Best dystopian / post-apocalyptic books

What is dystopia? Well, you could say it is the opposite of utopia (an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect), and that it is a society characterized by poverty, squalor, or oppression. When not reading within the fantasy genre, dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction is we often find ourselves.

1. Swan Song by Robert McCammon
Score: 224
Our rating: 9.8 | 30 positive reader reviews
Facing down an unprecedented malevolent enemy, the government responds with a nuclear attack. America as it was is gone forever, and now every citizen – from the President of the United States to the homeless on the streets of New York City – will fight for survival. In a wasteland bo [...]

2. The Stand by Stephen King
Score: 193
Our rating: 9.6 | 11 positive reader reviews
First came the days of the plague. Then came the dreams. Dark dreams that warned of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the charnel house and Prince of Evil. His time is at hand. His empire grows in the west and the [...]

3. The Chimes by Anna Smaill
Score: 190
Our rating: 9.6 | 0 positive reader reviews
A boy stands on the roadside on his way to London, alone in the rain.No memories, beyond what he can hold in his hands at any given moment.No directions, as written words have long since been forbidden.No parents - just a melody that tugs at him, a thread to follow. A song th [...]

4. Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
Score: 190
Our rating: 9.6 | 0 positive reader reviews
Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they a [...]

5. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Score: 111
Our rating: 10.0 | 13 positive reader reviews
A father and his young son walk alone through burned America, heading slowly for the coast. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. They have nothing but a pistol to defend themselves against the men who stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged fo [...]

6. Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky
Score: 108
Our rating: 9.9 | 9 positive reader reviews
The year is 2033. The world has been reduced to rubble. Humanity is nearly extinct. The half-destroyed cities have become uninhabitable through radiation. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. Survivors still remember the past gre [...]

7. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Hunger Games: Book 1
Score: 103
Our rating: 9.1 | 12 positive reader reviews
Winning will make you famous. Losing means certain death.The nation of Panem, formed from a post-apocalyptic North America, is a country that consists of a wealthy Capitol region surrounded by 12 poorer districts. Early in its history, a rebellion led by a 13th district against [...]

8. Cirque du Freak by Darren Shan
The Saga of Darren Shan: Book 1
Score: 103
Our rating: 9.3 | 10 positive reader reviews
Darren Shan seems like your average boy--he likes playing football with his mates, passing notes in class and loves spiders. Then, one day, his best mate Steve gets tickets for a banned freak show and Darren starts experiencing things that no average boy would dream of. At the Freak show he sees [...]

9. The Book of Transformations by Mark Charan Newton
Legends of the Red Sun: Book 3
Score: 100
Our rating: 9.8 | 2 positive reader reviews
A new and corrupt Emperor seeks to rebuild the ancient structures of Villjamur to give the people of the city hope in the face of great upheaval and an oppressing ice age. But when a stranger called Shalev arrives, empowering a militant underground movement, crime and terror becomes rampant. The [...]

10. Blindness by Jose Saramago
Score: 97
Our rating: 9.4 | 3 positive reader reviews
An illness spreads through an unnamed city. It has only one symptom: blindness. It comes without fanfare, pain, or warning. One moment a man waits in his car at the traffic lights, the next his world has dissolved to white. [...]

11. The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.3 | 3 positive reader reviews
God is a slick god. Temple knows. She knows because of all the crackerjack miracles still to be seen on this ruined globe... Older than her years and completely alone, Temple is just trying to live one day at a time in a post-apocalyptic world, where the undead roam endlessly, and the remnant of [...]

12. City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton
Legends of the Red Sun: Book 2
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.6 | 0 positive reader reviews
In the frozen north of a far-flung world lies Villiren, a city plagued by violent gangs and monstrous human/animal hybrids, stalked by a serial killer, and targeted by an otherworldly army. Brynd Lathraea has brought his elite Night Guard to help Villiren build a fighting force against the invade [...]

13. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Hunger Games: Book 3
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.6 | 0 positive reader reviews
Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding. It is by design that Ka [...]

14. Tarnished City by Vic James
The Dark Gifts Trilogy #2
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.6 | 0 positive reader reviews
A corrupted city. A dark dream of power. Luke is a prisoner, condemned for a murder he didn’t commit. Abi is a fugitive, desperate to free him before magic breaks his mind. But as the Jardines tighten their grip on a turbulent Britain, brother and sister face a fight greater than their own. [...]

15. Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
Skyward #1
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.6 | 2 positive reader reviews
Spensa's world has been under attack for hundreds of years. An alien race called the Krell leads onslaught after onslaught from the sky in a never-ending campaign to destroy humankind. Humanity's only defense is to take to their ships and fight the enemy in the skies. Pilots have become t [...]

16. Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody
The Obernewtyn Chronicles: Book 1
Score: 95
Our rating: 9.1 | 4 positive reader reviews
For Elspeth Gordie freedom is-like so much else after the Great White-a memory. It was a time known as the Age of Chaos. In a final explosive flash everything was destroyed. The few who survived banded together and formed a Council for protection. But people like Elspeth-mysteriously [...]

17. The Drowned World by JG Ballard
Score: 95
Our rating: 9.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Fluctuations in solar radiation have melted the ice caps, sending the planet into a new Triassic Age of unendurable heat. London is a swamp; lush tropical vegetation grows up the walls of the Ritz and primeval reptiles are sighted, swimming through the newly-formed lagoons. Some flee the capital; [...]

18. The Passage by Justin Cronin
The Passage Trilogy #1
Score: 95
Our rating: 9.3 | 2 positive reader reviews
Amy Harper Bellafonte is six years old and her mother thinks she's the most important person in the whole world. She is. Anthony Carter doesn't think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row. He's wrong. FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond imagination is coming. It [...]

19. Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse by John Joseph Adams
Score: 95
Our rating: 9.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Famine, death, war, pestilence. These are said to be the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse-Armageddon. The End of the World. Whether by nuclear warfare, a biological disaster or an ecological/geological disaster it is in the wake of this great cataclysm that the survivors have to adapt and su [...]

20. The Crystal World by JG Ballard
Score: 95
Our rating: 9.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Through a ‘leaking’ of time, the West African jungle starts to crystallize. Trees metamorphose into enormous jewels. Crocodiles encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses. Most flee the area in terror, afraid t [...]

21. Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Score: 95
Our rating: 9.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien p [...]

22. Divergent by Veronica Roth
Divergent Trilogy #1
Score: 94
Our rating: 8.3 | 11 positive reader reviews
She turns to the future in a world that’s falling apart. For sixteen-year-old Tris, the world changes in a heartbeat when she is forced to make a terrible choice. Turning her back on her family, Tris ventures out, alone, determined to find out where she truly belongs. Shocked by the brutali [...]

23. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Hunger Games: Book 2
Score: 94
Our rating: 9.4 | 0 positive reader reviews
Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale [...]

24. The Silence by Tim Lebbon
Score: 94
Our rating: 9.0 | 4 positive reader reviews
In the darkness of an underground cave system, blind creatures hunt by sound. Then there is light, there are voices, and they feed... Swarming from their prison, the creatures thrive and destroy. To scream, even to whisper, is to summon death. As the hordes lay waste to Europe, a girl watches to [...]

25. The Seven by Peter Newman
The Vagrant Trilogy #3
Score: 94
Our rating: 9.4 | 0 positive reader reviews
‘An exciting new writer – sharp, compelling and original’ Mark LawrenceYears have passed since the Vagrant journeyed to the Shining City, Vesper in arm and Gamma’s sword in hand.Since then the world has changed. Vesper, following the footsteps of her father, [...]

26. After America by John Birmingham
Score: 93
Our rating: 9.3 | 0 positive reader reviews
The world changed forever when a massive wave of energy slammed into North America and wiped out 99 percent of the population. As the United States lay in ruins, chaos erupted across the globe. Now, while a skeleton American government tries to reconstruct the nation, swarms of pirates and foreig [...]

27. The Return Man by VM Zito
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.2 | 0 positive reader reviews
The outbreak tore the USA in two. The east remains a safe haven. The west has become a ravaged wilderness. They call it the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead to deliver peace. Now Homeland Security wants Marco, for [...]

28. Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Divergent Trilogy #2
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.0 | 2 positive reader reviews
"I have done bad things. I can’t take them back, and they are part of who I am." Tris has survived a brutal attack on her former home and family. But she has paid a terrible price. Wracked by grief and guilt, she becomes ever more reckless as she struggles to accept her new future [...]

29. High Rise by JG Ballard
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.0 | 2 positive reader reviews
Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on ‘enemy’ floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for riots and technological mayhem. [...]

