Apocalyptic & Dystopian audiobooks

The Lightest Object in the Universe

By: Kimi Eisele

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

What if the end times allowed people to see and build the world anew? This is the landscape that Kimi Eisele creates in her surprising and original debut novel. Evoking the spirit of such monumental love stories as Cold Mountain and the creative vision of novels like Station Eleven, The Lightest Object in the Universe tells the story of what... Read more

The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

By: Michael Zapata

Narrated by: Coral Peña

Length: 9 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

*Winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction*

A Heartland Booksellers Award Nominee

An NPR Best Book of the Year

A BookPage Best Book of the Year

A Library Journal Best Winter/Spring Debut of 2020

A Most Anticipated Book of 2020 from the Boston Globe and The Millions

A Best Book of February 2020 at Salon, The Millions, LitHub and Vol 1.... Read more

Afterland

By: Lauren Beukes

Narrated by: Bianca Amato

Length: 14 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Children of Men meets The Handmaid's Tale in this "smartly written" and "splendid" thriller about how far a mother will go to protect her son from a hostile world transformed by the absence of men (Stephen King).

Most of the men are dead. Three years after the pandemic known as The Manfall, governments still hold and life continues—but a world... Read more

Tell Me an Ending

By: Jo Harkin

Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues

Length: 16 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

Named a Best Science Fiction Book by The New York Times

“Sharply, beautifully written.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Intriguing, frightening, witty, and humane.” —The Wall Street Journal

Black Mirror meets Severence in this thrilling speculative novel about a tech company that deletes unwanted memories, the consequences for those forced to... Read more

Bright Ruin

By: Vic James

Narrated by: Avita Jay

Length: 13 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

In the “thrilling conclusion”* to the dystopian trilogy that began with Gilded Cage and Tarnished City, the people of Britain rise up against their magically gifted masters. They must break the system—or be broken.

MAGIC RUINS. WE RISE.

The rules are simple, the system cruel: the lower classes must give ten years in service to Britain’s... Read more

Empty Hearts

By: Juli Zeh

Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell

Length: 8 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

A prescient political and psychological thriller ripped from tomorrow's headlines, by one of Germany's most celebrated contemporary novelists

A few short years from now, the world is an even more uncertain place than it is today, and politics everywhere is marching rightward: Trump is gone, but Brexit is complete, as is Frexit. There's a global... Read more

Users

By: Colin Winnette

Narrated by: Justin Price

Length: 6 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

Miles, a lead creative at a midsize virtual reality company known for its "original experiences," has engineered a new product called The Ghost Lover. Wildly popular from the outset, the "game" is simple: a user's simulated life is almost identical to their reality, except they're haunted by the ghost of an ex-lover. However, when a shift in the... Read more

Eden

By: Jim Crace

Narrated by: Ben Allen

Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Harvest and Quarantine, a gorgeous, unforgettable retelling of the myth of Eden.

The inhabitants of Eden are untouched by death. In the garden they care for their orchards and the land, and give thanks for their good fortune, because they know that beyond the garden walls is a world where disease... Read more

Underground Airlines

By: Ben H. Winters

Narrated by: William DeMeritt

Length: 9 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

The bestselling book that asks the question: what would present-day America look like if the Civil War never happened?

A New York Times bestseller; a Goodreads Choice finalist; named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Slate, Publishers Weekly, Hudson Bookseller, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kirkus Reviews, AudioFile Magazine, and Amazon

A... Read more

Fragile Remedy

By: Maria Ingrande Mora

Narrated by: James Fouhey

Length: 10 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Sixteen-year-old Nate is a Gem—a Genetically Engineered Medical Surrogate—created by Gathos City scientists as a cure for the elite from the fatal lung rot ravaging the population. As a child, Nate was smuggled out of the laboratory where he was held captive and taken into the Withers—a quarantined, lawless region. He manages to survive by... Read more

I Am Legend

By: Richard Matheson

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 5 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

The basis for the film starring Academy Award nominee Will Smith, I Am Legend is a classic of horror and suspense.In I Am Legend, a terrible plague has decimated the world, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive are transformed into bloodthirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on earth. Every other man,... Read more

Lark Ascending

By: Silas House

Narrated by: Charlie Thurston

Length: 7 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

A riveting story of survival and hope, set in the not-too-distant future, about a young man forced to flee the United States and seek refuge across the Atlantic. 

