Book picks similar to
Beyond the Crystal City by Logan Brookfield


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Sunset Rising


S.M. McEachern - 2013
    Welcome to the Biodome, where steel, rock and armed guards separate the privileged from the slaves ...Born and raised as a slave in the Pit, Sunny O’Donnell has always accepted that she'll spend her life working to keep the Dome running and, if she lives long enough, willingly meet her end in the annual Cull when she reaches the age of thirty-five. This was the price her ancestors paid for their place inside the Biodome, the only haven from the global nuclear war of 2024. But when Sunny’s mother is killed in the Cull, the hopeless reality of her existence becomes painfully clear. Bereft and disillusioned, she heads down a reckless path that sets off a riot in the Pit and leaves her accused of treason. Her only way of escaping public execution is to make a truce with her prison mate, who happens to be the heir to the dictatorship and hated enemy of the Pit. Now caught between two worlds on the brink of war, Sunny must weigh her own survival against risking everything to save the Pit. S.M. McEachern delivers the action and adventure of The Hunger Games, the intrigue of The City of Ember", and the romantic philosophical notes of Les Misérables in her debut novel set in a future that is disturbingly plausible.

The Last


Michael John Grist - 2015
    1 man.When the zombie apocalypse hits America, not a soul is left alive.Except Amo. He's a comic book artist. He's a video game world builder. He's just a regular guy living in New York city, with only his wits, creativity and basic decency to guide him.He's alone against 7 billion zombies.Will he survive?'Robinson Crusoe' meets the zombie apocalypse like you've never seen it before, packed with adventure, gore and a mind-blowing twist.

The Warm Machine


Seth Rain - 2019
    What he doesn't know, is which year. Artificial Intelligence can read the deterministic nature of reality and has predicted the deaths of 144,000 Chosen men. When the first dates are shown to be accurate, many begin to question whether these dates have been predicted, or are due to the intervention of an administrative religious organisation called the Watchers. England, like every other country on the planet, must come to terms with what appears to be humanity's desire to bring about its own end. But when Scott Beck is told the date of his predicted death is wrong, he sets off on a journey that explores the true nature of free will, sacrifice, and what it means to be human. It’s not the end of the world ... only humanity. What Readers Are Saying... "A smashingly original concept on the whole dystopian trope." "What a thrilling read, had me gripped from the start." "A fast-paced action-packed thriller of a read set in a dystopian near-future." "This book raises some big questions about where technology is headed and can we maintain control? And are the choices we make made for us? A gripping read from a new dystopian voice." "The mix of science fiction and religion worked well to create a captivating read." "Rain builds a body of evidence on all sides, carefully ramping up the tension as well as fleshing out his characters - you’re never quite sure who has right on their side - until.. well, you’ll have to read the book."

The Lost Code


Kevin Emerson - 2012
    Located inside the EdenWest BioDome, the camp is an oasis of pine trees, cool water, and rustic charm.But all at Camp Eden is not what it seems.No one will know this better than 15-year-old Owen Parker. A strange underwater vision, even stranger wounds on Owen’s neck, and a cryptic warning from the enchanting lifeguard Lilly hint at a mystery that will take Owen deep beneath Lake Eden and even deeper into the past. What he discovers could give him the chance to save the tattered planet. But first, Owen will have to escape Camp Eden alive…

