Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Dystopian

When a hidden evil emerges from the depths of the ocean, the tight-knit town of Baywood is caught in a climate disaster of mysterious origins: an unusual wave of sea snails enter the estuary and transform wildlife, seascapes, and finally, people. Once infected, residents start “deading”: collapsing and dying, only to resurrect, changed in ways both physical and fundamental. After the government isolates Baywood, paranoia and surveillance run rampant. A newly formed cult called the Risers starts targeting those who are not deading.

Masks, the first novel in a mesmerizing new fantasy series, draws readers into a world in which cataclysmic events have left the Autarchy of Aygrima - the one land blessed with magical resources - cut off from its former trading partners across the waters, not knowing if any of those distant peoples still live. Yet under the rule of the Autarch, Aygrima survives. And thanks to the creation of the Masks and the vigilance of the Autarch’s Watchers, no one can threaten the security of the empire.

A month ago, the supernova Aeon detonated in the skies over Antarctica. Global sea levels rose by five feet, temperatures by ten degrees. A mass human and animal exodus to the north is underway even as the global electronics and power and communications grids have been destroyed. Max Carver made it back to America in time to be with Talisha and witness the birth of their child, Charlotte, but he was unsuccessful in stopping Ben Belloc from leaving he Amazon with the Colony technology. Rumors surface that Ben has landed in Louisiana, in the town Max and Ben grew up in together.

In dystopian Mafinga, Jasmin must contend with a dictator’s sorcerer to cleanse the socialist state of its deadly pollution. Mafinga's malevolent king dislikes books and, together with his sorcerer Atari, has collapsed the environment to become almost uninhabitable. The sun has killed all the able men, including Jasmin’s husband Godi. But Jasmin has Godi’s secret story machine that tells of a better world, far different from the wastelands of Mafinga. Jasmin’s crime for possessing the machine and its forbidden literature filled with subversive text is punishable by death.

As Kinnall Darival writes "I" in his journal, he knows this pronoun is forbidden by his people of Manneran because it is too personal. But through the use of a powerful, mind-altering drug, he has learned to understand what people are really feeling and to speak for himself. Now he is compelled to share his message of liberation, regardless of the risk. This science fiction classic is a cult favorite from a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author.

The year is 2038, and the formerly bustling town of Three Rivers, Texas, is a surreal wasteland. Under the authoritarian thumb of its tech industrialist mayor, Pablo Henry Crick, the town has outlawed reading and forced most of the town’s mothers to work as indentured laborers at the Big Tex Fish Cannery, which poisons the atmosphere and lines Crick’s pockets. Scraping by in this godforsaken landscape are best friends Prosperina and Neftalí—the latter of whom, one of the town’s last literate citizens, hides and reads the books of the mysterious renegade author Jazzmin Monelle Rivas.

In Masks, Mara Holdfast's life changed forever. As the daughter of the Autarch’s Master Maskmaker, she had a clearly defined future: a quiet, ordered life in the capital, making Masks with her father and doing work important to the ruling Autarch. But when her Mask, specially made by her own father, cracked and fell to pieces during her Masking ceremony, Mara was exiled from everything she once knew.Now she has become part of an underground rebellion, rejecting the unjust rules of a Masked society.

Demography is destiny. In the 22nd century, European deathbed demographics have turned the continent over to the more fertile Moslems. Atheism in Europe has been exterminated. Homosexuals are hanged, stoned, or crucified. Such Christians as remain are relegated to dhimmitude, a form of second-class citizenship.

With General Arika Cobane at the helm, the rebels take control of the Kongo territory and elect a council to negotiate peace. Everything changes when the council concedes to a last-minute English demand: The war criminal, Arika Cobane, must stand trial for crimes carried out during the revolution. A fugitive of the law, Arika flees north; determined to prove the council has been infiltrated. As she uproots lies and uncovers secrets, the line between English and Kongo, friend and foe dissolves—her hatred festers and she fears even her beloved Hosea Khan can't be trusted.

In an all too imaginable future, where the privileged lead lives untouched by wars that have become a global pastime, disenfranchised young people who “volunteer” to become super soldiers are injected with nano technology that repeatedly brings them back from death. In a race against time, one such soldier and an analyst struggle to understand strange phenomena that occur after too many resurrections: glitches known as nostalgia, which even in the midst of combat can hurtle a soldier into the past. But after eight, nine, even ten resurrections lies something much worse than just glitches.

The collapse of civilization has left the survivors scattered among a few settlements along the wilderness fringe of a land ravaged by war. Preyed upon by roving bands of sadistic ex-soldiers and ever at the mercy of a natural world that has turned against them, a family is facing their final days. Hope appears in the guise of their young son. Raised in isolation and taught by his father to survive at any cost, he is thrust headlong into a battle for the future of humankind.

When a dust storm engulfs her Colorado town and pink snow blankets the streets, a heartbreaking decision faces Ruby Cole, a girl who counts birds. She must either abandon her baby or give in to her father, whom she nicknames Lord God, and marry a man more than twice her age who already has two wives. She chooses to run, which sets in motion an interlocking series of actions and reactions, upending the lives of an equestrian police officer, pawnshop riffraff, a disabled war vet, Nuisance Animal destroyers, and a grieving ornithologist who is studying the decline of bird populations.

After World War III, Earth is in ruins, and the final armies have come to a reluctant truce. Everyone must obey the law - in every way - or risk shattering the fragile peace and endangering the entire human race. Although Arika Cobane is a member of the race whose backbreaking labor provides food for the remnants of humanity, she is destined to become a member of the Kongo elite. After 10 grueling years of training, she is on the threshold of taking her place of privilege far from the fields. But everything changes when a new student arrives.

Three teenagers are traveling northeast in a navy blue Ford pickup. Turi fled his abusive family at the border to see the beautiful New England landscape he’s always dreamed about. Arnulfo is undocumented and wants only to find someplace safe and quiet. Molly seeks a new life far away from her nowhere Missouri town. Turi and Arnulfo are best friends. Molly and Turi are falling in love. But for all their innocence, violence follows the trio at every turn.