Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Dystopian

It seems like just another morning. Around the world, people wake up, check the news, open the front door. On every doorstop is a box. Inside that box is the exact number of years that person has left to live. Whether they open it or hide it under their bed, each person must learn to live in this new world: a couple who thought they didn’t have to rush their life together, a doctor who cannot save himself from his own fate, best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything…

The Future – as the richest people on the planet have discovered – is where the money is. The Future is a few billionaires leading the world to destruction while safeguarding their own survival with lavish bunkers. The Future is private weather, technological prophecy and highly deniable weapons. The Future is a handful of friends—the daughter of a cult leader, a non-binary hacker, an ousted Silicon Valley visionary, the concerned wife of a dangerous CEO, and an internet-famous survivalist—hatching a daring plan. It could be the greatest heist ever. Or the cataclysmic end of civilization.

Day one: The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the Earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%. Week Two: Civilization has crumbled. Year Twenty: A band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and it threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild.

Fighting her way through the dark underbelly of civilization, Juliet Bianchi has become a top-tier mercenary with a heart of gold and a killer smile. A shadowy, high-priced operative embedded with high-tech AI, she goes by the moniker "Lucky," and the life she once led as a metal scrapper seems eons behind her. Now, armed with her very own formidable monoblade and fresh ink warning all others not to mess with her lest they become very dead, she's taking a step away from business to handle something personal.

In the wake of the apocalypse, Flora has come of age in a highly gendered post-plague society where females have become a precious, coveted, hunted, and endangered commodity. But Flora does not participate in the economy that trades in bodies. An anathema in a world that prizes procreation above all else, she is an outsider everywhere she goes, including the thriving all-female city of Shy. Now navigating a blighted landscape, Flora, her friends, and a sullen young slave she adopts as her own child leave their oppressive pasts behind to find their place in the world.

Against all odds, Morgan Carter and his family have endured despite the deteriorating conditions surrounding them. Armed with survivalist tactics, Morgan's crew, alongside their new friends from the recently-liberated DHS camp, have worked together to build a sustainable community. But not all situations can be prepared for. When a massive wildfire threatens their very existence, they must decide: fight or flight?

In the walled city of Edin, Spike's carefree childhood has always had an end date. His protection from the wasteland of death on the outside is about to change on his 18th birthday. But while only half of the cadets survive their mandatory time on national service, Spike's goal goes far beyond making it out alive. He's betting everything on being chosen as the top candidate, rising to the role of Protector, and securing a spot beside his beautiful best friend.…

Jean McClellan spends her time in almost complete silence, limited to just 100 words a day. Any more, and a thousand volts of electricity will course through her veins. Now the new government is in power, everything has changed. But only if you’re a woman. Almost overnight, bank accounts are frozen, passports are taken away and 70 million women lose their jobs. Even more terrifyingly, young girls are no longer taught to read or write.

After the sickness known as the Doom destroyed civilization, magick has become commonplace, and Fallon Swift has spent her young years learning its ways. Fallon cannot live in peace until she frees those who have been preyed upon by the government or the fanatical Purity Warriors, endlessly hunted or locked up in laboratories, brutalized for years on end. She is determined to save even those who have been complicit with this evil out of fear or weakness - if, indeed, they can be saved.

Often compared to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale and Naomi Alderman's The Power - Woman on the Edge of Time has been hailed as a classic of speculative science fiction. Disturbing and forward thinking, Marge Piercy’s remarkable novel will speak to a new generation. Connie Ramos has been unjustly incarcerated in a mental institution with no hope of release. The authorities view her as a danger to herself and to others. Her family has given up on her. But Connie has a secret - a way to escape the confines of her cell. She can see the future.

Adam and Kimberly Hall are enjoying a quiet suburban life with their daughter, Crystal, and their dog, Bowser, when an emergency message flashes on their phones: meteor impact imminent, seek immediate shelter. Minutes later, the shock wave rages through South Austin like a hurricane, and they’re left to pick up the pieces. As dusk begins to fall and horrific creatures come crawling out of the impact craters, they realize they’re under attack—and the attackers are not from Earth.

Whether romantic or platonic, changing relationships prove tricky for Rose, Tom, Clara, and Craig—never mind adapting to the new not-so-normal. Being surrounded by the undead is bad enough, but with a tyrant-in-training running their Safe Zone, it’s that much worse.

With enemies closing in on every side, the survivors of Fall Creek find themselves facing impossible odds. Do they flee for their lives? Or, do they defend their town and risk losing it all? Some things are worth fighting for, even dying for. This may be their last stand. When the country goes dark, ordinary people find themselves facing the end of the world as they know it.

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.

The wall just didn’t look right. Alex has been trying to cope. Life after his deployment had been rough. His ex-wife thought he needed to stop disappointing their daughter. She was right. He would try harder. With six hours before his little girl’s fourth birthday party, he saw the anomaly. One wall was too short. Plenty of time to tear out a panel and look behind it. He found a brick wall. His house wasn’t made of brick. Behind that was another just like the first. He still had time. When the second wall came down, Alex stood and stared at the shining doorway.

In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat.

Zoey Ashe wakes up every day feeling like she’s trying to steer a battleship while tied to the propeller. The twenty-three-year-old heiress to a criminal empire is navigating a futuristic world of high-tech liars and cutthroats, forced to learn the rules of a devious game she never asked to play. Now she’s facing a crisis that is both bigger and stranger than all that came before: The gleaming new city of Tabula Ra$a is hosting its massive annual music festival, which every year precedes the equally massive annual drunken riot.

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.

Jason and Sophie are teachers at a rural high school north of Tampa, Florida. When an EMP attack spreads chaos and lawlessness, they are unexpectedly left responsible for a group of their former students. Without electricity, phones, or transportation, civilization collapses, and terror reigns. Jason's background as a decorated Army Ranger former officer and his history as a prepper help them. But can they survive in a world where organized predators prey on the young and innocent?

Alvitania is a dazzling collection of satirical short stories and surreal tales that blend dark humor, magical realism, and sharp social commentary. From absurd business trips to vanished countries, dystopian futures to bizarre political revolutions, each story in Tim Wexler’s anthology invites listeners into a world that is both uncannily familiar and thrillingly strange.