense.
If only Kress had been able to bring her trained raven, Render, with her. If only none of them had ever had to come to this place.
Renegades by Marissa Meyer
Secret Identities. Extraordinary Powers. She wants vengeance. He wants justice.
The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies — humans with extraordinary abilities — who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned.
As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone... except the villains they once overthrew.
Nova has a reason to hate the Renegades, and she is on a mission for vengeance.
As she gets closer to her target, she meets Adrian, a Renegade boy who believes in justice — and in Nova.
But Nova's allegiance is to a villain who has the power to end them both.
Scythe by Neal Shusterman
A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery: humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death.
Now Scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.
Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants.
These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.
Scythe is the first novel of a thrilling new series by National Book Award–winning author Neal Shusterman in which Citra and Rowan learn that a perfect world comes only with a heavy price.
The V Girl by Mya Robarts
In post-apocalyptic North America two emerging nations are at war and sexual slavery is legal. Lila Velez desperately wants to lose her virginity before the troops visit her town and take it away by force. She makes plans to seduce her only friend. Lila does not love him, but he is the only man who has shown her true affection, an affection she is willing to take as a substitute for love.
Lila hides a secret that will bring her closer to Aleksey Fürst, a foreign, broody man who she distrusts because of his links to the troops and his rough, yet irresistible appearance. He offers Lila an alternative to her plans, a possibility that terrifies her…and tempts her in spite of herself.
With threats looming at every turn and no way to escape, Lila fears that falling in love will only lead to more heartache. The consequences of laying down her arms for Aleksey and welcoming hope might destroy more than her heart. They might force her to face the worst of her nightmares becoming a reality. Is love possible in a world that has forgotten what the human touch is?
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
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 toils willingly, trusting 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 lush wilds 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.
The Bees by Laline Paull
Flora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive where work and sacrifice are the highest virtues and worship of the beloved Queen the only religion. But Flora is not like other bees. With circumstances threatening the hive’s survival, her curiosity is regarded as a dangerous flaw but her courage and strength are an asset. She is allowed to feed the newborns in the royal nursery and then to become a forager, flying alone and free to collect pollen. She also finds her way into the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers mysteries about the hive that are both profound and ominous.
But when Flora breaks the most sacred law of all—daring to challenge the Queen’s fertility—enemies abound, from the fearsome fertility police who enforce the strict social hierarchy to the high priestesses jealously wedded to power. Her deepest instincts to serve and sacrifice are now overshadowed by an even deeper desire, a fierce maternal love that will bring her into conflict with her conscience, her heart, her society—and lead her to unthinkable deeds.
Thrilling, suspenseful and spectacularly imaginative, The Bees gives us a dazzling young heroine and will change forever the way you look at the world outside your window.
The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Isn't that what they say? But how close is too close when they may be one and the same?
The Seven Stages War left much of the planet a charred wasteland. The future belongs to the next generation's chosen few who must rebuild it. But to enter this elite group, candidates must first pass The Testing—their one chance at a college education and a rewarding career.
Cia Vale is honoured to be chosen as a Testing candidate; eager to prove her worthiness as a University student and future leader of the United Commonwealth. But on the eve of her departure, her father's advice hints at a darker side to her upcoming studies—trust no one.
But surely she can trust Tomas, her handsome childhood friend who offers an alliance? Tomas, who seems to care more about her with the passing of every gruelling (and deadly) day of the Testing.
To survive, Cia must choose: love without truth or life without trust.
The Program by Suzanne Young
Sloane knows better than to cry in front of anyone. With suicide now an international epidemic, one outburst could land her in The Program, the only proven course of treatment.
Sloane’s parents have already lost one child; Sloane knows they’ll do anything to keep her alive. She also knows that everyone who’s been through The Program returns as a blank slate. Because their depression is gone—but so are their memories.
Under constant surveillance at home and at school, Sloane puts on a brave face and keeps her feelings buried as deep as she can.
The only person Sloane can be herself with is James. He’s promised to keep them both safe and out of treatment, and Sloane knows their love is strong enough to withstand anything.
But despite the promises they made to each other, it’s getting harder to hide the truth. They are both growing weaker. Depression is setting in.
And The Program is coming for them.
The Sowing by K. Makansi
Remy Alexander wants vengeance. When she and her friends discover a clue that could help reveal the truth behind the massacre that claimed her sister's life, she may finally get her chance.
Valerian Orlean wants answers. Why the girl he was in love with disappeared three years ago. Why she joined the Resistance - a covert organization sworn to destroy everything he believes in.
When he is appointed to lead a government program whose mission is to hunt and destroy the Resistance, he may finally find his answers - and Remy.
In a world where the powerful kill to keep their secrets, and the food you eat can change who you are, Remy and Vale are set on a collision course that could bring everyone together - or tear everything apart.
Life First by R.J. Crayton
Strong-willed Kelsey Reed must escape tonight or tomorrow her government will take her kidney and give it to someone else.
She’ll need the help of her true love, Luke, to make this dangerous escape. This dystopian future Kelsey lives in was forged by survivors of pandemics that wiped out 80 percent of the world's population.
Here, life is valued above all else. The mentally ill are sterilized, abortions are illegal and those who refuse to donate an organ when told are sentenced to death.
Determined not to give up her kidney or die, Kelsey and Luke enlists the help of a dodgy doctor to escape. The trio must disable the electronic tracking chip in Kelsey's arm for her to flee undetected. If they fail, Kelsey could be stripped of Luke, her kidney and everything else she holds dear.
The Selection by Kiera Cass
For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime.
The opportunity to escape a rigid caste system, live in a palace, and compete for the heart of gorgeous Prince Maxon.
But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare.
It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her, and competing for a crown she doesn’t want.
Then America meets Prince Maxon—and realizes that the life she’s always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined.
Legend by Marie Lu
What was once the western United States is now home to the Republic, a nation perpetually at war with its neighbors.
Born into an elite family in one of the Republic's wealthiest districts, fifteen-year-old June is a prodigy being groomed for success in the Republic's highest military circles.
Born into the slums, fifteen-year-old Day is the country's most wanted criminal. But his motives may not be as malicious as they seem.
From very different worlds, June and Day have no reason to cross paths - until the day June's brother, Metias, is murdered and Day becomes the prime suspect.
Caught in the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family's survival, while June seeks to avenge Metias's death.
But in a shocking turn of events, the two uncover the truth of what has really brought them together, and the sinister lengths their country will go to keep its secrets.



























