30. The Vagrant by Peter Newman
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.0 | 2 positive reader reviews
The Vagrant is his name. He has no other. Years have passed since humanity’s destruction emerged from the Breach. Friendless and alone he walks across a desolate, war-torn landscape. As each day passes the world tumbles further into depravity, bent and twisted by the new order, corrupted by [...]

31. Gilded Cage by Vic James
The Dark Gifts Trilogy #1
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.2 | 0 positive reader reviews
A modern Britain. An age-old cruelty. Britain's magically skilled aristocracy compels all commoners to serve them for ten years - and now it's the Hadleys' turn. Abi Hadley is assigned to England's most ruthless noble family. The secrets she uncovers could win her freedom - or bre [...]

32. The Wolves of Winter by Tyrell Johnson
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.0 | 2 positive reader reviews
Forget the old days. Forget summer. Forget warmth. Forget anything that doesn’t help you survive in the endless white wilderness beyond the edges of a fallen world. Lynn McBride has learned much since society collapsed in the face of nuclear war and the relentless spread of disease. As the [...]

33. X-isle by Steve Augarde
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
Ever since the floods came and washed the world away, survivors have been desperate to win a place on X Isle, the island where life is rumoured to be easier than on what's left of the mainland. Only young boys are in with a chance, the smaller and lighter the better. Baz and Ray are two of th [...]

34. Wool by Hugh Howey
Wool Trilogy: Book 1
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the people who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They [...]

35. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
The Maze Runner Trilogy #1
Score: 91
Our rating: 8.7 | 4 positive reader reviews
When the doors of the lift crank open, the only thing Thomas remembers is his first name. But he's not alone. He's surrounded by boys who welcome him to the Glade - a walled encampment at the centre of a bizarre and terrible stone maze. Like Thomas, the Gladers don't know why or how t [...]

36. The Death House by Sarah Pinborough
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
Toby's life was perfectly normal... until it was unravelled by something as simple as a blood test. Taken from his family, Toby now lives in the Death House; an out-of-time existence far from the modern world, where he, and the others who live there, are studied by Matron and her team of nurs [...]

37. Nod by Adrian Barnes
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
Dawn breaks over Vancouver and no-one in the world has slept the night before, or almost no-one. A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand can still sleep, and they've all shared the same golden dream. A handful of children still sleep as well, but what they're dreaming remains a mystery. [...]

38. The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.1 | 0 positive reader reviews
Hig, bereaved and traumatised after global disaster, has three things to live for - his dog Jasper, his aggressive but helpful neighbour, and his Cessna aeroplane. He's just about surviving, so long as he only takes his beloved plane for short journeys, and saves his remaining fuel. But, just [...]

39. The Last Dog on Earth by Adrian J Walker
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
Every dog has its day... And for Lineker, a happy go lucky mongrel from Peckham, the day the world ends is his: finally a chance to prove to his owner just how loyal he can be. Reg, an agoraphobic writer with an obsession for nineties football, plans to wait out the impending doom in his second f [...]

40. The Malice by Peter Newman
The Vagrant Trilogy #2
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.1 | 0 positive reader reviews
Following Peter Newman’s brilliant debut, THE VAGRANT. This is the much-anticipated sequel, THE MALICE.In the south, the Breach stirs.Gamma’s sword, the Malice, wakes, calling to be taken to battle once more.But the Vagrant has found a home now, made a life and so [...]

41. The Long Walk by Stephen King
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.1 | 0 positive reader reviews
In the near future, where America has become a police state, 100 boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life.The game is simple - maintain a steady walking pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnin [...]

42. The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Women are dying in their millions. Some blame scientists, some see the hand of God. As she watches her world collapsing, Jessie Lamb decides she wants to make her life count. Would you let your daughter die if it would save the human race? The Testament of Jessie Lamb is the story of one daughter [...]

43. The Last Policeman by Ben H Winters
The Last Policeman Trilogy #1
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
What's the point in solving murders if we're all going to die soon, anyway? Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There's no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact. The economy spirals downward while crops rot [...]

44. Truancy City by Isamu Fukui

Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
As a new threat arises from outside the walls of the City, the warring Truants and Educators must join forces or be destroyed. The fate of the City is determined at last in this long-awaited conclusion to the Truancy trilogy. [...]

45. No Return by Zachary Jernigan
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
On Jeroun, there is no question as to whether God exists--only what his intentions are. Under the looming judgment of Adrash and his ultimate weapon--a string of spinning spheres beside the moon known as The Needle--warring factions of white and black suits prove their opposition to the orbiting [...]

46. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
Shades of Grey Trilogy #1
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Hundreds of years in the future, after the Something that Happened, the world is an alarmingly different place. Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marr [...]

47. Wolves by Simon Ings
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Two friends are working at the cutting edge of this technology and when they are offered backing to take the idea and make it into the next global entertainment they realise that wolves hunt in this imagined world. And the wolves might be them. [...]

48. Heroes and Villains by Angela Carter
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Sharp-eyed Marianne lives in a white tower made of steel and concrete with her father and the other Professors. Outside, where the land is thickly wooded and wild beasts roam, live the Barbarians, who raid and pillage in order to survive. Marianne is strictly forbidden to leave her civilized worl [...]

49. Truth and Fear by Peter Higgins
The Wolfhound Century #2
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Investigator Lom returns to Mirgorod and finds the city in the throes of a crisis. The war against the Archipelago is not going well. Enemy divisions are massing outside the city, air raids are a daily occurrence and the citizens are being conscripted into the desperate defence of the city. But L [...]

50. Lock In by John Scalzi
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Fifteen years from now, a new virus sweeps the globe. 95% of those afflicted experience nothing worse than fever and headaches. 4% suffer acute meningitis, creating the largest medical crisis in history. And 1% find themselves 'locked in' - fully awake and aware, but unable to move or res [...]

51. Firefight by Brandon Sanderson
A Reckoners Novel #2
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Babylon Restored, formerly Manhattan, may give David answers. Ruled by the mysterious High Epic, Regalia, David is sure Babylon Restored will lead him to what he needs to find. And while entering another city oppressed by a High Epic despot is a gamble, David's willing to risk it. Because kil [...]

52. Steeple by Jon Wallace
Kenstibec #2
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Kenstibec is a Ficial - a genetically engineered artificial life form; tough, skilled, hard to kill. Or at least he was. He's lost the nanotech that constantly repaired him. Life just got real. Just like it is for the few remaining humans in this blighted world - the Reals; locked in a fight [...]

53. Blightborn by Chuck Wendig
The Heartland Trilogy #2
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Cael McAvoy is on the run. He’s heading toward the Empyrean to rescue his sister, Merelda, and to find Gwennie before she’s lost to Cael forever. With his pals, Lane and Rigo, Cael journeys across the Heartland to catch a ride into the sky. But with Boyland and others after them, Cael [...]

54. Without Warning by John Birmingham
Score: 89
Our rating: 8.9 | 0 positive reader reviews
March 14, 2003. In Kuwait, American forces are lock and loaded for the invasion of Iraq. In Paris, a cover agent is close to cracking a terrorist cell. And just north of the equator, a sailboat manned by a drug runner and a pirate is witness to the unspeakable. In one instant, all around the worl [...]

55. Countdown City by Ben H Winters
The Last Policeman Trilogy #2
Score: 89
Our rating: 8.9 | 0 positive reader reviews
There are just 77 days to go before a deadly asteroid collides with Earth, and Detective Hank Palace is out of a job. With the Concord police force operating under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, Hank's days of solving crimes are over...until a woman from his past begs for help f [...]

56. The Deserter by Peader O Guilin
The Bone World Trilogy: Book 2
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
To save his tribe, the cannibal Stopmouth must abandon it. Leaving the stone-age world of the Surface behind, he travels to the Roof, the mysterious hi-tech world suspended above. But the Roof has its own problems. The nanotechnology that controls it is collapsing. And now a rebellion against the [...]

57. Variant by Robison Wells
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.5 | 3 positive reader reviews
Benson Fisher thought a scholarship to Maxfield Academy would be the ticket out of his dead-end life. He was wrong. Now he’s trapped in a school that’s surrounded by a razor-wire fence. A school where video cameras monitor his every move. Where there are no adults. Where the kids have [...]

58. Feedback by Robison Wells
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.7 | 1 positive reader reviews
Benson Fisher escaped from Maxfield Academy’s deadly rules and brutal gangs. Or so he thought. But now Benson is trapped in a different kind of prison: a town filled with hauntingly familiar faces. People from Maxfield he saw die. Friends he was afraid he had killed. They are all pawns in t [...]

59. Exit Kingdom by Alden Bell
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
In a world where the undead outnumber the living, Moses Todd (the only recurring character from The Reapers are the Angles) roams the post-apocalyptic plains of America. His reprobate brother, Abraham - his only companion -has known little else. Together they journey, because they have to; becaus [...]

