Book picks similar to
Ice by James Follett


fiction
thriller
polar-crime
mystery-thriller

Encrypted


Carolyn McCray - 2012
     Praise for Encrypted... "Imagine a roller coaster ride filled with historical twists and turns, fabulous action, and a great love story. You'll soar to the skies then grip your seat on the way down. Encrypted will leave you breathless in the end." Amber Scott Author Fierce Dawn "If you like Lara Croft you'll love the heroine, Ronnie. From one explosion to the next my heart raced with each turn of the page. And the plague making a come back? Written with such realism, after reading Encrypted, you may never want to leave your house again." Elena Gray Author Full Body Contact Overview: A code written in unbreakable Angelic script. The resurgence of the Black Death. Can an FBI Agent and the Robin Hood Hacker save the world from another Dark Ages? More praise for Encrypted... "Dan Brown blinked and Carolyn McCray took over. Encrypted is the best thing that I've read in the thriller genre, hands down. It's got history, mysticism, shadowy organizations manipulating world events. Oh, and did I mention the most incredible opposites attract relationship EVER? This novel knocked my socks off." Ben Hopkin Book Reviewer "Halting the spread of a weaponized redo of the Black Plague? Intending to plunge the world into a medieval hellish vision of the Hidden Hand? It's never good when the dead could turn out to be the lucky ones. That's a lot of responsibility resting on the shoulders of a brilliant cyber hacker and a sexy FBI agent. Makes you wonder who's calling the shots? God, the angels or a 13th century cult that would make Lucifer blush." Taylor Lee Author Grandmaster's Legacy "Action packed from the first sentence, 'Encrypted' kept me turning pages. From hackers, special agents, to the plague, you won't be able to put this one down until the end!" Kelli McCracken Author What the Heart Wants If you enjoy the intrigue of The Bourne Identity, the historical texture of Dan Brown, and the roller coaster action of Indian Jones, you are going to LOVE "Encrypted!" **If you were looking for Carolyn's extremely controversial historical thriller, simply search under 30 Pieces of Silver (#1 Kindle Bestseller in Men's Adventure and War categories, but be warned, it is WAY more controversial than Encrypted.) **If you were looking for near future action/adventure roller coaster, try Carolyn's MoonRush. It's 2049 and the rush is on! To the moon! **If you were looking for Carolyn's taut romantic suspense with an MMA kick, search for Full Body Contact under her pen name Cristyn West **If you were looking for Carolyn's #1 historical thriller set in ancient Rome, simply search under "Fated McCray." Beware though, there is a thread of paranormal romance that sneaks up on you like an asp in the night... **If you were looking for Carolyn's thriller short stories, An Engagement to Remember and Dark Lullaby check out Bullet, Brass, and Babes, the ultimate thriller anthology!

Icebound


David Axton - 1976
    The fear is numbing. Screams freeze in the throat. Death arrives in shades of white. Cold-blooded murder seems right at home....the chill of the grave.

Kill Decision


Daniel Suarez - 2012
    Unmanned weaponized drones already exist—they’re widely used by America in our war efforts in the Middle East. In Kill Decision, bestselling author Daniel Suarez takes that fact and the real science behind it one step further, with frightening results. Linda McKinney is a myrmecologist, a scientist who studies the social structure of ants. Her academic career has left her entirely unprepared for the day her sophisticated research is conscripted by unknown forces to help run an unmanned—and thanks to her research, automated—drone army. Odin is the secretive Special Ops soldier with a unique insight into the faceless enemy who has begun to attack the American homeland with drones programmed to seek, identify, and execute targets without human intervention. Together, McKinney and Odin must slow this advance long enough for the world to recognize its destructive power, because for thousands of years the “kill decision” during battle has remained in the hands of humans—and off-loading that responsibility to machines will bring unintended, possibly irreversible, consequences. But as forces even McKinney and Odin don’t understand begin to gather, and death rains down from above, it may already be too late to save humankind from destruction at the hands of our own technology.

The Quantum Spy


David Ignatius - 2017
    The winner of the race to build the world's first quantum machine will attain global dominance for generations to come. The question is, who will cross the finish line first: the U.S. or China?In this gripping cyber thriller, the United States' top-secret quantum research labs are compromised by a suspected Chinese informant, inciting a mole hunt of history-altering proportions. CIA officer Harris Chang leads the charge, pursuing his target from the towering cityscape of Singapore to the lush hills of the Pacific Northwest, the mountains of Mexico, and beyond. The investigation is obsessive, destructive, and--above all--uncertain. Do the leaks expose real secrets, or are they false trails meant to deceive the Chinese? The answer forces Chang to question everything he thought he knew about loyalty, morality, and the primacy of truth.Grounded in the real-world technological arms race, The Quantum Spy presents a sophisticated game of cat and mouse cloaked in an exhilarating and visionary thriller.

