Book picks similar to
Broken Worlds by Drew Avera


sci-fi
science-fiction
1st-in-series
sifi

Earth Warden


Tony James Slater - 2018
    Their sacred duty: to protect humanity from itself… and from everything else. Lord Anakreon, Warden of the First Circle, has a problem. He’s been forced to kill another apprentice, and he’s rapidly running out of candidates. In fact, there is precisely one left… On Earth, Tristan Andrews is in trouble. He has been ever since the day his dad left for work – and never came home. Seven years later, living with one foot on the street, Tristan is struggling to survive. Until a tough old man with a scarred face breaks into his house. He claims to have the answers Tristan seeks… But there’s a price.

Legacy


Michelle Dorey - 2017
    She’s flitted like a butterfly from one college program to another. The only thing she’s ever finished has been the last call at dance clubs. Everything changes in a New York minute when her parents decide it’s time for tough love and cut her off. No more credit cards, no more cash allowance and OMG they cancelled her apartment’s lease. On top of all that, she’s banished to her grandmother’s. A grandmother she never knew existed. Her grandmother is batty as hell—Pamela York lives in an antiquated manor, dresses for dinner like she’s the Queen of England and makes crazy talk about ghosts. Ghosts? As. If. Keira’s about to learn a few things. Haunted houses do exist and she’s living in one. Pamela isn’t psychotic; she’s a powerful psychic whose lifework has been assisting reluctant spirits pass through The Veil to a higher plane. When Keira discovers she has a lot more in common with the old woman than she ever imagined, her real education begins. But it’s not just reluctant spirits Pamela has had to contend with. There also exist malevolent forces; paranormal entities that crave the chaos of a Veil torn asunder. Keira finds out not only are ghosts real— so are demons. Uh oh. A supernatural thriller with danger and magic.

Ship of Fools


Richard Paul Russo - 2001
    Now an unidentified transmission lures them toward a nearby planet-and into the dark heart of an alien mystery.

Nova


Margaret Fortune - 2015
    The fog vanishes, dissipated in an instant as though it never was. Memories come slotting into place, their edges sharp enough to leave furrows, and suddenly I know. I know exactly who I am.My name is Lia Johansen, and I was named for a prisoner of war. She lived in the Tiersten Internment Colony for two years, and when they negotiated the return of the prisoners, I was given her memories and sent back in her place.And I am a genetically engineered human bomb.Lia Johansen was created for only one purpose: to slip onto the strategically placed New Sol Space Station and explode. But her mission goes to hell when her clock malfunctions, freezing her countdown with just two minutes to go. With no Plan B, no memories of her past, and no identity besides a name stolen from a dead POW, Lia has no idea what to do next. Her life gets even more complicated when she meets Michael Sorenson, the real Lia’s childhood best friend.Drawn to Michael and his family against her better judgment, Lia starts learning what it means to live and love, and to be human. It is only when her countdown clock begins sporadically losing time that she realizes even duds can still blow up. If she wants any chance at a future, she must find a way to unlock the secrets of her past and stop her clock. But as Lia digs into her origins, she begins to suspect there’s far more to her mission and to this war, than meets the eye. With the fate of not just a space station but an entire empire hanging in the balance, Lia races to find the truth before her time—literally—runs out.

Fledgling


Katrina Cope - 2015
    Each day, unknown forces are taking over the human race. Evil is growing stronger, and innocence is the victim. If not stopped, the future of humankind is bleak. With current protection angels being stretched past their limits, a new wave of protection is being developed. A new breed of angel is being trained to fight. Fledgling is one of them. She did not ask for this life. After living three short lives as a human, she was chosen. With a mind of an eighteen-year-old, she struggles to adapt to her new life surrounded by angelic rules. All contact with her past life is ruled prohibited, and romance outlawed. Yet she still finds herself torn between her kind-hearted trainee friend, who has gorgeous blue wings with matching eyes, and the love of her human lives. Her human love is on the verge of either joining the angels or becoming lost to her forever. She is forbidden to intervene.Despite her qualms, she is passionate about saving the innocent. Will she be able to place aside her struggles in order to fulfil her passion and new life, or will she become exiled from succumbing to her temptations?

Spirit Legacy


E.E. Holmes - 2013
    Jess' life has never been what anyone would call easy; doing damage control in the wake of your nomadic, alcoholic mother doesn't exactly make for a storybook childhood. But now her world has fallen apart just when it should be coming together: her mother gone—dead under mysterious circumstances; her life uprooted to stay with estranged relatives she’s never met; and there’s something odd about some of the people she’s been meeting at school:They’re dead.Aided by Tia, her neurotic roommate, and Dr. David Pierce, a ghost-hunting professor, Jess must unravel the mystery behind her hauntings. But the closer she gets to the truth, the more danger shadows her every move. An ancient secret, long-buried, is about to claw its way to the surface, and nothing can prepare Jess for one terrifying truth......her encounters with the world of the dead are only just beginning.Spirit Legacy is the first of three thrilling novels in The Gateway Trilogy by E.E. Holmes.

