Book picks similar to
Regret by Elana Johnson


dystopian
young-adult
dystopia
novellas

Sea of Dreams


C.L. Bevill - 2010
    Only Sophie remains, a typical seventeen year old girl from Oregon. While hiking with her father, she goes to sleep one night and wakes up to find that a sea of dreams has washed over the world, irrevocably changing everything.Electricity no longer works.Technology has ground to a halt. Towns have disappeared. New animals, unicorns, gryphons, and giant beasts for which Sophie has no name, have appeared.In her determined quest to understand and to endure, Sophie finds other survivors.Zach, young, handsome and full of his own secrets is one. There is Gideon, a fifteen year old leader of a group of other survivors in the California Redwoods. There is also the Burned Man, an individual who wants Sophie dead for both thwarting him and escaping his sinister intentions. All have special psychic abilities in common, which leads Sophie to believe that is the reason they survived. Sophie’s premonitions, Zach’s eerie dreams of Sophie before the change, and Gideon’s supernatural powers of perception all link them together in a very dissimilar worldSophie’s recently developed empathy to one of the new creatures, something that resembles both a firefly and a pixie, will guide her in her burgeoning role as both protector and protagonist in a startling newborn period.Magic is real.Technology is gone.The new and the old must learn to coexist or be vanquished forever.Sophie struggles to understand her responsibilities and to stay alive and one step ahead of the Burned Man.

Madly


Michelle Leighton - 2011
    A traitor has set free eight Lore, the spirits of what humans know as fairy tales, and they are making their way to Slumber to awaken their descendants. In order to save her home, the lives of her family, and all of humanity, Madly must learn to wield her exceptional powers and recapture the Lore before it’s too late and all is lost. But Madly’s only help are her two best friends and the Sentinel, Jackson Hamilton, that threatens both her heart and her destiny. Madly has loved Jackson as long as she can remember, but he is the one thing even a princess can’t have. Can she resist love to become the queen she was fated to be? Or can she find a way to have both?This novelette introduces you to Madly and prepares you for the quest of a lifetime

Stopping Time, Part 1


Melissa Marr - 2010
    She knows Niall and Irial watch over her, and she would give almost anything to keep them from hurting. But she resists the pull to be with either one of them.Someone knows about Leslie's past, however, and is intent on using her to reach the fey. And he doesn't care who gets hurt...

Phantom Universe


Laura Kreitzer - 2011
    When the boat she's lived on most of her life is destroyed, Summer finds herself washed up on the shore of a new world, a phantom universe full of the bizarre and extraordinary. She meets Gage, the one boy who understands the girl with no speech. But when their lives are put on the line, will Summer finally call out? Or will all be lost in the fathomless depth of silence?

Evolution


Kelly Carrero - 2012
    He knew what she was. And like him, she was born this way.Now if finding out that people like her shouldn’t exist was bad enough, Jades best friend is kidnapped by the psycho who’s terrorised her dreams. With the help of Aiden, she has to figure out how to saver her, before it’s too late.But what Jade doesn’t know, is not everything is what it seems. She is merely a puppet in a sadistic game to find out what she is truly capable of – and the game has only just begun.

The Executioness


Tobias S. Buckell - 2011
    But someone else will pay. Every time a spell is cast, a bit of bramble sprouts, sending up tangling vines, bloody thorns, and threatening a poisonous sleep. It sprouts in tilled fields and in neighbors' roof beams, thrusts up from between street cobbles, and bursts forth from sacks of powdered spice. A bit of magic, and bramble follows. A little at first, and then more--until whole cities are dragged down under tangling vines and empires lie dead, ruins choked by bramble forest. Monuments to people who loved magic too much.In paired novellas, award-winning authors Tobias Buckell and Paolo Bacigalupi explore a shared world where magic is forbidden and its use is rewarded with the axe. A world of glittering memories and a desperate present, where everyone uses a little magic, and someone else always pays the price.Magic has a price.In Khaim, that price is your head if you’re found using it. For the use of magic comes with a side effect: it creates bramble. The bramble is a creeping, choking menace that has covered majestic ancient cities, and felled civilizations. In order to prevent the spread of the bramble, many lose their heads to the cloaked executioners of Khaim.Tana is one of these executioners, taking the job over from her ailing father in secret, desperate to keep her family from starvation. But now her family has been captured by raiders, and taken to a foreign city.So Khaim’s only female executioner begins a quest to bring her family back together. A bloody quest that will change lives, cities, and even an entire land, forever. A quest that will create the legend of The Executioness.

Other Worlds


Jon ScieszkaEric S. Nylund - 2013
    J. MacHale, Eric Nylund, Kenneth Oppel and Neal Shusterman.Compiled by US National Ambassador for Children’s Literature (and Secret Ambassador for the Intergalactic Alliance) Jon Scieszka, Other Worlds will boldly take you where no reader has gone before.

