If you’ve been following along with the hit Netflix series, Squid Game, and are excitedly bingeing Season 3, we have a roundup for you! From dystopian sci-fi worlds to dangerous and deadly games, get the same pulse-pounding mix of horror and entertainment with these can’t-miss reads.
Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
In an America not unlike our own, prisons become capitalist coliseums for CAPE, Criminal Action Penal Entertainment. Prisoners operate as Links in larger groups called Chain-Gangs that compete in fights-to-the-death in exchange for their freedom. Loretta Thurwar and Hurricane Staxxx are fellow links and lovers, at risk of losing their humanity to escape the brutality of CAPE. Outside the arena, protestors gather. With the attention of filthy rich patrons and the bloodthirsty masses, cracks form under the weight of unchecked capitalism.
Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
The Getaway by Lamar Giles
Karloff Country Resort is the escape for the rich and powerful, but for Jay, it’s just an after-school job. The theme park where he works may have started as an innocuous retreat from day to day life, but as the world outside grows more chaotic, Karloff Country becomes more insular. Guests are staying and never leaving. When employees start to be treated like servants and Jay’s friend disappears without a trace, Jay and his crew learn the apocalypse isn’t going to be “all-inclusive”, and make a vow to find the truth.
Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
If you’ve never picked up this genre-defining classic before, with the upcoming release of the fourth volume, now is the perfect time to dive in. In an alternate universe fascist Japan, Shiroiwa Junior High is the victim of a government mass kidnapping. Third-Year students from around the country are fixed with lethal shock collars and dropped onto a deserted island. Their objective: be the last person standing and leave with your life.
Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
When a girl grows into a woman, she becomes more powerful than at any other point in her life. At age sixteen, the Grace Year, girls are banished into the wild so that their seductive magic may be released away from society, but not all return. With the threat of her Grace Year on the horizon, Tierney James wishes for a kinder world, one where women are companions and not competition.
Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
#murderTrending by Gretchen McNeil
In the near future, the island prison Alcatraz 2.0 is the stage of the world’s favorite entertainment pastime, public executions. Criminals are brutally dispatched live on the Postman App which brings eyes and money to the island. Dee finds herself on this twisted death row, wrongly accused of her stepsister’s murder. She won’t go down without a fight and neither will her newfound friends, the Death Row Breakfast Club. With the Postman’s beloved executioners at their heels, can they clear their names and escape the game?
Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Scythe by Neal Shusterman
The last frontier for humanity was death. After they conquered it, the world soon realized that death was their last true ally. Now, as the old age continues and new people are brought into a deathless world, specially trained “Scythes” are the only ones who can curb the chaos of overpopulation. Citra and Rowan take up the mantle knowing the price could be their own mortality.
Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Red Rising by Pierce brown
Darrow suffers so that his children’s future will be secure, or so he thinks. Darrow is a Ded, the lowest-caste of the human settlements on Mars. He has dedicated his life to the cause, believing that his efforts are contributing to a habitable planet. But when he learns that the surface has been habitable for generations, enjoyed by the sovereign Gold class, he is enraged for the life and love he lost. With no future to lose, he plans to infiltrate the system from the inside and depose it.
Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
The Ferryman by Justin Cronin
While the outside world crumbles away, citizens on the islands of Prospera enjoy comfortable lives…until the screens that monitor their health fall below 10 percent and they are “retired”. Proctor Bennett is facilitator of this life event. He ferries people at the end of their health to the Nursery, an island where the ailing will have their memories wiped and their bodies refreshed. But when it is Proctor’s father’s turn to retire, he leaves his son with a cryptic warning. Unrest is descending on the island. Rumors of revolution fly and the island’s essential staff are questioning what exactly their existence means at the end of the world.
Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
These Deadly Games by Diana Urban
Crystal Donovan receives a horrifying video of her little sister gagged in a white van. The kidnapper has a deal, she can get her sister back unharmed if Crystal plays his game. She accepts and is surprised to find the tasks mundane: steal a test, make a prank call. But as she completes each task, the ramifications are deadly. Each game is designed to pick off her friends until she’s the only one left. With her sister in the balance, Crystal must outgame the kidnapper in order to save the lives of everyone.
Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
The Calling by James Frey
In the beginning, gods descended and gave civilization to humanity. They had them mine for gold and when there was enough, they left. That was twelve thousand years ago, and no one knows that they left a gift behind. This gift is Endgame. For tens of millennia, humanity trained in secret, optimizing traits that would assure their victory in finding the keys left behind and winning the game. With the human race of the line, the twelve players take The Calling, ready to kill each other to save what little remains of the world.
Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Leave A Comment