Book picks similar to
The Recovery Man's Bargain by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
science-fiction
sci-fi
fiction
novella
Qualify
Vera Nazarian - 2014
You die, or you Qualify.
The year is 2047. An extinction-level asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, and the descendents of ancient Atlantis have returned from the stars in their silver ships to offer humanity help.But there’s a catch.They can only take a tiny percent of the Earth’s population back to the colony planet Atlantis. And in order to be chosen, you must be a teen, you must be bright, talented, and athletic, and you must Qualify.Sixteen-year-old Gwenevere Lark is determined not only to Qualify but to rescue her entire family.Because there’s a loophole.If you are good enough to Qualify, you are eligible to compete in the brutal games of the Atlantis Grail, which grants all winners the laurels, high tech luxuries, and full privileges of Atlantis Citizenship. And if you are in the Top Ten, then all your wildest wishes are granted… Such as curing your mother’s cancer.There is only one problem.Gwen Lark is known as a klutz and a nerd. While she’s a hotshot in classics, history, science, and languages, the closest she’s come to sports is a backyard pool and a skateboard.This time she is in over her head, and in for a fight of her life, against impossible odds and world-class competition—including Logan Sangre, the most amazing guy in her class, the one she’s been crushing on, and who doesn’t seem to know she exists.Because every other teen on Earth has the same idea.
You Qualify or you die.
* * *EXCERPT!Now you can read
Chapter One
in its entirety (click here)!* * *
The Breach
Patrick Lee - 2009
It is the world's best-kept secret-and its most terrifying. Trying to regain his life in the Alaskan wilds, ex-con/ex-cop Travis Chase stumbles upon an impossible scene: a crashed 747 passenger jet filled with the murdered dead, including the wife of the [resident of the United States.Though a nightmare of monumental proportions, it pales before the terror to come, as Chase is dragged into a battle for the future that revolves around an amazing artifact. Allied with a beautiful covert operative whose life he saved, Chase must now play the role he's been destined for-a pawn of incomprehensible forces or humankind's final hope-as the race toward Apocalypse begins in earnest. Because something is loose in the world. And doomsday is not only possible...it is inevitable.
The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin - 2016
Le Guin, an icon in American literature, collected for the first time in one breathtaking volume.Ursula K. Le Guin has won multiple prizes and accolades from the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to the Newbery Honor, the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and PEN/Malamud Awards. She has had her work collected over the years, but never as a complete retrospective of her longer works as represented in the wonderful The Found and the Lost.CONTENT "Vaster Than Empires And More Slow" "Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight" "Hernes" by Ursula K. Le Guin "The Matter Of Seggri" "Another Story Or A Fisherman Of The Inland Sea" "Forgiveness Day" "A Man Of The People" "A Woman’s Liberation" "Old Music And The Slave Women" "The Finder" "On The High Marsh" "Dragonfly" "Paradises Lost"This collection is a literary treasure chest that belongs in every home library.
Catseye
Andre Norton - 1961
He didn't understand how he could communicate with the animals or why they were contacting him. But from the moment he began work at Kyger's pet emporium on Korwar he was enmeshed in a perilous intrigue... an intrigue that would leave more than one man dead, an entire government in jeopardy, and Horan himself both master and captive of the most extraordinary band of warriors his world had ever known.
This is Not a Game
Walter Jon Williams - 2009
And though each was good at a number of things, all of them were very good at games...Dagmar is a game designer trapped in Jakarta in the middle of a revolution. The city is tearing itself apart around her and she needs to get out. Her boss Charlie has his own problems — 4.3 billion of them, to be precise, hidden in an off-shore account. Austin is the businessman — the VC. He's the one with the plan and the one to keep the geeks in line. BJ was there from the start, but while Charlie's star rose, BJ sank into the depths of customer service. He pads his hours at the call-center slaying on-line orcs, stealing your loot, and selling it on the internet.But when one of them is gunned down in a parking lot, the survivors become players in a very different kind of game. Caught between the dangerous worlds of the Russian Mafia and international finance, Dagmar must draw on all her resources — not least millions of online gamers — to track down the killer. In this near-future thriller, Walter Jon Williams weaves a pulse-pounding tale of intrigue, murder, and games where you don't get an extra life.
