Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Dystopian

2035: In the shadow of a race course, a young woman finds a robot named Coli on a scrap heap, contemplating the sky. Intrigued, she takes him into her care and learns how he is designed to be a humanoid jockey who has mistakenly been programmed to have feelings. She and Coli are determined to rescue his beloved race horse who is heading for the knackers' yard after a lifetime of overwork. To remind the horse of happier times, they hatch a special plan to let her run another race. But it will be no ordinary event—they will train her to run the slowest time of her life.

Entire cities disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but dust and rubble. When an alien race came to make Earth theirs, they brought with them a weapon we had no way to fight, a universe-altering force known as thelemity. It seemed nothing could stop it - until we discovered we could wield the power, too. Five hundred years later, the Earth is locked in a grinding war of attrition. The talented few capable of bending thelemity to their will are trained in elite military academies, destined for the front lines.

Everything changed when scientists discovered the drug. It looked like the cure for aging, but comes with a price tag. The blood of “carriers” is the most valuable commodity on earth. When treated with a new wonder drug, it cures disease, increases power, and makes the recipient a virtual superman. It also makes the carriers targets. Young people with the right genes are ripped from their families and stashed in “blood farms”. Ellie Bautista became an LAPD officer specifically to fight this evil as a member of the Blood Squad, but her ambitions are thwarted....

In a troubling, near-future Cape Town four broken people try to carve out a place for themselves before a brutal storm of change hits them. Kendra, an art-school dropout, brands herself for a nanotech marketing program. Lerato, an ambitious AIDS baby, plots to defect from her corporate employers. Tendeka, a hot-headed activist, is becoming increasingly rabid. Toby, a roguish blogger, discovers that the video games he plays for cash are much more than they seem.

In near-future America, film critic Noah Body uploads his reviews to a content aggregator. His job is routine: watch, seethe, pan. He dreams of making his own film, free from the hackery of commercial cinema. Faced with writing about lousy movies for a website that no one reads, Noah smuggles into his work episodes from his trainwreck of a life. We learn that his apartment in Miniature Aleppo has been stripped of furniture after his wife ran off with his best friend - who Noah believes has possessed his body.

Kali Ling has faced down death hundreds of times for the entertainment of millions. She knows fear - and she knows what's truly terrifying.... There's a new game in town. A brutal, winner-takes-all international video game tournament showcasing the world's most elite players, promising fame, prestige, and unbelievable fortune. But there's a catch. The game uses new VR pods guaranteed to push digital warriors to their physical and psychological brink - adapting every time a gamer makes a move.

The RAGE tournaments - the Virtual Gaming League's elite competition where the best gamers in the world compete in a no-holds-barred fight to the digital death. Every bloody kill is broadcast to millions. Every player is a modern gladiator - leading a life of ultimate fame, responsible only for entertaining the masses. And though their weapons and armor are digital, the pain is real.

Things I will never forget: my name, my made-up birthday...the dark of the hospital at night. My mother’s face when she was young. Things other people will forget: where they come from, how old they are, the faces of the people they love. The right words for bowl and sunshine...what is a beginning and what is an end. Joy spends her days working the graveyard shift at a store outside Boston and nursing an addiction to cough syrup, an attempt to suppress her troubled past.