13 Tension-Filled Books To Read if You Loved ‘The Compound’

When record executive Theo meets the Future Saints, they’re bombing at a dive bar in their hometown. Since the tragic death of their manager, the band has been in a downward spiral and Theo has been dispatched to coax a new—and successful—album out of them, or let them go. Immediately, Theo is struck by Hannah, the group’s impetuous lead singer, who’s gone off script by debuting a whole new sound, replacing their California pop with gut-wrenching rock. When this new music goes viral, Theo puts his career on the line to give the Saints one last shot at success.

February Book Club Pick!

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore. Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. That is, until uncovered island secrets blur the lines of who they can trust.

Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident. As a teenager, Jane starts pushing against the limits set by him, and when her devotion to her father makes her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees to San Francisco in search of answers about her mother’s death. In a city undergoing seismic change, she will come to question everything she values.

Alice Storm hasn’t been welcome at her family’s private island off the Rhode Island coast in five years—not since she was cast out and built her life beyond the Storm name, influence, and untold billions. But the shocking death of her larger-than-life father changes everything. Alice plans to keep her head down, pay her final respects and leave the minute the funeral is over. Unfortunately, her father had other plans: Forcing them to play an inheritance game designed to upend their world.

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators, and prisoners are com­peting for the ultimate prize: their freedom. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches. But CAPE’s corporate own­ers will stop at nothing to protect their status quo.

Esther is a stowaway. She’s hidden herself away in the Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her―a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda. The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.

It begins with a reality TV show. 12 contestants sent into the woods to face challenges testing their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. Accept for a young woman called Zoo who stumbles across a scene of devastating destruction, and assumes is part of the game. But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways—and her ability to parse the charade will be either her triumph or her undoing.

A group of strangers arrive on a beautiful but remote island, ready for the challenge of a lifetime: to live there for one year, without contact with the outside world. But 12 months later, on the day when the boat is due to return for them, no one arrives. Eight people set foot on the island. How many will make it off alive?

Lyla is in a bit of a rut. Her post-doctoral research has fizzled out and things with her boyfriend, Nico, an aspiring actor, aren’t going great. So when the opportunity arises for her and Nico to join the cast of a new reality TV show, she agrees. Lyla soon finds herself whisked off to tropical paradise, where the two must compete against four other couples to win a cash prize. But not long after they arrive, an overnight storm cuts them all off from the mainland by miles of ocean. As tensions run high and fresh water runs low, the game show gets all too real—and the stakes are life or death.

When Caz steps onboard the exclusive cruise liner RMS Atlantica, it’s the start of a vacation of a lifetime with her new love, Pete. On their first night they explore the ship, eat, dance, make friends, but when Caz wakes the next morning, Pete is missing. And when she walks out into the corridor, all the cabin doors are open. To her horror, she soon realizes that the ship is completely empty. No passengers, no crew, nobody but her. The Atlantica is steaming into the mid-Atlantic and Caz is the only person on board. But that’s just the beginning of the terrifying journey she finds herself in.

Four strangers and six weeks: this is all that separates Mara from one life-changing payday. She was surprised when reality TV producers came knocking at Primal Instinct—the survival school where she teaches rich clients not to die during a night outdoors—and even more shocked to be cast in their new show, Civilization. Now she just has to live off the land with her fellow survivors for long enough to get the prize money. But when the cast wakes one morning to find something has gone horribly wrong “survival” becomes more than a game.

Five contestants have been chosen to compete for ten million dollars on the game show, One Lucky Winner. The catch? None of them knows what (or who) to expect, and it will be live streamed all over the world. Completely secluded in an estate in Northern California, with strict instructions not to leave the property and zero contact with the outside world, the competitors start to feel a little too isolated. When long-kept secrets begin to rise to the surface, the contestants realize this is no longer just a reality show—someone is out for blood.

In a dystopian future, America has fallen on hard times. 16-year-old Ray Garraty is about to compete in the annual grueling match of stamina and wits known as the Long Walk. 100 boys must keep a steady pace of four miles per hour day and night, without ever stopping. The winner gets “The Prize”—anything he wants for the rest of his life. But the rules of the Long Walk are harsh and the stakes are high. There is no finish line—the winner is the last man standing. Slow down under the speed limit and you’re given a warning. Three warnings and you’re out of the game—forever.