Rebirth


Aaron Hodges - 2017
     For centuries our evolution has stagnated. Surrounded by technology, we ceased to adapt. Until now... When eighteen year old Chris is accused of treason, his world is changed forever. Abducted in the night, he wakes in a facility hidden deep in the Californian mountains. There he is subjected to the depraved experiments of the Praegressus Project – a government led initiative to enhance the human race. Unfortunately for Chris, the chances of survival are slim. But only the lucky get to die. Don't forget to check out Book 2 - Renegades!

The 100


Kass Morgan - 2013
    Now, one hundred juvenile delinquents—considered expendable by society—are being sent on a dangerous mission: to recolonize the planet. It could be their second chance at life...or it could be a suicide mission.CLARKE was arrested for treason, though she's haunted by the memory of what she really did. WELLS, the chancellor's son, came to Earth for the girl he loves—but will she ever forgive him? Reckless BELLAMY fought his way onto the transport pod to protect his sister, the other half of the only pair of siblings in the universe. And GLASS managed to escape back onto the ship, only to find that life there is just as dangerous as she feared it would be on Earth.Confronted with a savage land and haunted by secrets from their pasts, the hundred must fight to survive. They were never meant to be heroes, but they may be mankind's last hope.

Breaking Destiny


Mitty Walters - 2019
     A quiet businessman—known by most as Joe Kettleman—narrowly survives an attempt on his life. While recovering from surgery to remove a bullet, imaging reveals a lethal tumor. Unwilling to spend his final days under chemical bombardment, he returns to a remote cabin in New Mexico to die in peace. But when death takes its time and Joe outlives his supplies, he’s forced to take a perilous journey through the deserts of the Bisti Badlands. Two days into what was supposed to be a five day trek, Joe comes across a town. A small city, really. Right in the middle of nowhere. And it’s not on any map. That’s when Joe’s fate collides with that of a beautiful young woman, desperate to escape the strange city and making wild claims about a genetically enhanced pandemic that will soon wipe out most of humanity. Clearly she’s delusional. But something has her genuinely terrified. To unravel the mystery, Joe will have to put his death on hold.

The Park Service


Ryan Winfield - 2012
    That's what fifteen-year-old Aubrey VanHouten learns when he stumbles onto a post-apocalyptic paradise where the few remaining humans live on the run from deadly drones controlled by a mysterious Park Service. Torn between loyalty to his new best friend and trusting the girl of his dreams, Aubrey must learn to survive in a world he never dreamed existed while searching for answers to why everything he was taught is a lie. Beautifully written with challenging moral dilemmas and heart-melting friendships, The Park Service trilogy is an epic coming-of-age-story that will inspire and delight readers young and old.

The January Dancer


Michael Flynn - 2008
    Heinlein Award-winning SF writer Michael Flynn now turns to space opera with stunningly successful results. Full of rich echoes of space opera classics from Doc Smith to Cordwainer Smith, "The January Dancer" tells the fateful story of an ancient pre-human artifact of great power, and the people who found it. Starting with Captain Amos January, who quickly loses it, and then the others who fought, schemed, and killed to get it, we travel around the complex, decadent, brawling, mongrelized interstellar human civilization the artifact might save or destroy. Collectors want the Dancer; pirates take it, rulers crave it, and they'll all kill if necessary to get it. This is a thrilling yarn of love, revolution, music, and mystery, and it ends, as all great stories do, with shock and a beginning.

Losing Mars


Peter Cawdron - 2018
    A Chinese spacecraft is disabled, stranded near Phobos. Well over a hundred million miles from Earth, their only hope for rescue comes from the American base on the edge of the Vallis Marineris on the surface of Mars. The Americans need to decide, do they lose Mars or their humanity?

Timebound


Rysa Walker - 2012
    But it all becomes horrifyingly real when a murder in the past destroys the foundation of Kate’s present-day life. Suddenly, that medallion is the only thing protecting Kate from blinking out of existence.Kate learns that the 1893 killing is part of something much more sinister, and Kate’s genetic ability to time-travel makes her the only one who can stop him. Risking everything, she travels to the Chicago World’s Fair to try to prevent the killing and the chain of events that follows.Changing the timeline comes with a personal cost, however—if Kate succeeds, the boy she loves will have no memory of her existence. And regardless of her motives, does she have the right to manipulate the fate of the entire world?

Ninefox Gambit


Yoon Ha Lee - 2016
    Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris’s career isn’t the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.Cheris’s best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress.The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own. As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao–because she might be his next victim.

Artifact Space


Miles Cameron - 2021
    But though she's made her way onboard with faked papers, leaving her old life - and scandals - behind isn't so easy.She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new . . ., ,