Book picks similar to
Stonefish by Scott R. Jones


horror
science-fiction
fiction
sci-fi

The Girl In Between


Laekan Zea Kemp - 2012
    Afflicted with Klein-Levin Syndrome, she suffers episodes of prolonged sleep that steal weeks, and sometimes even months, from her life. But unlike most KLS patients, she doesn’t spend each episode in a catatonic state or wake up with no recollection of the time she’s missed. Instead, Bryn spends half her life in an alternate reality made up of her memories. For Bryn, the past is a place, until one day a boy she’s never met before washes up on the illusory beach of her dreams with no memory of who he is.But the appearance of this strange boy isn’t the only thing that’s changed. Bryn’s symptoms are worsening, her body weakening as she’s plagued by hallucinations even while awake. Her only hope of finding a cure is to undergo experimental treatment created by a German specialist. But when Dr. Banz reveals that he knows more about her strange symptoms than he originally let on, Bryn learns that the boy in her head might actually be the key to understanding what’s happening to her, and worse, that if she doesn’t find out his identity before it’s too late, they both may not survive.

Extracted


R.R. Haywood - 2017
    But his good intentions turn catastrophic when an early test reveals something unexpected: the end of the world.A desperate plan is formed. Recruit three heroes, ordinary humans capable of extraordinary things, and change the future.Safa Patel is an elite police officer, on duty when Downing Street comes under terrorist attack. As armed men storm through the breach, she dispatches them all.'Mad' Harry Madden is a legend of the Second World War. Not only did he complete an impossible mission—to plant charges on a heavily defended submarine base—but he also escaped with his life.Ben Ryder is just an insurance investigator. But as a young man he witnessed a gang assaulting a woman and her child. He went to their rescue, and killed all five.Can these three heroes, extracted from their timelines at the point of death, save the world?

John Dies at the End


David Wong - 2007
    You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don't put it down. It's too late. They're watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you'll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it's too late. You touched the book. You're in the game. You're under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.The important thing is this: The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. I'm sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault.

Mordew


Alex Pheby - 2020
    Until one day his desperate mother sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew. The Master derives his magical power from feeding on the corpse of God. But Nathan, despite his fear and lowly station, has his own strength – and it is greater than the Master has ever known. Great enough to destroy everything the Master has built. If only Nathan can discover how to use it. So it is that the Master begins to scheme against him – and Nathan has to fight his way through the betrayals, secrets, and vendettas of the city where God was murdered, and darkness reigns… … WELCOME TO MORDEW – THE FIRST IN A MONUMENTAL NEW TRILOGY FROM THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR, ALEX PHEBY

A Question of Will


Alex Albrinck - 2012
    They burned down his house. They beat him within an inch of his life. And then they realized they had the wrong man.They should have killed him when they had the chance.Will Stark is a thirty-five-year-old self-made billionaire. He's happily married and father to a young son he adores. He's well-loved in his community for his philanthropic efforts. He lives in a beautiful home inside a private, secure community designed to provide safety for his family from those who would do them harm.His idyllic world is shattered when, despite his best efforts, men storm his community, murder his family in their home, and burn his house down. In his efforts to rush to the aid of those he loves, Will is seized, beaten, and nearly killed.And as it's happening, the men who've attacked him realize they've mistaken him for someone else.Will's rescue from certain death brings him into the midst of a battle between two factions of a secret society, one in which members learn the secrets of developing superhuman abilities. And it's a battle in which a man named Will Stark has been the focal point. Will seizes the opportunity to learn these secrets, and battle those who destroyed his family. His own rapid development, however, means he may become a target for attack of his own accord.As he builds his new life, however, Will is faced with a critical decision. Will he use his new abilities to seek out vengeance? Or will he risk everything he has to save those he holds most dear?

Post-Human Omnibus


David Simpson - 2014
    What will happen when humans can live forever? Or die with just a few keystrokes? How will our governments react as they lose control of their citizens' data? And how do you feel about uploading your mind into a computer so that you may live on after death?The Post-Human Omnibus is the perfect book for these times. It's an epic series of stories that explore all sides of humanity's future through science fiction, from both near-future dystopias to far-future utopias (and everything in between). Written by award winning author & TEDx speaker David Simpson, this collection explores many different genres from thrillers to romances to mysteries and much more.

Halo


Frankie Rose - 2013
    Her training. Her halo.The first and second give her the ability to defeat the opponents she is pitted against each month. The third frees her from pain and fear. From any kind of emotion at all. Everything is as it should be. Everything is as it should be, until…Fear… Pain… Anger… Happiness… Desire… Guilt…Love.When a newly named Kit escapes the Sanctuary after killing her best friend, the last thing she needs is another knife in her hand. Or Ryka, the damaged, beautiful blond boy, whom she refuses to let save her. The sights and sounds of Freetown are new, yet one thing is familiar: the matches. The only difference? Where the blood in the Sanctuary landed only on the Colosseum floor, Kit will quickly learn that a river of red runs through Freetown’s very streets.Without her halo, the inhabitants of Kit’s new home consider her saved, but is that really the case? The reality of her old life is paralyzing. Would she be better off free of the guilt associated with all the blood on her hands, or is the love of one boy worth living through all the pain?Raksha is the call of the dead. It is the rumbling chant for fresh blood from the other side, the demand for sacrifice. The Colosseum is behind Kit. The fighting pits await.