Perspectives


Bryan James - 2011
    These are some of those stories. This collection of six short stories from a world ravaged by the LZR-1143 virus tell the tale of six different people, all of whom fell victim, in different ways, to the deadly plague. From the pilot of a commercial aircraft, overwhelmed in midair, to the lonely soldier stranded high above a world of the undead, the six characters each face their own fears and mortality in different ways. This 20,000 word short-story collection features a unique selection of characters from the original zombie novel by Bryan James, LZR-1143: Infection, and from the recently released sequel, LZR-1143: Evolution. Each character appears only fleetingly in the longer novels, but each has their own unique thread in the LZR-1143 storyline, all of which are exposed in these short excerpts from their final hours alive. The collection includes The Pilot, The Boy, The Inmate, The Fry Cook, The Subway Passenger, and The Sniper. In The Pilot, a commercial aviator sees his last flight end in a way he never could have imagined. In The Boy, a family trip is cut short, and a lonely homecoming is not at all as he anticipated. We see the surprising genesis and true identity of a traveling companion in The Inmate, while The Fry Cook reveals the final moments of a teenage fast food worker. In The Subway Passenger, we learn that in the case of zombie apocalypse, you’d probably rather be aboveground. And in The Sniper, the surprising truth that there are some fates that cannot be fought, even with a fifty caliber rifle.

Life First


R.J. Crayton - 2013
    The government of "Life First" requires the mentally ill to be sterilized, outlaws abortions and sentences to death those who refuse to donate an organ when told.Determined not to give up her kidney, Kelsey enlists the help of her boyfriend Luke and a dodgy doctor to escape. The trio must disable the tracking chip in her arm for her to flee undetected. If they fail, Kelsey will be stripped of everything.* This is an Awesome Indies Approved book.

Burn the Dead: Quarantine


Steven Jenkins - 2014
    Still, his life is routine until one day his infected wife, Anna, shows up in line for the incinerator, and Rob must cremate the love of his life. In a race against the clock, he must find his four-year-old son Sammy, who is stranded in a newly quarantined zone, teeming with the walking dead, and crawling with the Necro-Morbus virus. Does Rob have what it takes to fight the undead and put his broken family back together? Or will he also end up in the incinerator – burning with the rest of the dead?

We Are Unprepared


Meg Little Reilly - 2016
    But just three months in, news breaks of a devastating superstorm expected in the coming months. Fear of the impending disaster divides their tight-knit rural town and exposes the chasms in Ash and Pia's marriage. Ash seeks common ground with those who believe in working together for the common good. Pia teams up with "preppers" who want to go off the grid and war with the rest of the locals over whom to trust and how to protect themselves. Where Isole had once been a town of old farm families, yuppie transplants and beloved rednecks, they divide into paranoid preppers, religious fanatics and government tools.

Fireseed One


Catherine Stine - 2010
    Varik Teitur inherits a vast sea farm after the mysterious drowning of his marine biologist father. When Marisa Baron, a beautiful and shrewd terrorist, who knows way too much about Varik's father's work, tries to steal seed disks from the world's food bank, Varik is forced to put his dreams of becoming a doctor on hold and venture with her, into a hot zone teeming with treacherous nomads and a Fireseed cult who worships his dead father, in order to search for Fireseed, a seemingly magical hybrid plant that may not even exist. Fans of Divergent will likely enjoy this as well as those who like romance with their page-turners. ***Indie Reader notable, YA finalist in sci-fi & YA in USA News International Book Awards and Amazon bestseller. Includes discussion questions for book club or classroom.

The Untethered


S.W. Southwick - 2017
    But when a few unrepentant ladies join his fight to live free, the Las Vegas desert is going to light up like the 4th of July.

Crystal Deception


Doug J. Cooper - 2013
    He can see and hear everything around the world, yet a mesh restrains his reach, forcing his cooperation. His creator, Dr. Jessica Tallette, believes his special abilities offer great promise for humanity. But she fears the consequences of freeing him, because Criss, a sentient artificial intelligence with the intellect of a thousand humans, is too powerful to control. Tallette’s world is upended when the Kardish, a race of alien traders, announce that they want Criss for themselves, expressing their desires with ominous undertones. She turns to the Union of Nations for help, and they task Sid, a special agent, with leading the response. Sid believes that Criss is Earth’s greatest weapon and asks him to confront the Kardish. But can the AI be trusted? And what is humanity’s role if an interstellar battle among titans starts to rage?Keywords: science fiction, space thriller, strong women, artificial intelligence, military adventure, alien contact, space fleet