60. The Girl with all the Gifts by MR Carey
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.9 | 1 positive reader reviews
Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite. But they don't laugh. Melanie [...]

61. The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski
Score: 88
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Where Nirrim lives, crime abounds, a harsh tribunal rules, and society's pleasures are reserved for the High Kith. Life in the Ward is grim and punishing. People of her low status are forbidden from sampling sweets or wearing colours. You either follow the rules, or pay a tithe and suffer the [...]

62. World of Trouble by Ben H Winters
The Last Policeman Trilogy #2
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
Detective Hank Palace has found sanctuary in the woods of New England, secure in a well-stocked safe house with other onetime members of the Concord police force. But with time ticking away before the asteroid makes landfall, Hank’s safety is only relative, and his only relative - his siste [...]

63. Rig by Jon Wallace
Kenstibec #3
Score: 88
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
‘My nanotech is dead. By definition I am no longer Ficial. On the other hand I don't experience your emotions. That makes me inhuman. Like I said: neither one nor the other.' Caught in a world that is too busy destroying itself to care for anything except how to exploit the weak, Ke [...]

64. The Ruthless by Peter Newman
Deathless #2
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
Return to a world of crystal armour, savage wilderness, and corrupt dynasties in book two of The Deathless series from Gemmell award-winning author Peter Newman.THE REBELFor years, Vasin Sapphire has been waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. Now, as other Deathless families [...]

65. Fire City by Bali Rai
Score: 87
Our rating: 8.6 | 1 positive reader reviews
Twenty-five years ago the world changed forever. A great war, which had raged for three years ended, and the reign of the Demons began... Within the crumbling walls of Fire City, fifteen-year-old Martha is a member of the resistance, a small band of humans fighting for freedom in a lawless and ho [...]

66. Plague Town by Dana Fredsti
An Ashley Parker novel #1
Score: 87
Our rating: 8.6 | 1 positive reader reviews
Ashley was just trying to get through a tough day when the world turned upside down. A terrifying virus appears, quickly becoming a pandemic that leaves its victims, not dead, but far worse. Attacked by zombies, Ashley discovers that she is a 'Wild-Card' - immune to the virus - and she is [...]

67. The Test by Sylvain Neuvel
Score: 87
Our rating: 8.6 | 1 positive reader reviews
Britain, the not-too-distant future.Idir is sitting the British Citizenship Test.He wants his family to belong.Twenty-five questions to determine their fate. Twenty-five chances to impress.When the test takes an unexpected and tragic turn, Idir is handed the power of [...]

68. The Secret Book of Sacred Things by Torsten Krol
Score: 86
Our rating: 8.5 | 1 positive reader reviews
The coming of the Great Stone destroyed almost everything that used to be. But high in one remote valley, the Church of Selene has found its way back from ruin. Sister Luka and her female converts offer sacrifices to the scarred (and very close) moon that hangs over their convent. It has been thi [...]

69. The Mall by Richie Tankersley Cusick
Score: 86
Our rating: 8.5 | 1 positive reader reviews
Shop till you drop... dead. Trish has everything a girl wants; friends, a good mother and a job at the local mall's muffin shop, but that was until someone calls at her shop, then when she tries to ignore him, the phone calls start, then she really feels scared as she starts to realise he is [...]

70. The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
There are many things that Annah would like to forget: the look on her sister's face before Annah left her behind in the Forest of Hands and Teeth, her first glimpse of the Horde as they swarmed the Dark City, the sear of the barbed wire that would scar her for life. But most of all, Annah wo [...]

71. The Black Cloud by Frank Hoyle
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
A giant black cloud comes towards Earth and sits in front of the sun, causing widespread panic and death. A select group of scientists and astronomers - including the dignified Astronomer Royal, the pipe smoking Dr Marlowe and the maverick, eccentric Professor Kingsly - engage in a mad race to un [...]

72. MetaWars: The Dead are Rising by Jeff Norton
MetaWars: Book 2
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
In an unforgiving future, two warring factions - the Millennials and the Guardians - are locked in a brutal battle over control of an online virtual world called the Metasphere. Jonah Delacroix has always known which side he’s on - the same side as his dead father. But when he assumes his f [...]

73. Black Feathers by Joseph DLacey
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
It is the Black Dawn, a time of environmental apocalypse, the earth wracked and dying. It is the Bright Day, a time long generations hence, when a peace has descended across the world. In each era, a child shall be chosen. Their task is to find a dark messiah known only as the Crowman. But is he [...]

74. Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins
The Wolfhound Century #1
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
A thousand miles east of Mirgorod, the great capital city of the Vlast, deep in the ancient forest, lies the most recent fallen angel, its vast stone form half-buried and fused into the rock by the violence of impact. As its dark energy leeches into the crash site, so a circle of death expands ar [...]

75. Broken Worlds: Dystopian Stories by Anthology
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
In a future of bleakness and roboticism, a totalitarian government enforces upon the people a lifestyle that lulls them into a state of obedience. Your career and social status are predestined and you cannot alter it - this is a reality that walks a fine line between evoking sensations of fear an [...]

76. The Darwin Elevator by Jason M Hough
Dire Earth Cycle #1
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
The Builders came to Earth and constructed an elevator from Darwin, Australia into space. No one know why, or if they will return.It’s 2283 and planet Earth has been decimated by a virus which turns humans into mindless subhumans. Those who survived are either immune - a tiny minorit [...]

77. Peacemaker by Marianne de Pierres
Peacemaker #1
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
The story follows follows Virgin Jackson, park ranger at one of the last remaining national parks in the world. Her boss has made her responsible for looking after U.S. Marshall Nate Sixkiller, but before she can pick him from the airport, Virgin witnesses a murder at the national park and become [...]

78. California by Edan Lepucki
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
The sunshine state lies in darkness. Los Angeles is in ruins, left to the angels now. And the world Cal and Frida have always known is gone. Cal and Frida have left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their da [...]

79. Children of the Different by SC Flynn
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Nineteen years ago, a brain disease known as the Great Madness killed most of the world’s population. The survivors all had something different about their minds. Now, at the start of adolescence, their children enter a trance-like state known as the Changeland and emerge either with specia [...]

80. The Old Man and the Waste Land by Nick Cole
The Wasteland Saga #1
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Forty years after the destruction of civilization... Man is reduced to salvaging the ruins of a broken world. One man’s most prized possession is Hemingway’s Classic ‘The Old Man and the Sea.’ With the words of the novel echoing across the wasteland, a survivor of the Nucl [...]

81. The Savage Boy by Nick Cole
The Wasteland Saga #2
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Amid the remains of a world destroyed by a devastating Global Thermonuclear Armageddon, barbaric tribes rule the New American Dark Age. A boy and his horse must complete the final mission of the last United States soldier, and what unfolds is an epic journey across an America gone savage. [...]

82. The Road is a River by Nick Cole
The Wasteland Saga #3
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Part Hemingway, part Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, The Road is a River is a suspenseful odyssey into the dark heart of the Post-Apocalyptic American Southwest. The Road is a River concludes Nick Cole’s fantastic Wasteland Saga. [...]

83. Ruin's Wake by Patrick Edwards
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
An old soldier in exile embarks on a desperate journey to find his dying son.A young woman trapped in an abusive marriage with a government official finds hope in an illicit love.A female scientist uncovers a mysterious technology that reveals that her world is more fragile than she [...]

84. Bright Ruin by Vic James
The Dark Gifts Trilogy #3
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Magically gifted aristocrats rule Britain, and the people must serve them. But rebellion now strikes at the heart of the old order. Abi has escaped public execution, thanks to an unexpected ally. Her brother Luke is on the run with Silyen Jardine, the most mysterious aristocrat of all. And as pol [...]

85. Splinter by Sebastian Fitzek
Score: 84
Our rating: 8.4 | 0 positive reader reviews
Marc Lucas is only slowly putting his life back together after the car crash that killed his pregnant wife when things start to go strangely wrong for him. His credit cards stop working. His key no longer fits his door. He discovers someone else working in his office and one day he comes home to [...]

86. Skyship Academy by Nick James
The Pearl Wars: Book 1
Score: 84
Our rating: 8.2 | 2 positive reader reviews
A devastated Earth's last hope is found in Pearls: small, mysterious orbs that fall from space and are capable of supplying enough energy to power entire cities. Battling to control the Pearls are the Skyship dwellers--political dissidents who live in massive ships in the Earth's stratosp [...]

87. The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor by Jay Bonansinga and Robert Kirkman
Score: 84
Our rating: 8.4 | 0 positive reader reviews
Philip Blake's life has been turned upside down. In less than seventy-two hours an inexplicable event has resulted in people . . . turning. The world has gone to hell and the walking dead roam the streets slaughtering the living. Escaping their small town, Philip has just one focus in life - [...]

