Dystopian Mystery

Luka is a prisoner once again. But this time, it's a fate worse than death. In the Block, he must toggle between enduring an Energy Harvest for 12 hours of the day and surviving complete immobilization. The only semblance of relief is the Sane Zone, created to keep prisoners from going completely mad. In this virtual reality, the prisoners live out their fantasies of life outside. But for Luka, it's different.

In a future where homelessness is an illegal status, and those living on the streets are registered into "Sponsorship" programs, crime and abuse runs rampant. Keegan Smith rejects the idea of the system, but finds himself inheriting one of the largest Sponsorship programs in the nation from his late father. When he finds an illegal fighting ring linked to sex trafficking and other atrocities within his own corporation, he is trapped between protecting his family and buying in, and adhering to his own morals by fighting back.

After emerging from a coma, Faye Wills opens her eyes to complete darkness and the feeling of being trapped. Soon she discovers she is in no less than a nightmare world and awakens in the worst place imaginable. She is one of thousands of bodies in a makeshift mass grave that was once a football stadium. Left for dead. There are no signs of life and the only sound she hears is the buzzing of flies that follow the stench of death.

In a scorched summer sky, silence becomes an earthquake. The clouds vanished. The rain forgot how to fall. The sun never left. And the world began to burn. Thirteen-year-old Lena sees what others can’t: swirling patterns, pulsing signals in the sky, and messages buried in light. Her spiral drawings—once dismissed as daydreams—now mirror the strange shimmer overtaking the atmosphere. She’s not alone. Other children are seeing it too.

When Dom, a convicted murderer, awakens in a prison infirmary after a suicide attempt, he’s told he’s been chosen. For what, no one will say. But the next morning he’s shackled, loaded into a van, and driven deep into the mountains—where a secretive order of monks awaits. His task? Walk the Path. A brutal, remote trail leading to a summit no one ever reaches. Each walker carries a strange amber cube that seems to know them. It grows heavier with guilt, whispers their sins, and punishes those who try to set it down. One by one, the walkers disappear—burning from the inside out.

In a future where American culture has been thoroughly demonized, US Marine Sean Harris returns to the United States from the Sino-American War. Only he finds his country, his government, no longer has a place for him, nor the United States Marine Corps.

The nation is thrown into darkness. Nuclear attacks kill millions. No one is coming to save you. When the warning of an imminent attack on America appears online, Jack assumes it's a hoax. But after the electrical grid is wiped out and a nuclear bomb levels downtown LA, his world crashes down. He's got only minutes to save himself. And the worst part? He's a thousand miles from Annie, his wife. With time running out on the West Coast, Jack must search for safety before it's too late. How can he escape the violence breaking out in LA and make it home to Texas?

From Dan Wells, author of the New York Times best-selling Partials Sequence, comes the first book in a new sci-fi-noir series. Los Angeles in 2050 is a city of open doors, as long as you have the right connections. That connection is a djinni - a smart device implanted right in a person's head. In a world where virtually everyone is online 24 hours a day, this connection is like oxygen - and a world like that presents plenty of opportunities for someone who knows how to manipulate it.

When Adéla discovers she has a terminal illness, she leaves behind her native Czech village for a chance at reuniting in America with Tereza, the daughter she gave up at birth, decades earlier. But the country Adéla experienced as a young woman, when she eloped with a filmmaker and starred in his cult sci-fi movie, has changed entirely. In 2030, America is ruled by an authoritarian government increasingly closed off to the rest of the world.

In the final book of the Restoration Series by best-selling author Terri Blackstock, the end of a global electrical blackout signals the beginning of the Branning family's ultimate test. Murder and affairs of the heart form the backdrop for a family sifting through the lessons they have learned and how well they have truly learned them.

Late in the 21st century, the United Continental States of America is running smoothly. Unemployment has been eradicated, terrorism is no more, and any internal dissent diminishes by the day. Most give credit to President Meyers, and many can no longer remember the last election, but it is a small price to pay to keep the country safe from the terrorist group Hariq Jihad.

In this fractured world, a sinister force is coming for Riley, and the only things keeping her safe are a perimeter fence and the people she loves. As her life is threatened, she must make impossible choices. But help comes from the most unlikely of places, and all Riley needs to know is: Who can she really trust? Meanwhile, a repentant killer searches for peace and salvation, but what he gets is the exact opposite. Now, he'll have to make the hardest decision of his life.

Lionel Bigman is dead. Murdered by a robot. Guy Matthias, the philandering founder and CEO of the mega-corporation Beetle, insists it was human error. But was it? Either the predictive algorithms of Beetle's supposedly omniscient "lifechain" don't work, or, they've been hacked. Both scenarios are impossible to imagine and signal the end of Beetle's technotopia and life as we know it.

Ten years after the world's oil went sour and a pandemic killed most of the population, Sam Edison is the chief of police of The Little Five, a walled-in community near Atlanta, Georgia. Those who survived share the world with what are known as hollow-heads: creatures who are no longer fully human. A man and a pregnant teenager arrive at the gate and are welcomed into the town. They begin to settle in when suddenly both are murdered by an unknown assailant. In the course of investigation, Chief Edison discovers that the girl was fleeing a life of sexual slavery, and that some members of the community were complicit in the human trafficking network that had ensnared her.

A wealthy young woman vanishes from her high-security apartment without leaving a single strand of DNA behind. No trace of the victim's disappearance is recorded on any of the building's many cameras or security sensors. Her apartment's memory cores have been destroyed beyond any hope of recovery.

Sam thinks his job at the Zombie Apocalypse Call Center is a joke. Zombies aren’t real, and the customers who call in for support about their guns and conspiracy theories are crazy! Sam knows a zombie apocalypse will never happen. Until one day, the zombie apocalypse does happen. Now Sam and his fellow analysts have to figure out how the zombie apocalypse started, and how to cure the zombies, while also keeping the customers alive and well-stocked with ammo.

The world has fallen. Without warning, a mysterious and omnipotent force has claimed the planet for their own. There are no negotiations, no demands, no reasons given for their actions. All they have is a message: humanity has thirty days to reach the one place on Earth where they will be allowed to exist…Antarctica.

La vengeance, le pouvoir et le progrès scientifique sont les thèmes de ces cinq nouvelles noires, très belles et glaçantes, situées dans un futur étrange et indéterminé. Rat Island, la plus longue, imagine un avenir possible pour nos sociétés occidentales : des membres fortunés de l’élite attendent en haut d’un gratte-ciel l’arrivée d’un hélicoptère qui va les transporter dans un havre de paix et de sécurité, tandis que, à leurs pieds, les masses affamées et sans abri luttent pour survivre dans des rues dévastées et sillonnées par des gangs à moto.

When Yang Wei travels to C City for work, he expects nothing more than a standard business trip. A break from his day-to-day routine, a good paycheck, a nice hotel—nothing too extravagant, of course. No fuss, but all the amenities. But this is where his problems begin. A complimentary bottle of mineral water from the hotel minibar results in sudden and debilitating stomach pain, followed by unconsciousness. When he wakes three days later, things don’t improve; they get worse. With no explanation, the hotel forcibly sends him to a hospital for examination.

Imagine a near-future Britain in which women dominate workplaces, public spaces, and government. Where the gender pay gap no longer exists and motherhood opens doors instead of closing them. Where women are no longer afraid to walk home alone, to cross a dark parking lot, or to catch the last train. Where all men are electronically tagged and not allowed out after 7 p.m. But the curfew hasn’t made life easy for all women