It may already feel a bit like we’re living in dystopian reality. There’s something about these books that’s hits just close enough to home, it makes it hard for us to put them down. These are just a few of the new dystopian books we’re sitting down with.

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

Set to release in late November, Ready Player Two is a sequel to the 2011 novel Ready Player One that inspired games like Fortnite to embrace the idea of the Metaverse. Ready Player One was turned into a Steven Spielberg film, however, Cline said that the sequel will be to the novel, not the movie. No synopsis has been made available yet.

The Key To Fear by Kristin Cast

A global pandemic that spreads through touch has led the Key Corporation to take all measures possible to keep humanity safe. No one, not even lovers, is allowed to touch and humans have blindly followed these rules for years. However, when terminally ill patient Aiden escapes the hospital, a nurse named Elodie is forced to break the rules in search of him. Aiden knows secrets that lead him and Elodie to question the Key Corporation and be hunted down by the organization that pledged to keep them safe. 

Sanctuary by Paola Mendoza & Abby Sher

In the near future America of the year 2032, the tension regarding illegal immigrants is at an all-time high. Every citizen of the United States is chipped and tracked everywhere they go. After years of surviving through counterfeited chips, sixteen-year-old Vali and her family are forced to flee when her mother’s chip malfunctions. Vali’s mother is quickly detained and Vali must race across the country with her brother to the sanctuary state of California. California is currently being walled from the rest of the country and Vali and her brother must make it there before time runs out to live in their sanctuary.

A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen

Released in early January 2020, Chen’s book follows four fictitious pandemic survivors who show us how to look forward to something better. A former pop-star, event planner, and a father/daughter duo battle identity crises and the yearning to start over. The four of them come together in support when another pandemic threatens their society and they must face all they still stand to lose while providing the necessary companionship to keep their lives going.

Red Pill by Hari Kunzru

A proposed author is sent to the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, whose bleak ties to Nazi Germany, and graves of suicidal authors yield him to struggle to complete the work he was sent there for. After watching hours and hours of the violent cop show Blue Lives, this author questions his true purpose in life and gets further away from accomplishing work for the writing fellowship that sent him to Germany in the first place. After going to a party where he meets the writer of Blue Lives, the narrator of Red Pill believes that he and viewers of Blue Lives are being red-pilled; forced to accept an ugly and pessimistic perspective on life. 

The Silence by Don DeLillo

The Silence is a small book with a large story. A retired physics professor, her husband, and one of her former students are at a home in Manhattan, watching Super Bowl Sunday. They await the arrival of another couple, who are on a soon to be a dramatic flight from Paris. When an event happens that severs the communicative ties they have grown to know and live with, conversations about what it means to be human follow.

Monstre: Volume One by Duncan Swan

 It started in Europe, and the United States Marines were sent over, believing they could destroy the dark and destructive cloud over Switzerland. They were sorely mistaken as after just 89 days of fighting, the cloud is over the East Coast of the United States, threatening all Americans. The American people descend into madness as they fight each other to survive. However, a Tennessee Sheriff refuses to quit and give up. He takes a family under his wing and leads them westward, towards a rumored bunker that will keep them safe. If they don’t make it before the cloud kills them, what’s looming in the darkness might.

Candidate Spectrum by Brian Cato

A real-world superhero named Spectrum believes he can save America by running for president. However, it’s not as easy as he had hoped. The integrity of his campaign is threatened by his desire to save those around the world and his background as an atheist immigrant from a destroyed planet. He’s serious about the issues he is trying to solve and realizes they run deep in American society. Will Spectrum achieve his goals and save America from within? Or will he be outcast and forced to watch Americans continue on their self-destructive path?

*Disclosure: The links above are affiliate links. We are a participant in the Bookshop Affiliate Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking toBookshop.org while simultaneously supporting local bookstores. This affiliate program does not impact your purchase price.