The Ember War Saga


Richard Fox - 2016
     Iron Hearts Elias lies dying after the battle to liberate Earth. His fellow armor soldiers hatch a plan to save his life, but they'll need help from a Marine with questionable morals to succeed. The Ruins of Anthalas Only a sliver of mankind survived the Xaros invasion. With Earth's defenses in ashes, nothing can stop the aliens' inevitable return. Hope arrives from a cryptic message from a long-lost alien race, promising the means to rebuild the shattered space fleet. Captain Valdar takes one of the last strike carriers, the Breitenfeld, and his shell-shocked crew on a desperate mission to the dead world. Vent Rats Chief MacDougall must hunt down a Toth loose in the Breitenfeld before it wrecks the entire ship. Blood of Heroes The Xaros, a galaxy-wide scourge of murderous drones, have their sights set on the planet Takeni. Captain Isaac Valdar volunteers his ship to defend the innocent civilians and evacuate every one he can. Pressed by an alien fleet in space and a horrifying foe on the surface, the Breitenfeld must risk everything to save the doomed populace.

Plague


Max Hawthorne - 2016
     “Holy --- Steve, the Taser’s not stopping him!” “It has to! Nobody can take that. Hit him again!” “Look out! Here he comes!” Ron charged again, powering his way past the jolts of pain. He smashed into the nearest intruder with bone-jarring force, grappling with him, tearing at him. The struggle intensified as the two rolled around on the alley’s blood-soaked cobblestones. The second creature joined in the battle, striking at his head with a hard stick in an effort to aid his comrade. Ron laughed. The intruders were pathetically weak. He could sense it. He snatched the light from the closer one and backhanded him across the face with it, sending him sprawling. Then he turned toward the other one. He was stumbling backward, clawing at his hip, and obviously terrified. Amused, Ron turned away and focused on the one on the ground. He took a deep whiff, smelling the hot blood that ran in rivulets from the downed newcomer’s brow, and listened to the jackhammer beating of his heart. More food. THE DEADLIEST KILLERS ARE THE ONES YOU CAN'T SEE. Three weeks have passed since the monstrous Kronosaurus imperator’s attack on Harcourt Marina stunned the world. The death toll was horrific, but Paradise Cove’s traumatized survivors soon discover they have more to worry about than just burying their dead and rebuilding their shattered lives. Accompanying the pliosaur were hordes of primeval pathogens. With their host destroyed, the Cretaceous-era bacteria are forced to find new homes for themselves. They do: tiny, bipedal life forms whose warm, iron-rich blood provides perfect growing conditions. They begin to multiply and spread, their mutagenic qualities quickly warping their unwitting host’s delicate bodies and minds. Soon, the infected are transformed into mindless beasts, consumed with a burning hunger for flesh. And like all ravening beasts, they must feed . . .

Nightmare Journey


Dean R. Koontz - 1975
    After man fled the stars, he tried to explore his own genetic frontier, creating horrible races of deformed beings - some scaled, some furred, tiny, winged and huge. Now Jask, a Pure who retains the original human genetic code, and Tedesco, a great bear with a human brain, are thrown together by their one shared and fatal trait - telepath. Hunted like animals by the fearful populace, they go in search of The Black Presence - which may be the key to mankind's place in the cosmos.

The Manchurian Candidate


Richard Condon - 1959
    Raymond Shaw is a hero of the first order. He's an ex-prisoner of war who saved the life of his entire outfit, a winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, the stepson of an influential senator...and the perfect assassin. Brainwashed during his time as a P.O.W., he is a "sleeper" -- a living weapon to be triggered by a secret signal. He will act without question, no matter what order he is made to carry out. To stop Shaw and those who now control him, his former commanding officer, Bennett Marco, must uncover the truth behind a twisted conspiracy of torture, betrayal, and power that will lead him to the highest levels of the government -- and into the darkest recesses of his own mind....

