10 Brilliant Thrillers Set in the Near Future
Perrin Pring recommends Mason Coile, Jakob Kerr, Rebecca Roanhorse, and more
Reading slump be damned! Here are ten, page-turning, edge of your seat, near-ish future thrillers that span the gambit of tastes. We’ve got recent releases and oldie but goodies, so don’t worry, at least one of these will be a quick turn around on Libby. Treat yourself to a book you look forward to reading.
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Mason Coile, Exiles
Novella. Horror. Sci-Fi. What happens when the robots sent to Mars to build the base for the first humans go offline? Dive into Exiles and you’ll find out.
Jakob Kerr, Dead Money
Techno Thriller. When a Silicon Valley tycoon is murdered, the hunt for the killer is on. Get ready for twisty turns which are so, so, so satisfying.
Blake Crouch, The Wayward Pines Trilogy
Near-future. Thriller. Trilogy. If you want to get lost one propulsive book after another, watch Secret Service Agent Ethan Burke wake up in bucolic Idaho town only to discover that nothing is what it seems.
Rebecca Roanhorse, Trail of Lightning
Dystopia. Thriller. Speculative. When the world falls apart, the Navajo Reservation is doing just fine, until the Navajo Gods come back to Earth and reluctant but totally badass, Maggie, has to deal with them.
Scott Carson, Departure 37
Sci-Fi. Told through two timelines, one in 2025 Maine and one in Indiana during the Cold War, you can’t guess how the two are going to intersect, but they do, and it is spectacular.
Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore
Near-Future. Thriller. Literary. Cli-Fi. A woman looking for her missing husband makes her way to a drowning seed bank in Antarctica. Reader beware, this one will rip your heart out.
C.J. Tudor, The Gathering
Mystery. Near-future. Speculative. Vampires. In a future where vampires exist, they are forced to live in colony far from humans. If they murder a human, the entire colony can be killed. When a local teen is found dead in his small Alaska town, a government vampire detective is flown in to prove the vamps are guilty. Except she finds that they might not be….
Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Lost Ark Dreaming
Cli-fi. Near-future. Speculative. Horror. Experimental. Taking place in an ark, a building built to withstand worsening global conditions and allow generations of humans to live, an unlikely group of teammates are forced to navigate the ark’s physical, societal, and political barriers to stop a mythological invader.
Emma Torz, Ink Blood Sister Scribe
Witches. Thrillers. This is for all the witchy girls out there who want their booky magic set in a jet setting, fast paced thriller of a read.
Daniel Suarez, Delta-V
Near-future. Thriller. Sci-fi. Humanity has figured out how to finally mine the stars, and it’s a race to see who can do it first. Set on Earth and in space, join the characters of Delta-V as they set out to make their fortunes in the stars no matter the cost.
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Perrin Pring
Perrin Pring is the author of Cash and Gravity. A former white water kayaker who competed on the World Cup circuit, Pring is now a park ranger. She has worked and lived across the U.S., riding horses in the Rocky Mountains, driving Jeeps in the wilds of the desert, greeting the sunrise in Hawaii, and running chainsaws in the Sierra Mountains. She holds an MFA in creative writing and screenwriting from UC Riverside Palm Desert and a BA from Tufts University. Her writing has appeared in Backcountry Journal, the Coachella Review, and Kelp Literary. She lives in the Rocky Mountain West.