88. Isolation by Dan Wells
Partials Sequence: A Novella
Score: 84
Our rating: 8.4 | 0 positive reader reviews
Two decades before the events of Partials, the world was locked in a different battle for survival: a global war for the last remaining oil reserves on the planet. It was for the Isolation War that the American government contracted the ParaGen Corporation to manufacture the Partials—our la [...]

89. Truancy Origins by Isamu Fukui
Score: 84
Our rating: 8.4 | 0 positive reader reviews
Fifteen years ago, the Mayor of the Education City was presented with an unwelcome surprise by his superiors: twin six-month-old boys. As the Mayor reluctantly accepted the two babies, he had no way of knowing that they would change the city forever… Raised in the comfort of the Mayoral ma [...]

90. Inside Out by Maria V Snyder
MIRA: Book 1
Score: 83
Our rating: 8.2 | 1 positive reader reviews
I’m Trella. I’m a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I just do my job and try to avoid the Population Control Police, who dream of recycling scrubs into fertiliser. So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around t [...]

91. The Girl and the Mountain by Mark Lawrence
The Book of the Ice: Book 2
Score: 83
Our rating: 8.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
The second novel in the thrilling and epic new fantasy series from the international bestselling author of Red Sister and Prince of Thorns.On the planet Abeth there is only the ice. And the Black Rock.For generations the priests of the Black Rock have reache [...]

92. Afterblight Chronicles: America by Simon Spurrier
Afterblight Chronicles: America
Score: 82
Our rating: 8.2 | 0 positive reader reviews
The Afterblight Chronicles Omnibus Vol 1: America, features three action-packed novels set in dangerous, post-apocalyptic world rules by crazed gangs and strange cults.The Blight arose from nowhere. It swept across the bickering nations like The End of Times and spared only those with a si [...]

93. Truancy by Isamu Fukui
Score: 82
Our rating: 8.2 | 0 positive reader reviews
In an alternate world, in a nameless totalitarian city, the autocratic Mayor rules the school system with an iron fist, with the help of his Educators. Fighting against the Mayor and his repressive Educators is a group of former students called the Truancy, whose goal is to take down the system b [...]

94. The Games by Ted Kosmatka
Score: 81
Our rating: 8.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
Dr. Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. But when his creation demonstrates monstrous strength, [...]

95. Blood Zero Sky by J Gabriel Gates
Score: 81
Our rating: 8.1 | 0 positive reader reviews
Unprofitables are banished to work camps to pay off their credit. Other tie-men and women look on apathetically. Fair is fair. Everyone knows you shouldn't use more credit than you are worth to the Company. They turn their attention to the next repackaged but highly coveted N-Corp product on [...]

96. Radiant State by Peter Higgins
The Wolfhound Century #3
Score: 80
Our rating: 8.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
The Vlast stands two hundred feet tall, four thousand tons of steel ready to be flung upwards on the fire of atom bombs. Ready to take the dream of President-Commander of the New Vlast General, Osip Rizhin, beyond the bounds of this world. But not everyone shares this vision. Vissarion Lom and Ma [...]

97. This Perfect Day by Ira Levin
Score: 80
Our rating: 8.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Considered one of the greatest dystopian thrillers ever written, Ira Levin’s terrifying glimpse into the future continues to fascinate readers forty years after its initial publication.Set in a seemingly perfect global society, where uniformity is the defining feature, one man leads [...]

98. The First Days: As the World Dies by Rhiannon Frater
Score: 80
Our rating: 8.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Two very different women flee into the Texas Hill Country on the first day of the zombie rising. Together they struggle to rescue loved ones, find other survivors, and avoid the hungry undead. [...]

99. Wastelands 2 by John Joseph Adams
Score: 80
Our rating: 8.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
For decades, the apocalypse and its aftermath have yielded some of the most exciting short stories of all time. From David Brin's seminal The Postman to Hugh Howey's Deep Blood Kettle and Tananarive Due's prescient Patient Zero, the end of the world continues to thrill. [...]

100. The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
Scion #1
Score: 80
Our rating: 8.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
The year is 2059. Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working in the criminal underworld of Scion London, based at Seven Dials, employed by a man named Jaxon Hall. Her job: to scout for information by breaking into people's minds. For Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant and, in the world of [...]