Crossover
Joel Shepherd - 2001
Cassandra is an experimental design — more intelligent, more creative, and far more dangerous than any that have preceded her. But with her intellect come questions, and a moral awakening. She deserts the League and heads incognito into the space of her former enemy, the Federation, in search of a new life. Her chosen world is Callay, and its enormous, decadent capital metropolis of Tanusha, where the concerns of the war are literally and figuratively so many light years away. But the war between the League and the Federation was ideological as much as political, with much of that ideological dispute regarding the very existence of artificial sentience and the rules that govern its creation. Cassandra discovers that even in Tanusha, the powerful entities of this bloody conflict have wound their tentacles. Many in the League and the Federation have cause to want her dead, and Cassandra’s history, inevitably, catches up with her. Cassandra finds herself at the mercy of a society whose values preclude her own right even to exist. But her presence in Tanusha reveals other fault lines, and when Federal agents attempt to assassinate the Callayan president, she finds herself thrust into the service of her former enemies, using her lethal skills to attempt to protect her former enemies from forces beyond their ability to control. As she struggles for her place and survival in a new world, Cassandra must forge new friendships with old enemies, while attempting to confront the most disturbing and deadly realities of her own existence
The Expert System's Brother
Adrian Tchaikovsky - 2018
He soon discovers that the life he thought he knew is far stranger than he could even possibly imagine.Can an unlikely saviour provide the answers to the questions he barely comprehends?
Mean Streets
Jim Butcher - 2009
Green.Kat Richardson’s Greywalker finds herself in too deep when a “simple job” goes bad and Harper Blaine is enmeshed in a tangle of dark secrets and revenge from beyond the grave.For centuries, the being that we know as Noah lived among us. Now he is dead, and fallen-angel-turned-detective Remy Chandler has been hired to find out who killed him in a whodunit by Thomas E. Sniegoski.
The New Space Opera
Gardner DozoisRobert Silverberg - 2007
McAuley88 • Glory • (2007) • novelette by Greg Egan112 • Maelstrom • (2007) • novelette by Kage Baker143 • Blessed by an Angel • (2007) • shortstory by Peter F. Hamilton158 • Who's Afraid of Wolf 359? • shortstory by Ken MacLeod170 • The Valley of the Gardens • (2007) • novelette by Tony Daniel202 • Dividing the Sustain • (2007) • novelette by James Patrick Kelly234 • Minla's Flowers • [Merlin [4] • 2] • (2007) • novella by Alastair Reynolds291 • Splinters of Glass • (2007) • novelette by Mary Rosenblum316 • Remembrance • (2007) • shortstory by Stephen Baxter334 • The Emperor and the Maula • (2007) • novelette by Robert Silverberg379 • The Worm Turns • (2007) • shortstory by Gregory Benford401 • Send Them Flowers • (2007) • novelette by Walter Jon Williams436 • Art of War • shortstory by Nancy Kress454 • Muse of Fire • (2007) • novella by Dan Simmons
The Oracle Year
Charles Soule - 2018
So when an unassuming Manhattan bassist named Will Dando awakens from a dream one morning with 108 predictions about the future in his head, he rapidly finds himself the most powerful man in the world. Protecting his anonymity by calling himself the Oracle, he sets up a heavily guarded Web site with the help of his friend Hamza to selectively announce his revelations. In no time, global corporations are offering him millions for exclusive access, eager to profit from his prophecies.He's also making a lot of high-powered enemies, from the President of the United States and a nationally prominent televangelist to a warlord with a nuclear missile and an assassin grandmother. Legions of cyber spies are unleashed to hack the Site—as it's come to be called—and the best manhunters money can buy are deployed not only to unmask the Oracle but to take him out of the game entirely. With only a handful of people he can trust—including a beautiful journalist—it's all Will can do to simply survive, elude exposure, and protect those he loves long enough to use his knowledge to save the world.Delivering fast-paced adventure on a global scale as well as sharp-witted satire on our concepts of power and faith, Marvel writer Charles Soule's audacious debut novel takes readers on a rollicking ride where it's impossible to predict what will happen next.
