Books like 'Sunbirth'
Readers who enjoyed Sunbirth by An Yu also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Protect by R.D. Brady
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSURVIVOR, MOTHER, LEADER ...HUMANITY'S LAST CHANCE The pulse-pounding, action-packed dystopian novel from Amazon best selling author, R.D. Brady.Deep within the remnants of the United States, Lyla Richards oversees a camp of two hundred survivors...Categorized as:
dystopia family literary-fiction action-adventure audiobook book children-books colonization -
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I Am Not a Number by Lisa Heathfield
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe powerful and heart-wrenching new novel from Lisa Heathfield, award-winning author of Seed and Paper Butterflies. Perfect for fans of Sarah Crossan, Louise O'Neill and Lisa Williamson.The Traditionals have been voted to lead the country, winning people over with talks of healing a broken society, of stronger families and safer streets. They promised a happier future for everyone... -
Time Shelter: A Novel by Georgi Gospodinov
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 13 ratings“A trickster at heart, and often very funny” (Garth Greenwell, The New Yorker), award-winning Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov has enthralled readers around the world with his labyrinth-like, Kafkaesque tales of contemporary Europe...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism adult book contemporary fiction hard-sci-fi philosophy -
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The Semplica-Girl Diaries (short story) by George Saunders
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNovelette, Free online fiction.From newyorker.com“The Semplica-Girl Diaries” deals with a family in a not-too-distant future (or perhaps an alternate present or past?) that is struggling to keep up with the Joneses—which, in this society, means leasing some unusual garden ornaments... -
Flight 3430 by Jacqueline Druga
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn a small Montana town, it takes four minutes for every man, woman and child to die.It isn’t a virus or biological attack, but rather the beginning of a geological event that triggers a chain reaction across the globe with devastating effects.A repeat of an extinction event that occurred millions of years earlier.There is no stopping it. The only way to survive is to stay ahead of it... -
We of the Forsaken World... by Kiran Bhat
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn a distant corner of the globe, a man journeys to the birthplace of his mother, a tourist town destroyed by an industrial spill. In a nameless remote tribe, the chief’s second son is born, creating a scramble for succession as their jungles are being destroyed by loggers... -
Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsThe baker's dozen stories gathered here (including a new, previously unpublished story) turn readers into travelers to the past, the future, and explorers of the weirder points of the present...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction magical-realism adult anthologies apocalyptic audiobook contemporary -
Heading Home by Susan Kiernan-Lewis
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWhat happens when the one thing you’ve been praying for turns out to be the one thing that will destroy you and everything you love? After two years of living and adjusting to life after the bomb, Sarah and her son, John, have discovered that happiness can trump grief and loss... -
Motorman by David Ohle
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFiction. It is curious that a reprint could be heroic. It is more curious that a book this good could go out of print so quickly. And it is most curious that an introduction would even be required for a novel that, if you examine it carefully in the right kind oflight, might actually be seen to be steaming... -
Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford, Ben Marcus
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsForty years ago I first linked up with Unguentine and we made love on twin-hulled catamarans, sails a-billow, bless the seas . . .So begins the courtship of a certain Unguentine to the woman we know only as “Mrs. Unguentine,” the chronicler of their sad, fantastical tale. For forty years, they sail the seas together, alone on a giant land-covered barge of their own devising... -
The After Wife by Cass Hunter
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratings'Grab a box of tissues because this beautiful story will make you cry' Amazon reviewer, 5 starsWhen Rachel and Aidan fell in love, they thought it was forever.She was a brilliant, high-flying scientist. He was her loving and supportive husband.Now she's gone, and Aidan must carry on and raise their daughter alone... -
The Marriage Act by John Marrs
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhat if marriage was the law? Dare you disobey?Britain. The near-future. A right-wing government believes it has the answer to society’s ills — the Sanctity of Marriage Act, which actively encourages marriage as the norm, punishing those who choose to remain single... -
The Yellow Arrow by Victor Pelevin
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe main character, Andrei, is a passenger aboard the Yellow Arrow, who begins to despair over the trains ultimate destination and looks for a way out as the chapters count down. Indifferent to their fate, the other passengers carry on as usual — trading in nickel melted down fro the carriage doors, attending the Upper Bunk avant-garde theatre, and leafing through Pasternak’s Early Trains...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult alternate-history audiobook book -
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Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories by Kevin Wilson
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsKevin Wilson's characters inhabit a world that moves seamlessly between the real and the imagined, the mundane and the fantastic. "Grand Stand-In" is narrated by an employee of a Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider—a company that supplies "stand-ins" for families with deceased, ill, or just plain mean grandparents...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism 21st-century anthologies audiobook contemporary fiction humor -
Not Forgetting the Whale by John Ironmonger
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWhen a young man washes up, naked, on the sands of St Piran, he is quickly rescued by the villagers. From the retired village doctor and the schoolteacher, to the beachcomber and the owner of the local bar, the priest's wife and the romantic novelist, they take this lost soul into their midst...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction magical-realism adult apocalyptic audiobook book contemporary -
2666, Part 1: The Part About The Critics by Roberto Bolaño
