Books like Without warning by John Birmingham

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune follows Paul Atreides as he rises from betrayed heir to the enigmatic Muad'Dib, guarding the precious spice melange that fuels galactic politics and extends life.

Andy Weir’s debut science‑fiction bestseller follows astronaut Mark Watney, stranded on Mars in 2035, as he uses ingenuity to survive.

In 2044, teenager Wade Watts lives for the virtual utopia OASIS, where he hunts legendary puzzles from old pop culture for a hidden prize that could change the world.

Neal Stephenson’s cyberpunk classic follows hacker Hiro as he confronts a deadly digital drug in a slick, future Metaverse full of hackers, virtual reality, and ancient Sumerian intrigue.

A weary father and his young son journey across a bleak, post‑apocalyptic America, battling cannibals, starvation, and a harsh winter in a desperate quest for safety and a glimpse of remaining civilization.

A soldier's harrowing journey across the stars, spanning space and time in Joe Haldeman's hard sci-fi epic war story.

Red Mars chronicles the early days of humanity’s colonization and political upheaval on Mars, blending environmental engineering, terraforming and nation‑building in a hard‑science vision.

A Soviet nuclear submarine marked for defection slips into the Atlantic, sparking a high‑stakes pursuit by the United States and the Soviet Union in this tense Cold War thriller.

In Warren Ellis’s near‑future techno‑thriller, foresight strategist Adam Dearden retreats to the isolated Normal Head forest in Oregon to escape the mental toll of predicting disaster. When a patient disappears, he uncovers a conspiracy that challenges assumptions about the future and our place in it.

In the icy Canadian Arctic, a vanished Soviet bomber laden with anthrax is found, forcing a U.S. covert team, led by Lt. Col. Jon Smith, to race against ruthless mercenaries and Russian secrecy to uncover a deadly hidden truth.

Former Republic founder Darrow goes rogue, leading a desperate war on Mercury while he faces his own legacy. New heroes, shifting alliances, and looming dangers threaten a fragile peace, ushering in a new Dark Age.

Contest over the presidency, death of a religious leader, and intelligence officers in the final presidential election of the century.

In Kuwait, American forces are stacked up, locked and loaded for the invasion of Iraq. In Paris, a covert agent, a woman who inhabits a twilight of lies and death, is close to cracking a terrorist cell. And just north of the equator, a forty-foot wood-hulled sailboat, manned by a drug runner, a pirate, and two gun-slinging beauties, is witness to the unspeakable. In one instant, all around the world, for politicians and peasants, from Gaza to Geneva, things will never be the same. A wave of inexplicable energy has slammed into the continental United States. America, as we know it, is gone. . . .WITHOUT WARNINGNow U.S. soldiers are fighting a war without command or control. A correspondent records horrors for no one. Washington is gone and the line of succession is in tatters; the functioning remnants of government are in Pearl Harbor, Guantanamo Bay, and one desperate, isolated corner of the Northwest. For the jihadists, it's Allah's miracle. For Saddam, it's a chance to attack. Iran declares war on an America that doesn't exist--except in the hearts and souls of the men and women who want it to.In this astounding work of alternate fiction, John Birmingham hurtles us into a scenario that is unimaginable but shatteringly real: a world of financial ruin where a cloud of noxious waste--from America's burning cities--darkens Europe, while men and women in offices around the globe struggle to make decisions that cannot hold and opportunists unleash their secret demons.From a slick Texas lawyer who happens to be in the right place at the right time to a hard-working city engineer in Seattle who becomes his terrified city's only hope, from the cancer-stricken secret agent to a drug runner off the Mexican coast and a U.S. general in Cuba, Without Warning tells a fast, furious story of survival, violence, and a new, soul-shattering reality. The first in an epic trilogy that will leave readers breathless and astounded, Without Warning offers a world without its policeman, its Great Satan, or its savior--as an unknowable future struggles to be born.From the Hardcover edition.

After discovering his wife murdered and toddler alone, art history professor George Clare faces relentless police suspicion while dark community secrets unfold across decades.

A group of executives is held hostage in a luxurious business retreat by a group of backwoods hunters, with the goal of demanding a ransom of unprecedented size.