Showing titles in Dystopian

When winter comes to the Court of Dreams, the war against the Subterranean of Nightmares freezes. To celebrate, the faerie queen holds a tournament where mortals compete for the prize of a dream come true. For outsider Willow Nightstalk, it's the only way to break the curse making her as ugly as she feels. But the deadly tournament has a darker purpose—to flush out flawed mortal blights on the perfectly pretty fae society… and to kill them.

The world's population is soaring, creating overcrowded cities and an economic crisis. And in the UK, breaking point has arrived. A growing number of people can no longer afford to start families let alone raise them. But for those desperate to experience parenthood, there is an alternative. For a monthly subscription fee, clients can create a virtual child from scratch who they can access via the metaverse and a VR headset. To launch this new initiative, the company behind Virtual Children has created a reality tv show.

Events are coming to a climax in the Banished Lands, as the war reaches new heights. King Nathair has seized the fortress at Drassil, and now possesses three of the Seven Treasures. And with Calidus and Queen Rhin, Nathair will do anything to obtain the rest. They will allow him to open a portal to the Otherworld – so Asroth and his demon-horde can break into the Banished Lands and finally become flesh.

A generation after the events of The Long Earth, mankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by Stepping. Where Joshua and Lobsang once pioneered, now fleets of airships link the stepwise Americas with trade and culture. Mankind is shaping the Long Earth - but in turn the Long Earth is shaping mankind...

Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her - a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda. The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.

London is in lockdown under martial law. A hospital is being urgently built by the river Thames to contain the thousands of victims of a flu-like epidemic. Construction is brought to a sudden halt when a leather holdall containing the bones of a child is unearthed from the rubble. A psychopath has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified. But why are he and his handlers determined to go to such murderous lengths to hide the origins of the body?

When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity. Cloning, feel-good drugs, anti-aging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media: has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 A.F. (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.

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.

The peaceful life of a village in Wiltshire is suddenly shattered by a disaster which strikes without reason or explanation, leaving behind it a trail of misery and horror. A yawning, bottomless crack spreads through the earth, out of which creeps a fog that resembles no other. Whatever it is, it must be controlled; for wherever it goes it leaves behind a trail of disaster as hideous as the tragedy that marked its entry into the world. The fog, quite simple, drives people insane.

A city is hit by a sudden and strange epidemic of "white blindness", which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there social conventions quickly crumble and the struggle for survival brings out the worst in people.

Deep underground, 39 women are kept in isolation in a cage. Aboveground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus? Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the 40th prisoner - sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them aboveground.

The Banished Lands are engulfed in war and chaos. The cunning Queen Rhin has conquered the west and High King Nathair has the cauldron, most powerful of the seven treasures. At his back stands the scheming Calidus and a warband of the Kadoshim, dread demons of the Otherworld. They plan to bring Asroth and his host of the Fallen into the world of flesh, but to do so they need the seven treasures. Nathair has been deceived but now he knows the truth. He has choices to make; choices that will determine the fate of the Banished Lands.

One day changed the world forever. Billions died. A small handful of survivors braved the apocalyptic wasteland to start again. This is their story.

Walter Lawrence Baucom is used to the troops that patrol Agrarian District 89. He grew up with the sight of Chinese and Russian soldiers, right alongside the American ones. They are the Coalition. "The Three Brothers", they call themselves. They claim that they are there to help. And he thinks that if he doesn't rock the boat, then they will never have a reason to break in his door and disappear him, like they did to his brother.

After a long, perilous journey, Hell Divers Xavier Rodriguez and Magnolia Katib discover the Metal Islands, a sunny, habitable zone where thousands of people live by fishing and farming. But this "paradise" is really a violent warrior society ruled by the cannibal King el Pulpo. For the first time in X's life, he is forced to lay down his arms and surrender.

Structured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, there are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.

Zoe loves teaching science, she loves her garden, and most of all she loves her quiet, peaceful bungalow. Then at school, people start falling ill. The virus is airborne and highly infectious. It starts with flu symptoms, confusion, and sleepiness, which worsen until one day they just don't wake up. It decimates the population and leaves chaos in its wake. Now Zoe has to find a way to survive. Luckily, when the pandemic strikes, she already has a greenhouse full of vegetable seedlings, but not everyone around is as prepared.

Ranger Quinn thought that morning would be like so many others. A hangover, a day off before going back to work keeping the lower levels of Zion City safe from itself. But a crime so horrific, so brutal in its execution, turns those mundane expectations around. An investigation into the death of a senior leader in their underground utopia safe from the harsh radioactive wastelands beyond their walls forces Quinn beyond that safety and into the world outside.

Iris was born twenty-eight years ago during the unrest, when every birth required a life to be sacrificed. Since then, fertile women’s rights have been curtailed in further attempts to reduce the population. Deemed as a dangerous nuisance, restrictions are in place on where fertile women can work and socialise, as well as what internet access they are allowed. Iris has been a good citizen and has followed every rule imposed upon her. But when new and even more sinister methods to reduce the population are enforced, Iris can’t accept it any more.

It all happened so quickly. First, animals became infected with the virus and their meat became poisonous. Then, governments initiated the Transition. Now, 'special meat' - human meat - is legal. Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans, only no one calls them that. He works with numbers, consignments, processing. One day, he's given a gift to seal a deal: a specimen of the finest quality. He leaves her in his barn, tied up, a problem to be disposed of later. But the specimen haunts Marcos. Her trembling body, her eyes that watch him, that seem to understand.