As fires devastate most of the United States, Lark and his family secure a place on a refugee boat headed to Ireland, the last country not yet overrun by extremists and rumored to be... Read more

Blue Skies

By: T.C. Boyle

Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan

Length: 15 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening,
writhing creature that can be worn like “jewelry, living jewelry” to match her black jeans.
But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young “Burmie” she buys from
a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly... Read more

The Book of Joan

By: Lidia Yuknavitch

Narrated by: Xe Sands

Length: 7 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

A New York Times Notable Book • BuzzFeed 50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read this Year • New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice • National Bestseller“Brilliant and incendiary.” — Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times Book Review""Stunning. . . . Yuknavitch understands that our collective narrative can either destroy or redeem us, and the outcome... Read more

Surrender

By: Ray Loriga

Narrated by: Michael Patrick F Smith

Length: 4 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

"[A] riveting, and original, achievement."—WIRED

From award-winning Spanish author Ray Loriga comes a dystopian novel about authority, manipulation, and the disappearance of privacy that “calls to mind The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood [and] Blindness by José Saramago” (Alfaguara Prize Winner Citation).

Ten long years have passed since war... Read more

Census

By: Jesse Ball

Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla

Length: 4 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

A powerful and moving new novel from an award-winning, acclaimed author: in the wake of a devastating revelation, a father and son journey north across a tapestry of towns.When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son—a son whom he fiercely... Read more

Your Shadow Half Remains

By: Sunny Moraine

Narrated by: Sunny Moraine

Length: 4 hours

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

The Last of Us meets Bird Box in Sunny Moraine's Your Shadow Half Remains, a post-apocalyptic tale where eye contact causes people to spiral into a deadly, violent rage.

ONE LOOK CAN KILL.

Riley has not seen a single human face in longer than she can reckon. No faces, no eyes. Not if you want to survive.

But when... Read more

The Water Cure

By: Sophie Mackintosh

Narrated by: Hannah Murray, Gemma Whelan & Morfydd Clark

Length: 7 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

“A gripping, sinister fable!” —Margaret Atwood, via Twitter

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
NPR • GLAMOUR • GOOD HOUSEKEEPING • LIT HUB • THRILLIST

King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. Here on his island, women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The... Read more

Lost in Time

By: A.G. Riddle

Narrated by: John Skelley

Length: 11 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

"Amazing! One of the twistiest time-tales I've ever read ..."—Diana Gabaldon

"Crichtonesque thrillers don't come much better than this intricate outing which combines a fantastic premise … with a closed-circle whodunit. Readers won't be able to turn the pages fast enough."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

PANGEA, 202,320,641 BC
Quantum physicist... Read more

The Q

By: Amy Tintera

Narrated by: Kyla Garcia & Robbie Daymond

Length: 8 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

In this action-packed adventure from a New York Times bestselling author, two teenagers from opposite worlds must fight their way through a vast walled quarantine zone in a dystopian America toward their only chance for survival.

Seventeen-year-old Maisie Rojas has spent her entire life in the Q—a post-pandemic quarantine zone that was once... Read more

Scattered All Over the Earth

By: Yoko Tawada

Narrated by: Cindy Kay

Length: 7 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

A mind-expanding, cheerfully dystopian new novel by Yoko Tawada, winner of the National Book Award



Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as "the land of sushi." Hiruko, its former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her... Read more

Burn

By: Peter Heller

Narrated by: Mark Deakins

Length: 8 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars and The Last Ranger, a novel about two men—friends since boyhood—who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country racked by bewildering violence

Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving... Read more

The Annual Migration of Clouds

By: Premee Mohamed

Narrated by: Eva Tavares

Length: 4 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

“This packs a punch.” — Publishers Weekly “One of the most unique and engaging voices in genre fiction.” — Booklist “In this rich and nuanced universe, Mohamed offers an emotionally fierce and human story that takes the time and space to personalize apocalypse.” — STARRED review, Quill & Quire A novella set in post–climate disaster... Read more

Vox

By: Christina Dalcher

Narrated by: Julia Whelan

Length: 9 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S AND SHEREADS' BOOKS TO READ AFTER THE HANDMAID'S TALE

“[An] electrifying debut.”—O, The Oprah Magazine 
“The real-life parallels will make you shiver.”—Cosmopolitan

Set in a United States in which half the population has been silenced, Vox is the harrowing, unforgettable story of what one... Read more