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsComposed in the last two years of Bolaño's life, 2666 has been greeted as his greatest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness,beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters include academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student caring for her widowed, mentally unstable father... -
The High House by Jessie Greengrass
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn this powerful, highly anticipated novel from an award-winning author, four people attempt to make a home in the midst of environmental disaster.Perched on a sloping hill, set away from a small town by the sea, the High House has a tide pool and a mill, a vegetable garden, and, most importantly, a barn full of supplies... -
Rubicon Beach by Steve Erickson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA prisoner with a haunted past is released into ravaged Los Angeles, where he pursues an elusive girl to the shores or Rubicon Beach and faces his lost destiny. In his second novel, Steve Erickson creates a decaying world filled with leftover passions and poetic vision that established him as one of the most original and evocative American writers of his generation... -
Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children by Reena Mitra
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsSalman Rushdies Midnights Children, ever since its publication in 1980, has been considered an ingenious piece of literary art and a trendsetter in the field of Indian fiction in English... -
The Universe in Miniature in Miniature by Patrick Somerville
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn this genre-busting book from award-winning novelist Patrick Somerville characters, stories, and stray thoughts revolve around the "The Machine of Understanding Other People," the story of a Chicago man who is bequeathed a supernatural helmet that allows him to experience the inner worlds of those around him...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction magical-realism adult anthologies apocalyptic contemporary dark -
Every Version of You by Grace Chan
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn late twenty-first century Australia, Tao-Yi and her partner Navin spend most of their time inside a hyper-immersive, hyper-consumerist virtual reality called Gaia. They log on, go to work, socialise, and even eat in this digital utopia. Meanwhile their aging bodies lie suspended in pods inside cramped apartments...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction sci-fi fiction mental-illness lgbtq contemporary pollution-climate-change -
Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratings“PERHAPS TOMORROW I WILL WAKE UP ANOTHER PERSON. PERHAPS TOMORROW I WILL WAKE UP NOT A PERSON AT ALL.”From the “master of literary horror” (GQ) comes a collection of new stories tracing the limits and consequences of artificial intelligence and “post-human” relationships... -
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsOPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD“Wondering if there’s a novel out there that gives Cormac McCarthy’s The Road a run for its money? Here you go. [A Guardian and a Thief is] an indelible piece of writing, in equal parts dazzling and devastating...Categorized as:
literary-fiction dystopia fiction sci-fi contemporary historical-fiction mystery book -
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This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsNamed a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Harper's Bazaar, Oprah Daily, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, Good Housekeeping, Parade, Bustle, Marie Claire, PopSugar, Thrillist, Lit Hub and more! What if you could take a vacation to your past? With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a... -
The Affirmation by Christopher Priest
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsPeter Sinclair is tormented by bereavement and failure. In an attempt to conjure some meaning from his life, he embarks on an autobiography, but he finds himself writing the story of another man in another, imagines, world whose insidious attraction draws him even further in..Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult audiobook book contemporary -
Tenth of December by George Saunders
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 52 ratingsOne of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet...Categorized as:
dystopia family literary-fiction magical-realism 21st-century adult anthologies audiobook -
Pixel Juice by Jeff Noon
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratings'In the first shop they bought a packet of dogseed, because Doreen had always wanted to grow her own dog...'Pixel Juice is the collected outpourings of an overactive mind. A selection of fifty stories from Jeff Noon's head, each one strange, telling, disturbing, or sometimes just plain wierd...Categorized as:
dystopia magical-realism adult anthologies contemporary cyberpunk fiction male-author -
Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWritten in Soviet Moscow in the 1920s—but considered too subversive even to show to a publisher—the seven tales included here attest to Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s boundless imagination, black humor, and breathtaking irony: a man loses his way in the vast black waste of his own small room; the Eiffel Tower runs amok; a kind soul dreams of selling “everything you need for suicide”; an absentminded...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies classics communism -
Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers.One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction family magical-realism fiction sci-fi audiobook contemporary -
One of the Boys by Jayne Cowie
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIf you could test your son for a gene that predicts violence, would you do it?Antonia and Bea are sisters, and doting mothers to their sons. But that is where their similarities end.Antonia had her son tested to make sure he didn’t possess the "violent" M gene.Bea refuses to let her son take the test. His life should not be determined by a positive or negative result... -
The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgård, Karl Ove Knausgaard
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the internationally bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard, a sprawling and deeply human novel that questions the responsibilities we have toward one another and ourselves—and the limits of what we can understand about life itselfIn 1986, twenty-year-old Syvert Løyning returns from the military to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One evening, his dead father comes to him in a dream...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism fiction mystery audiobook philosophy contemporary fantasy -
Mothers & Other Monsters: Stories by Maureen F. McHugh
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn her debut collection, Maureen F. McHugh examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations...Categorized as:
dystopia family literary-fiction magical-realism adult anthologies contemporary female-author -
Deadly Design by Debra Dockter
