Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Dystopian

More than 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third voice: a woman who wields power through the ruthless accumulation and deployment of secrets.

Hat, ribbon, bird rose. To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed. When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn't forget, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?

Deep underground, 39 women are kept in isolation in a cage. Aboveground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus? Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the 40th prisoner - sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them aboveground.

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs. Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of 21st-century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood's devastating irony, wit and astute perception.

This is Nadia. She is fiercely independent, with an excellent sense of humour and a love of smoking alone on her balcony late at night. This is Saeed. He is sweet and shy and kind to strangers. He also has a balcony but he uses his for stargazing. This is their story: a love story, but also a story about how we live now and how we might live tomorrow.

It is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the US and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, one that’s held power for over a decade. Efforts to tighten its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media, but he is beginning to lose control of the streets. Many fear he’ll stop at nothing to remain in the White House. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death.

Welcome to Chain-Gang All-Stars - the highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program inside America's private prison system. Harkening back to the time of gladiators, but watched by millions of live-stream subscribers, prisoners compete for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

Tierney James lives in an isolated village where girls are banished at 16 to the northern forest to brave the wilderness - and each other - for a year. They must rid themselves of their dangerous magic before returning purified and ready to marry - if they're lucky. It is forbidden to speak of the grace year, but even so every girl knows that the coming year will change them - if they survive it.

Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you children. A blue ticket grants you freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And, once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back. But what if the life you're given is the wrong one? Blue Ticket is a devastating enquiry into free will and the fraught space of motherhood.

Leo Kall is a zealous, middle-ranking scientist in the totalitarian World State who has just made a thrilling discovery: a new drug, Kallocain, that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth. At last, criminality will be dragged out into the open and private thought can be outlawed. But can the World State be trusted with Kallocain? For that matter - can Kall himself be trusted? Written as the terrible events of the Second World War were unfolding, Karin Boye's classic dystopian novel speaks more clearly than ever of the dangers of acquiescence and the power of resistance.

You stay in bed until the afternoon, scrolling through your social media feeds and wondering why everyone else seems to be achieving so much. Sometimes you don't get out of bed at all. Then you hear about Life on Nyx, a programme that allows 100 lucky winners the chance to escape it all, move to another planet and establish a new way of life. One with meaning and purpose. One without Instagram and online dating. There's one caveat: if you go, you can never come back. But you aren't worried about that. After all, what on Earth could there possibly be to miss?

Once upon a time, damaged women came here to be cured. We took them in, fed them glasses of our clean, good water, let them scream at the waves till their lips split like ripe fruit. Now no one is left but my sisters and me. King died a year ago, quite suddenly. Mother has vanished, no one knows where. And the safe compound they built around us, far away from the toxic world, has finally been breached. Three men arrived last week, washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent. We remember now what our father taught us.

So, the thing is, I come from the world we were supposed to have. That means nothing to you, obviously, because you live here, in the crappy world we do have. But it never should've turned out like this. And it's all my fault - well, me and, to a lesser extent, my father. And, yeah, I guess a little bit Penelope. In both worlds she's the love of my life. But only a single version of her can exist. I have one impossible chance to fix history's greatest mistake and save this broken world.

Three years after a virus wiped out 99 percent of the men on earth, a mother and son are on the run. All Cole has left in the world is her boy, Miles. With men now a prised commodity, keeping him safe means breaking hastily written new rules - and leaving her own sister for dead. All Miles has left in the world is his mother.

As Trafford Sewell struggles to work through the usual crowds of commuters, he is confronted by the intimidating figure of his Parish Confessor. Why has Trafford not been streaming his every moment of sexual intimacy onto the community website like everybody else? Does he think he's different or special in some way? Better than his fellow man and woman? Does he have something to hide? Imagine a world where everyone knows everything about everybody.

If society collapsed, could you survive? When Morgan Carter's car breaks down 250 miles from his home, he figures his weekend plans are ruined. But things are about to get much, much worse: the country's power grid has collapsed. There is no electricity, no running water, no Internet, and no way to know when normalcy will be restored - if it ever will be.

Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow worker, Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.

2059. The world has stopped turning. One half suffers an endless frozen night; the other, nothing but burning sun.Only in a slim twilit region can life survive. In an isolationist Britain, Ellen Hopper receives a letter from a dying man. It contains a powerful and dangerous secret. One that those in power will kill to conceal.

At a New York City wedding, in early summer, four people are trying to get their lives started. Yun has everything he ever wanted, but somehow it's never enough. Emory is finally making her mark, but feels the shame more than the success. Andrew just wants to be honest, but has lied to himself his whole life. Fin can't resist falling in love, but can't help wrecking it all either. That night they see something none of them can explain. Someone sits down, and simply gives up. Soon it's happening all around them. Is it an illness, or a decision?

The Khao San Road, Bangkok—first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach." The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years.