Nature's End


Whitley Strieber - 1986
    Immense numbers of people swarm the globe. In countless, astonishing ways, technology has triumphed-but at a staggering cost. Starvation is rampant. City dwellers gasp for breath under blackened skies. And tottering on the brink of environmental collapse, the world may be ending....It is a future that could well be ours. In their second shocking and fascinating portrait of America's possible destiny, Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka have again written a breathless thriller, a book that gives us an important warning and ultimately a message of hope.

The Speed of Sound


Eric Bernt - 2018
    Resident Eddie Parks’s contribution is nothing less than extraordinary: an “echo box” that can re-create never-recorded sounds using acoustic archeology.All Eddie wants is to hear his late mother’s voice. But what he’s created is inadvertently posing a threat to national security.To Harmony House’s shadowy government backers and radical extremists, the echo box is the ultimate intelligence asset—an end to the very concept of secrecy. Now for Eddie and the compassionate Dr. Skylar Drummond, the true nature of the institution is becoming chillingly clear.As ruthless competing enemies close in on Eddie and his miraculous machine, Skylar risks all to take him on the run. Because once that prize is won, Eddie Parks will no longer be considered a “special person” but a dangerous redundancy. An inconvenient echo that must be silenced.

Flowertown


S.G. Redling - 2012
    Those who survived contamination were herded into a US Army medically maintained quarantine and cut off from the world. Dosed with powerful drugs to combat the poison, their bodies give off a sickly sweet smell and the containment zone becomes known simply as Flowertown. Seven years later, the infrastructure is crumbling, supplies are dwindling, and nobody is getting clean. Ellie Cauley doesn’t care anymore. Despite her paranoid best friend's insistence that conspiracies abound, she focuses on three things: staying high, hooking up with the Army sergeant she's not supposed to be fraternizing with and, most importantly, trying to ignore her ever-simmering rage. But when a series of deadly events rocks the compound, Ellie suspects her friend is right—something dangerous is going down in Flowertown and all signs point to a twisted plan of greed and abuse. She and the other residents of Flowertown have been betrayed by someone with a deadly agenda and their plan is just getting started. Time is running out. With nobody to trust and nowhere to go, Ellie decides to fight with the last weapon she has—her rage.Flowertown is a high-intensity conspiracy thriller that brings the worst-case scenario vividly to life and will keep readers riveted until the final haunting page.

Foe


Iain Reid - 2018
    Not out here. We never have. In Iain Reid’s second haunting, philosophical puzzle of a novel, set in the near-future, Junior and Henrietta live a comfortable, solitary life on their farm, far from the city lights, but in close quarters with each other. One day, a stranger from the city arrives with alarming news: Junior has been randomly selected to travel far away from the farm...very far away. The most unusual part? Arrangements have already been made so that when he leaves, Henrietta won't have a chance to miss him, because she won't be left alone—not even for a moment. Henrietta will have company. Familiar company. Told in Reid’s sharp and evocative style, Foe examines the nature of domestic relationships, self-determination, and what it means to be (or not to be) a person. An eerily entrancing page-turner, it churns with unease and suspense from the first words to its shocking finale.

Watch Dogs: Dark Clouds


John Shirley - 2014
     The novel introduces Mick Wolfe, a veteran, who get caught in a dangerous game in Chicago’s hyper connected and violent underground.

Through Violet Eyes


Stephen Woodworth - 2004
    Because to every generation are born a select few souls with violet-colored eyes, and the ability to channel the dead. Both rare and precious—and rigidly controlled by a society that craves their services—these Violets perform a number of different duties. The most fortunate increase the world's cultural heritage by channeling the still-creative spirits of famous dead artists and musicians. The least fortunate aid the police and the law courts, catching criminals by interviewing the deceased victims of violent crime.But now the Violets themselves have become the target of a brutal serial murderer—a murderer who had learned how to mask his or her identity even from the victims. Can the FBI, aided by a Violet so scared of death that she is afraid to live, uncover the criminal in time? Or must more of her race be dispatched to the realm that has haunted them all since childhood?

Sea Raptor: A Deep Sea Thriller


John J. Rust - 2014
    Army Ranger, until an unfortunate incident forced him out of the service. He is soon hired by the Foundation for Undocumented Biological Investigation and given a new mission, to search for cryptids, creatures whose existence has not been proven by mainstream science. Teaming up with the daring and beautiful wildlife photographer Karen Thatcher, they must stop a sea monster's deadly rampage along the Jersey Shore. But that's not the only danger Rastun faces. A group of murderous animal smugglers also want the creature. Rastun must utilize every skill learned from years of fighting, otherwise, his first mission for the FUBI might very well be his last.