A Question of Navigation
Kevin Hearne - 2021
He’s told that as a physicist, he is to be reserved, along with five other scientists, for a mysterious purpose. But fifty thousand other humans on board the interstellar scout ship are scheduled to be butchered and frozen, a food supply for the long journey to the alien homeworld. Clint and the other Reserves can’t stand by and let that happen.Ayesha is a biologist and Deepali a geologist; Oscar is a meteorologist and Gregory specializes in robotics; Hanh is a researcher in marine biology. Together they’re humanity’s last unlikely hope. Because if they don’t find a way to stop the ravenous aliens from reporting that they’ve found a planet full of delicious creatures to eat, the fifty thousand humans on board will only be the first of billions: the entire earth will become an all-you-can-eat buffet.
The Apollo Murders
Chris Hadfield - 2021
Three astronauts in a tiny spaceship, a quarter million miles from home. A quarter million miles from help.NASA is about to launch Apollo 18. While the mission has been billed as a scientific one, flight controller Kazimieras "Kaz" Zemeckis knows there is a darker objective. Intelligence has discovered a secret Soviet space station spying on America, and Apollo 18 may be the only chance to stop it.But even as Kaz races to keep the NASA crew one step ahead of their Russian rivals, a deadly accident reveals that not everyone involved is quite who they were thought to be. With political stakes stretched to the breaking point, the White House and the Kremlin can only watch as their astronauts collide on the lunar surface, far beyond the reach of law or rescue. Full of the fascinating technical detail that fans of The Martian loved, and reminiscent of the thrilling claustrophobia, twists, and tension of The Hunt for Red October, The Apollo Murders is a high-stakes thriller unlike any other. Chris Hadfield captures the fierce G-forces of launch, the frozen loneliness of space, and the fear of holding on to the outside of a spacecraft orbiting the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour as only someone who has experienced all of these things in real life can. Strap in and count down for the ride of a lifetime.
Perception
Lee Strauss - 2012
Zoe’s carefree life takes a traumatic turn when her brother Liam is murdered.The only one who can help her find out what happened is Noah Brody, the last guy on earth she should trust. Noah Brody is a natural who lives on the outside. He leads protests against the GAPs and detests the widening chasm they’ve created between those who have and those who don’t. He doesn’t like girls like Zoe and he has good reason not to like her specifically. He's not sure why he's agreed to help her, but what he finds out when he does, will change his life forever.PERCEPTION is a near-future mystery that can be read alone.
Ocean of Storms
Christopher Mari - 2016
Then a catastrophic explosion on the moon cleaves a vast gash in the lunar surface, and the massive electromagnetic pulse it unleashes obliterates Earth's electrical infrastructure. To plumb the depths of the newly created lunar fissure and excavate the source of the power surge, the feuding nations are forced to cooperate on a high-risk mission to return mankind to the moon.Now, a diverse, highly skilled ensemble of astronauts--and a pair of maverick archaeologists plucked from the Peruvian jungle--will brave conspiracy on Earth and disaster in space to make a shocking discovery.Ocean of Storms is an epic adventure that spans space and time as its heroes race to fulfill an ancient mission that may change the course of humanity's future.
The Collectors
Philip Pullman - 2014
Coulter. On a cold winter's night, two art collectors are settled before a fire in the Senior Common Room of a college in Oxford, discussing the unusual pieces one has recently added to his collection. What the two men don't know is that the portrait of a striking young woman and the bronze sculpture of a fearsome monkey are connected in mysterious ways. How could they imagine that they are about to be caught in the cross-fire of a story which has traveled time . . . and worlds. Published in 50 countries with over 22 million copies sold, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass are renowned for their engrossing storytelling and epic scope. This new short tale will delight the many fans eager for any new glimpse into the world of His Dark Materials.