dystopian fiction

Rex has escaped from an Elimination prison and now has joined with a rebel group of humans with psychic abilities like his own--hypnotism, telepathy, and memory reading. Calling themselves Retaliation, Rex and his new team begin to make a difference--until the criminals inside the organization try to take over. Rex won't let that happen.

Eighteen-year-old mind breaker Rex lives in a dystopian world where the government hunts down all with psychic abilities--so, he keeps a low profile, until one day he has to use his hypnosis on would-be bank robbers. Now, on the run, Rex and his hypnotist friend Kitty flee to a devastated countryside only for Kitty to be captured. To rescue her, Rex will have to get captured himself and mount a daring escape.

When a level five breaker with godlike powers and evil schemes threatens all, Rex and his friends must join with their former enemies to even have a chance at stopping him.

"Having escaped AEtheria, Aral and Rex take refuge on Cthonia near the impact site of AEtheria's power plant. At the same time, a team of armed Cthonian scouts sets out to recover their dead from the destruction. Among them, the AEtherian refugee Maire Himmel offers her knowledge of AEtheria to identify remnants of the destroyed power plant. Upon her arrival, though, Rex recognizes Maire as his mother, who was forced to leave him with a foster father sixteen years before"--Provided by publisher.

"Sent by their command to the AEtherians' water-extraction site, a group of ten Cthonian scouts travels for days across the desert. Their mission: to find water for their drought-afflicted civilization. When a reconnaissance team joins them, the Cthonians send scouts up to AEtheria through an access pipe to request water while wells are being dug. But when two of the scouts' bodies plunge to the ground from above, the plan changes--and one enraged Cthonian commander strikes back"--Provided by publisher.

In a post-apocalyptic United States, sixteen-year-old Noam ?lvaro gains the power of a technopath--the ability to control technology--after a viral magic killed his immigrant family and put him in a hospital. Carolina's minister of defense recruits Noam because of his abilities, and seeing a chance to affect change for the undocumented immigrant community, which is subject to brutal treatment under Carolina's government, Noam agrees, secretly hoping to use the minister's technology against them. But when Noam meets the minister's dangerous, impossibly alluring son, Dara, Noam's mission becomes muddled.

"In their world, telling the truth has become the most dangerous crime of all. In the near-future United States, a one-child policy is ruthlessly enforced. Everyone follows the Rule of One. But Ava Goodwin, daughter of the head of the Texas Family Planning Division, has a secret--one her mother died to keep and her father has helped to hide for her entire life. She has an identical twin sister, Mira. For eighteen years Ava and Mira have lived as one, trading places day after day, maintaining an interchangeable existence down to the most telling detail. But when their charade is exposed, their worst nightmare begins. Now they must leave behind the father they love and fight for their lives"--Provided by publisher.

Told through one of the most on-pulse genre voices of our generation, Radicalized is a timely collection consisting of four SF novellas connected by social, technological, and economic visions of today and what America could be in the near, near future. Unauthorized Bread is a tale of immigration, the toxicity of economic and technological stratification, and the young and downtrodden fighting against all odds to survive and prosper. In Model Minority, a Superman-like figure attempts to rectifiy the corruption of the police forces he long erroneously thought protected the defenseless, only to find his efforts adversely affecting their victims. Radicalized is a story of a darkweb-enforced violent uprising against insurance companies told from the perspective of a man desperate to secure funding for an experimental drug that could cure his wife's terminal cancer. The fourth story, Masque of the Red Death, harkens back to Doctorow's Walkaway, taking on issues of survivalism versus community.

"Seventeen-year-old Fin has never stepped foot on the surface of the Earth. Working the mines deep below has been the only life she has ever known, . . . in service to the . . . genetically-modified who control the underground from the world above . . . Two hundred years after the planet's magnetic poles began to flip, Earth's surface has become irradiated and unsustainable. As the land, water, and even the air grew toxic, the underprivileged were doomed to a life of hard labor underground, while the adapted Enhanced Human Coalition on the surface enjoy their spoils. But now, Fin and her friends discover a stolen piece of EHC tech thatmodifies genetics, giving them the abilities of those up top-varied levels of increased strength, intelligence, and adaptation to the surface's harsh conditions. The theft of this technology triggers a manhunt, forcing them to flee to the most dangerous place they could possibly go... aboveground"--Back cover.

"Lane McEvoy barely survived her first journey to the Feral Zone-- the forbidden, overgrown landscape east of the Mississippi River that was abandoned when a virus ravaged the United States. But Lane knows what lies beyond the quarantine line, and it's time she exposed the truth: There are survivors in the zone -- people who have remained uninfected as well as those who have gone feral, whose bodies have mutated to display a variety of animal traits. Six months after the events of Inhuman, Lane ventures back into the Feral Zone on a humanitarian aid mission. But she also has a darker, secret purpose. Rumor has that Rafe, the one she loves, has succumbed to the effects of the virus and become more beast than man - and she promised to put him down if he ever went feral. Now, Lane fears the time has come to carry out her vow ..."--Jacket flap.