Frozen


Melissa de la Cruz - 2013
    Like much of the destroyed planet, the place knows only one temperature—freezing. But some things never change. The diamond in the ice desert is still a 24-hour hedonistic playground and nothing keeps the crowds away from the casino floors, never mind the rumors about sinister sorcery in its shadows.At the heart of this city is Natasha Kestal, a young blackjack dealer looking for a way out. Like many, she's heard of a mythical land simply called “the Blue.” They say it’s a paradise, where the sun still shines and the waters are turquoise. More importantly, it’s a place where Nat won’t be persecuted, even if her darkest secret comes to light.But passage to the Blue is treacherous, if not impossible, and her only shot is to bet on a ragtag crew of mercenaries led by a cocky runner named Ryan Wesson to take her there. Danger and deceit await on every corner, even as Nat and Wes find themselves inexorably drawn to each other. But can true love survive the lies? Fiery hearts collide in this fantastic tale of the evil men do and the awesome power within us all.

Tainted


Alexandra Moody - 2014
    All she has ever known are the artificial confines of underground fallout shelter, the ARC. Under the Council’s rule, ruthless officials roam the hallways, community comes first and everyone lives in fear of failing their annual testing. With one simple blood test you could be taken away without any warning or a word of goodbye.There are only a few people in the ARC who Elle truly cares about and she desperately tries to keep them at arm’s length away for fear of losing someone else. Especially, her best friend Sebastian who she denies her feelings for, even from herself. Chilling secrets and mysterious disappearances plague the ARC, but Elle would never dare to voice the forbidden questions that linger on her lips. That is until they take the wrong person.No one is truly safe in the ARC and Elle is about to experience her own personal apocalypse. With nothing left to lose she will risk everything to uncover the truth about the tainted.Will she find what she's looking for or are some secrets better left buried deep underground?Don't miss the first book in this young adult series!

Anathema


Megg Jensen - 2011
    Make your own destiny. Reychel is a slave girl surrounded by magic, lies, and manipulation. Her best friend disappears in the middle of the night leaving Reychel to face her fifteenth birthday, the day her master burns his brand into the back of her bald head, alone. Sheltered from the outside world and without any hope for escape, can Reychel learn to believe in herself?

Grounded


G.P. Ching - 2012
    Science made me complicated.Book 1 in the Grounded TrilogyMy name is Lydia Troyer. Growing up in Hemlock Hollow, my life has always been simple. Things in my community haven’t changed much in over three hundred years, since the time my Amish ancestors came to what is now the Green Republic. I milk my cow by hand, make fresh bread every morning, and hope to be courted by Jeremiah, a boy I’ve known since childhood.When my father falls ill, the English doctor says a hospital outside the wall can heal him. Jeremiah convinces me to go on rumspringa, to experience the outside world as an Englisher in order to be closer to my father during his recovery. Others have gone before me. They claim it’s an adventure. But adventure turns to horror as an ordinary light switch thrusts me into a new world, and revelations about my personal history make me question everything I believe.All my life I’ve worked to be simple. I can’t pretend anymore. Nothing about me is simple.

Born


Tara Brown - 2012
    There are no regular people anymore."Ten years ago when the world ended she ran for her life.Five weeks ago the world she'd hidden from came knocking on the door of her secluded cabin.Ten days ago she found salvation hiding amongst the dead.Yesterday she went back for the living.Today she wonders if she will live to see tomorrow.What do you do when the world you were born to is gone?Where do you hide when even your own body isn't safe?Emma ran when her daddy told her to. She hid like he said she should. He was the first person she turned her back on. The first one she let die.Ten years has gone by and she still lives by the simple rules he taught her when she was nine years old."Don't help anyone. Don't go where other people are unless you have to. Trust no one. Always pull the trigger."Until one night she hears the worst sound in the world, a knock. A simple, timid knock, on the door to her cabin.Only the voice of the brave little girl, ready to die for her brother, persuades Emma to open the door.As her fingers turn the lock, she has a terrible feeling she will regret her decision.But even as regret fills her world, so do love and companionship. Things she never imagined she would ever have again.Everything comes at a cost; you decide what you'll pay.

Icicles Like Kindling


Sara Raasch - 2014
    In it, you will get a taste of the kingdom of Autumn, meet some of Meira’s fellow refugees, and get an introduction to the wicked danger that will soon plague them…

Forbidden Mind


Karpov Kinrade - 2011
    That's what we all thought. Until I met Drake.Everything changed when I linked minds with the blond-haired boy strapped to that gurney. In my wildest dreams I couldn't have imagined the dangerous truth behind my life. And now time is running out. We must work together to save ourselves and everyone we love. Before it's too late.

Little Knife


Leigh Bardugo - 2014
    It is a companion story to the third book of the Grisha Trilogy, Ruin and Rising, and the stories “The Witch of Duva” and “The Too-Clever Fox.”