Winter


Rod Rees - 2011
    Created to prepare soldiers for the nightmarish reality of urban warfare, it is a virtual world locked in eternal civil war. Its thirty million digital inhabitants are ruled by duplicates of some of history's cruellest tyrants: Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the Holocaust; Beria, Stalin's arch executioner; Torquemada, the pitiless Inquisitor General; Robespierre, the face of the Reign of Terror. But something has gone badly wrong inside the Demi-Monde, and the US President's daughter has become trapped in this terrible world. It falls to eighteen-year-old Ella Thomas to rescue her, yet once Ella has entered the Demi-Monde she finds that everything is not as it seems, that its cyber-walls are struggling to contain the evil within and that the Real World is in more danger than anyone realises.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch


Philip K. Dick - 1965
    When industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z. It is far more potent than Can-D, but threatens to plunge the world into a permanent state of drugged illusion controlled by the mysterious Eldritch.Cover illustration: Chris Moore

Catskinner's Book


Misha Burnett
    James Ozryck has a monster in his head. All of his life the entity that he calls Catskinner has made him a fugitive, afraid to get too close to anyone, afraid to stay in one place for too long. Catskinner kills, without compassion and without warning, and is very good at it. Now James has learned that Catskinner is not the only monster in the world, a world that has suddenly become a far stranger and more dangerous place than he imagined. In order to survive he will have to become something more than a monster, he will have to learn what it means to be human.

Season Of The Harvest


Michael R. Hicks - 2011
    The group’s leader, Naomi Perrault, is a beautiful geneticist who Jack believes conspired to kill his friend, and is claiming that a major international conglomerate developing genetically engineered crops is plotting a sinister transformation of our world that will lead humanity to extinction. As Jack is drawn into a quietly raging war that suddenly explodes onto the front pages of the news, he discovers that her claims may not be so outrageous after all. Together, the two of them must battle a horror Jack could never have imagined, with the fate of all life on Earth hanging in the balance…

Alone, Untouched, Soulless


Robert J. Crane - 2014
    (Approx. 185,000 words total.)Books included:1. Alone2. Untouched3. SoullessAloneSienna Nealon was a 17 year-old girl who had been held prisoner in her own house by her mother for twelve years. Then one day her mother vanished, and Sienna woke up to find two strange men in her home. On the run, unsure of who to turn to and discovering she possesses mysterious powers, Sienna finds herself pursued by a shadowy agency known as the Directorate and hunted by a vicious, bloodthirsty psychopath named Wolfe, each of which is determined to capture her for their own purposes...UntouchedStill haunted by her last encounter with Wolfe and searching for her mother, Sienna Nealon must put aside her personal struggles when a new threat emerges – Aleksandr Gavrikov, a metahuman so powerful, he could destroy entire cities – and he's focused on bringing the Directorate to its knees.SoullessAfter six months of intense training with the Directorate, Sienna Nealon finds herself on her first assignment - tracking a dangerous meta across the upper midwest. With Scott Byerly and Kat Forrest at her side, she'll face new enemies and receive help from unlikely allies as she stumbles across the truth behind the shadowy organization known only as Omega.Additional books not included in set:

X's For Eyes


Laird Barron - 2015
    Alas, life is complicated in mid-1950s USA when you’re child heirs to the throne of Sword Enterprises, a corporation that has enshrined Machiavelli’s The Prince as its operating manual and whose patriarch believes, Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds, would be a swell company logo. Consider also those long, cruel winters at the Mountain Leopard boarding school for assassins in the Himalayas, or that Dad may be a supervillain, while an uncle occasionally slaughters his nephews and nieces for sport; and the space flight research division of Sword Enterprises “accidentally” sent a probe through a wormhole into outer darkness and contacted an alien god. Now a bloodthirsty cult and an equally vicious rival firm suspect the Tooms boys know something and will spare no expense, nor innocent life, to get their claws on them. Between the machinations of the disciples of black gods and good old corporate skullduggery, it’s winding up to be a hell of a summer vacation for the lads.

Rushed


Brian Harmon - 2013
    With no idea how to cure himself of this odd new compulsion, he decides to let it take its course and go for a drive, hoping that once he proves to himself that there is nowhere to go, he can return to his normal life. Instead, he finds himself hurled headlong into a nightmare adventure across a fractured Wisconsin as the dream reveals itself one heart-pounding detail at a time. <br><br>Horror, science fiction, dark fantasy. From the author of The Temple of the Blind. 84,000 words.

Extinct


Ike Hamill - 2013
    What comes is a blinding blizzard, and a mass disappearance of nearly every person Robby Pierce knows. He and his family flee, trying to escape the snow and the invisible forces stealing people right from the street.Miles away, Brad Jenkins battles the same storm. Alone, he attempts to survive as snow envelops his house. When the storm breaks, Brad makes his way south to where the snow ends and the world lies empty. Join Brad, Robby, and the other survivors as they fight to find the truth about the apocalypse and discover how to live in their new world.