Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists: Dystopian Fiction

Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation. The house owners arrive in the middle of the night in a panic. They say a sudden blackout has swept the city. Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a safe place for their families? And are they safe from one other?
(Description from catalog)

Sensing something is wrong with his owner, a domesticated crow abandons the only life he ever knew to discover that humans are turning into zombies and must use knowledge gleaned from his TV-viewing to save them. - description from Novelist

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough. Until Frida has a very bad day.
(Description from Amazon)

A security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment that only six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte can stop. (Description from catalog.)

After a global nuclear war begins, Jon Keller and a small group of survivors at a hotel in Switzerland try to maintain some semblance of civilization, only to discover the murdered body of a young girl in the hotel's water tanks. (Description from NoveList.)

When her husband murders their son and abducts their daughter, grief-stricken and vengeful Essun pursues him across The Stillness, a vast and dynamic super-continent on the brink of catastrophe that will usher in a "fifth season," a time of uncertainty and hardship. But Essun is as formidable as the land she traverses -- she's an orogene, which means that she can shape the contours of the land. Although she's spent much of her life hiding from those who would kill her on account of her race, Essun is about to prove how dangerous a woman on a mission can be. (Description from NoveList.)

An accident occurs in an Army lab causing a horrific disaster and a plague virus sweeps the U.S. leaving only a handful of survivors. (Description from catalog)

One snowy night a famous actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time--from the actor's early days as a film star to twenty years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains--this elegiac novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. (Description from NoveList)

An Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance finds a young novelist hiding her editor from mysterious authorities who would erase all memories of people who once existed. (Description from NoveList.)

A resistance group takes America's racial reckoning into its own hands. (Description from NoveList)

"Margaret Atwood's best-loved novel has taken the world by storm again. Riding high on bestseller lists for months and the basis for Hulu's Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning smash hit series, The Handmaid's Tale is everywhere--and it's primed for a stunning new graphic novel adaptation. The story is iconic: In the Republic of Gilead, a Handmaid named Offred lives in the home of the Commander, to the purpose that she become pregnant with his child. Stripped of her most basic freedoms, (work, property, her own name), Offred remembers a different time, not so long ago, when she was valuable for more than her viable ovaries, when she was mother to a daughter she could keep, and when she and her husband lived and loved as equals. Darkly prescient, scathingly sarcastic, and eminently frightening, The Handmaid's Tale has only gained relevance since it was originally published, and remains one of the most powerful, widely read stories of our times. This illustrated edition is a must-have for Atwood's growing legions of fans"-- Provided by publisher.

In a future totalitarian state where books are banned and destroyed by the government, Guy Montag, a fireman in charge of burning books, meets a revolutionary schoolteacher who dares to read and a girl who tells him of a past when people did not live in fear ... This sixtieth-anniversary edition commemorates Ray Bradbury's masterpiece with a new introduction by Neil Gaiman ; personal essays on the genesis of the novel by the author; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Nelson Algren, Harold Bloom, Margaret Atwood, and others; rare manuscript pages and sketches from Ray Bradbury's personal archive; and much more ... --- From back cover.

"A motley crew of outcasts finds themselves caught up in a deadly power struggle for control of an ancient artifact of immense power. This striking sci-fi love letter to the African continent whisks you from the neon-drenched megalopolis of Eko City, Nigeria, to the sun-kissed estuaries of the Niger Delta." (description from book)

"Long after the demise of humankind, birds roam freely around a new earth complete with fruitful trees, sophisticated fungal networks, and an enviable socialist order. The universal worm feeds all, there are no weekends, and economics is as fantastical a study as unicorn psychology. No concept of money or wealth plagues the thoughts of these free-minded birds. Instead, there are angsty teens who form bands to show off their best bird song and other youngsters who yearn to become clothing designers even though clothes are only necessary during war. (The truly honorable professions for most birds are historian or librarian.) These birds are free to crush on hot pelicans and live their best lives until a crash-landed human from Earth threatens to change everything."--Amazon.

"From the cinematic mind of Atsushi Kaneko comes a contemporary reimagining of the timeless, Eisner Award-winning Dororo, by "God of Manga" Osamu Tezuka. This is a tale of rage. Rage against hypocrisy, injustice, exploitation, and the wrongs done to a child who grew into a righteous killer....Complete in three volumes, Search and Destroy transplants the vengeful action of Dororo from feudal Japan into a dystopian future where mercenary robots known as "creatures" serve the human elite and victimize the city's scrabbling, desperate masses. The violent death of one of these creatures connects an orphaned thief named Doro with a mysterious girl in a stinking animal hide that conceals deadly cybernetic implants. Who is this mysterious girl? How is she killing, one by one, the city's most twisted and powerful creatures?"--Amazon.com.

"On the broken and warped world known as the Hand Planet, the wanderer simply called Faceless ekes out existence on the margins to escape the shame that cost him his name and his identity. Exiled for his crimes, Faceless now calls the wastelands his home--until the good fortune of fate delivers him a mismatched band of fellow travelers who will soon become family . . . if they can survive a suicidal mission into the Hand Planet's class-segregated Finger Cities to restore what lies beneath Faceless's helmet and, with it, his hope in humanity" -- Provided by publisher.