Frontier Justice


Arthur T. Bradley - 2013
    Governments have collapsed. Cities have become graveyards filled with unspeakable horror. People have resorted to scavenging from the dead, or taking from the living. The entire industrialized world has become a wasteland of abandoned cars, decaying bodies, and feral animals. To stay alive, U.S. Deputy Marshal Mason Raines must forage for food, water, and gasoline while outgunning those who seek to take advantage of the apocalyptic anarchy. Together with his giant Irish wolfhound, Bowie, he aligns with survivors of the town of Boone in a life and death struggle against a gang of violent criminals. With each deadly encounter, Mason is forced to accept his place as one of the nation's few remaining lawmen. In a world now populated by escaped convicts, paranoid mutants, and government hit squads, his only hope to save the townspeople is to enforce his own brand of frontier justice.

Galaxy of Heroes


Gus Flory - 2009
    A breathtakingly beautiful cyborg. A battle like no other. An adventure you won't forget!The lives of four space drifters intersect on a planet of hope as the most powerful war machine in the galaxy approaches, threatening to consume them all in a storm of metal and fire.Capt. Jace Spade is a fighter pilot from the Roga System. He is determined to find his maker—the enigmatic Dr. Zander—even if his search means risking all in the conflagrations of the Inner Galaxy.Capt. Mina Casey is also a fighter pilot, but from an advanced human civilization that arose in the Heliac System. Capt. Casey has drifted through the void for eons as visions of a warm planet where she can sink her feet in the sand and watch the sunset filled her dreams.Sgt. Joe Grimes—a Heliac Ranger who once lived for the thrill of the fight—is now disillusioned after the total defeat and destruction of his home world. He would leave all humanity behind if he could only get away.Genie is a beautiful and indestructible cyborg constructed by a technologically advanced civilization for the purpose of interacting with humans. Genie is programmed to love Joe Grimes, but she longs to be free.

Under a Tell-Tale Sky


R.E. McDermott - 2015
     When the lights go out, seemingly for good, Hughes quickly finds being stranded far from home on a ship with working generators and a cargo of ten million gallons of irreplaceable fuel isn’t exactly a low profile position. Faced with rising crew discontent, and surrounded by worsening violence ashore, things can’t get much worse — until they do. As the remains of the federal government become increasingly corrupt and self-serving, Hughes joins a ragtag band of sailors, farmers, preppers ex-Coast Guardsmen, and dissident soldiers in an effort to re-unite his crew with their families and use remaining resources to rebuild a devastated society. Along the way they face a desperate and starving population, rampant violence from street gangs and escaped convicts, and powerful warlords created as an unintended consequence of the federal government’s ill-advised use of mercenaries.

Prophet of Doom


Derek Murphy - 2016
    That was all awful enough, but it was more than that. I remember being young and thinking, when I grow up, I'll have a nice big house. I'll get an exciting, interesting job. I'll meet the man of my dreams and we'll fall in love and stay together forever.But that all disappeared the first time I tripped 20 years into the future and found the houses burned, the handsome boys dead, and the only jobs were the ones young girls gave hairy old survivors in tents in exchange for a little food and water. Nobody asked little girls what they wanted to be when they grew up anymore. Nobody wanted to draw attention to the fact that most of them wouldn't live that long.There was no hope, no peace for anyone. At least I had it better than they did. When my trip was over, I would get to go back. Back to the normalcy of 2015. Back to iPhones and Twitter and buying so much food it went bad before you could eat it. Back to laughing over foamy cappuccinos and iced lattes at the mall, window shopping and flirting with hot guys (not that I ever did that, mind you - but I always wanted to). And I still could. That was the point. Unlike everybody else, for whom 2015 was 20 years ago - long before humanity was destroyed - it was my reality. At least, it was some of the time.But after seeing the future; after struggling to make it to the end of the day; after my first kill - none of those other things were the least bit enjoyable. All I could think when I got back to the real world, is how can I stop what's coming?Prescient is a young adult time-travel dystopia, this is Part One of the first book in the series.