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThough technically twins, Kyle and Connor McAdams couldn't be more different. Connor's the star of the track team, the valedictorian, a demigod living among the students at Rose Hill High School. But Kyle is more of a loner who's most comfortable playing video games in the basement. Also, these twins were born two years apart... -
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Dance Dance Revolution by Cathy Park Hong
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratings"The Guide" is a former South Korean dissident and tour guide who speaks a fluid fabricated language; "the Historian" interviews the Guide and annotates the commentaries. Cathy Park Hong's passionate and artful poem sequence weaves an ultimately revitalizing dialogue on shared experience in a globalized world, using language as subversion and disguise... -
Neon Green by Margaret Wappler
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIt's the summer of 1994 in suburban Chicago: Forrest Gump is still in theaters, teens are reeling from the recent death of Kurt Cobain, and you can enter a sweepstakes for a spaceship from Jupiter to land in your backyard. Welcome to Margaret Wappler's slightly altered alternative '90s. Everything's pretty much as you remember it, except for the aliens...Categorized as:
dystopia family literary-fiction magical-realism adult alternate-history book contemporary -
Dog Logic by Tom Strelich
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIf "Dr. Strangelove" and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" got together and had a litter of puppies you'd get "Dog Logic", a duck-and-cover fable and love story. Funny, inflammatory, and weirdly propheticHertell Daggett is the divorced and damaged caretaker of a failing pet cemetery on the outskirts of Bakersfield, and he's just discovered a lost civilization... -
A Better World by Sarah Langan
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe author of Good Neighbors , “one of the creepiest, most unnerving deconstructions of American suburbia” (NPR), returns with a provocative and disconcerting novel about a woman questioning her new home in an exclusive company town after a night out goes terribly wrong.Welcome to Plymouth Valley... -
Low Flying Aircraft And Other Stories by J.G. Ballard
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsContents:The Ultimate CityLow-Flying AircraftThe Dead AstronautMy Dream of Flying to Wake IslandThe Life and Death of GodThe Greatest Television Show on EarthA Place and a Time to DieThe Comsat AngelsThe Beach...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary fiction -
Vapor by Amanda Filipacchi
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSoon to be a major motion picture directed by Neil LaBute and starring Renee Zellweger, this is a surreal love story from the author of Nude Men. Now in paperback, Amanda Filipacchi's quirky comic romance gives aspiring actress Anna Graham a makeover that no reader will ever forget... -
Palestine +100: Stories from a Century after the Nakba by Basma Ghalayini, Mazen Maarouf
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsPalestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 – a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event – which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes – reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction adult anthologies contemporary fiction poc-author politics -
How Best to Avoid Dying by Owen Egerton
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratings[i]Lazarus Dying[/i]: the man Jesus raised from the dead is alive and living in New York City. [i]The Fecalist[/i]: an author whose best selling work is his latest poop. [i]Christmas[/i]: she loves you, you love her, she has a gun in your mouth. Welcome to the award-winning short fiction of Owen Egerton...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction magical-realism adult anthologies comedy contemporary drama -
The Hall of the Singing Caryatids by Victor Pelevin
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAfter auditioning for the part as a singing geisha at a dubious bar, Lena and eleven other “lucky” girls are sent to work at a posh underground nightclub reserved exclusively for Russia’s upper-crust elite. They are to be a sideshow attraction to the rest of the club’s entertainment, and are billed as the “famous singing caryatids.” Things only get weirder from there... -
And Yet They Were Happy by Helen Phillips
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"Brilliant miniatures. . . . Like the fables of Calvino, Millhauser, or W.S. Merwin. . . . Beautifully blends short story and prose poem. . . . Mermaids, subways, floods, cucumbers, magicians. . . .The book is a gallery of marvels...Categorized as:
family literary-fiction magical-realism adult anthologies classics contemporary female-author -
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Where the Sweet Bird Sings by Ella Joy Olsen
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn this provocative new novel, the author of Root, Petal, Thorn offers a powerful story of resilience, hope, and the secrets that, no matter how deeply hidden, can shape and ultimately unite a family. What connects us to one another? Is it shared history? Is it ancestry? Is it blood? Or is it love? People respond to tragedy in different ways. Some try to move on. Some don’t move at all... -
Mania by Lionel Shriver
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSet in a parallel yet all too familiar near past, a brilliant subversive novel from the New York Times bestselling author about a lifelong friendship threatened by the Culture Wars. In an alternative 2011, the Mental Parity movement takes hold. Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that there is no such thing as variable human intelligence... -
The Measure by Nikki Erlick
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 5 ratingsIt seems like any other day: You wake up, pour a cup of coffee, and head out. But today when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the answer to the exact number of years you will live.From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box...Categorized as:
dystopia literary-fiction magical-realism adult audiobook book contemporary female-mc -
The Stellow Project by Shari Becker
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 5 ratingsWhen a killer storm unexpectedly hits Manhattan, seventeen-year-old Lilah Stellow’s dad insists that she and her younger sister, Flori, take refuge at their cabin in the mountains. But instead of joining them with the experimental drug that keeps Lilah alive, he disappears just as news reports name him as a prime suspect in an act of ecoterrorism... -
Gliff by Ali Smith
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom a literary master, a moving and genre-bending story about our era-spanning search for meaning and knowing.An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world. Add two children. And a horse.From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world... -
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