Book picks similar to
Spanners: The Fountain of Youth by Jonathan Maas
fantasy
science-fiction
sci-fi
first-reads
Mr. Sandman
Lyle Howard - 1995
What is the mystery that Lance Cutter’s DNA is hiding? Whatever the secret is, they had it, they lost it, and now they will do anything to get it back...
Time is running out.
Lance Cutter is born out of a horrific experiment by a deranged scientist. Presumed dead in an explosion at birth, Lance and his mother create a quiet, normal life. But what is normal for others is not so for Lance. He is faster, smarter and more agile than other children. When Lance and his mother go to Washington seeking answers, they are greeted by deadly force. Barely escaping the clutches of government agents, the plane they are traveling on crashes into the icy Potomac river. Thought dead for the second time in his life, Lance grows up and finds a quiet, secluded existence working as an arson investigator in Florida. But when innocent people begin to spontaneously combust, Lance must use all of his extraordinary talents to stop the deranged killer.Cutter now finds himself front page news. It’s these headlines that will finally bring him face to face with the truth about his birthright and put him in a life and death struggle to survive.
Scroll up and grab a copy today.
The R.E.M. Effect: A Science Fiction Thriller
J.M. Lanham - 2016
And the results are a nightmare. From J.M. Lanham comes a heart-pumping thrill ride that puts a sci-fi twist on the future of medicine, technology, and philosophy. It’s 2021 and Paul Freeman just landed a job with Asteria Pharmaceuticals, a world leader in revolutionary drug development. Paul knows the company’s future is riding on the success of their latest product—a sleeping pill designed to interact with the human genome to deliver the perfect eight-hour sleep cycle. Just a few blocks from Asteria’s Atlanta headquarters, troubled self-help guru Donny Ford is selling a different kind of drug, empowering followers to take control of their lives using a sacred meditation technique skeptics believe may have already taken his mind to a dangerous place. 3,000 miles away, war-hardened journalist Claire Connor sits captive in a top-secret facility hidden deep in the Costa Rican jungle, guilty of two offenses: seeking help for a sleep disorder, and asking too many questions. When these worlds collide, the three will discover just how far some companies are willing to go to protect the bottom line. --------------------------- The debut novel by J.M. Lanham, The R.E.M. Effect is a new addition to the science fiction tradition of Michael Crichton, Preston & Child, Marcus Sakey, and Dean Koontz. Dive into fast-paced suspense that explores Big Pharma corruption, clandestine government experiments, and the mysteries of the human mind to create a world where taking a pill could mean taking lives. Want to download the first few pages of this book for FREE so you can try before you buy? Click the 'Send a free sample' button and start reading now! And if you like this title, don't miss out on The R.E.M. Project (The REM Series Book 2) available now!
Fracture
Craig Andrews - 2013
As a first year associate at a prestigious Portland law firm, his professional life is on the rise. All that is turned upside-down by a mysterious attack on his life by strange people with stranger abilities. Thrust into an underground world of magic where rival Families are on the brink of war, Allyn wants only to return to his normal life and thriving career. But distancing himself from this new reality is nearly impossible. Haunted by the attack and questioning why he was targeted to begin with, Allyn's questions only deepen with the sudden disappearance of his sister. The only place to turn for answers, and for help, is a Magi Family whose agenda he wants no part of. Yet with his sister's life on the line, he may have no choice but to pick a side.
Long Eyes and Other Stories
Jeff Carlson - 2011
SIXTEEN STORIES ABOUT STRANGE WORLDS, BIOTECH, COMMANDOS, AND THE GIRL NEXT DOOR.First published in top venues such as Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and cult 'zines like The Vampire's Crypt, these stories have been translated into fourteen languages worldwide. Several received honorable mentions in Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction or in Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. As part of the Fast Forward 2 anthology, "Long Eyes" was also a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award.THE FIRST COMPLETE COLLECTION FROM INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER JEFF CARLSON, THIS EBOOK IS 80,000 WORDS AND PACKED WITH ARTWORK FROM AWARD-WINNING ILLUSTRATORS SUCH AS FRANK WU AND BILLY TACKETT.Readers can find free fiction, videos, contests, and more at www.jverse.com.
Sullivan's War: The Omnibus Edition
Michael K. Rose - 2012
When he's assigned to the case, Agent Frank Allen soon discovers that the man responsible, Rick Sullivan, is not yet finished killing. But Allen will also discover that Rick Sullivan is not the man he appears to be, and the war he's fighting, a war to rid his home planet of its oppressive government, is not his only battle. As Allen pursues Sullivan across the known galaxy, he begins to question his own beliefs and loyalties. Will Allen be able to stop Rick Sullivan before he kills again? Does he really want to? As their lives become increasingly intertwined, both men realize they must face truths about themselves that neither of them are prepared for. And some of those truths will have consequences that neither of them could have ever imagined.
The Shopkeep: A Morbid Tale (The Morbid Tales, #1)
Zachery Miller - 2017
They’re just there for a steal and a quick buck, but what they don’t realize is that they’ve come for a whole different reason: the Devil’s Shopkeep awaits.
From a Distant Star
Karen McQuestion - 2015
Everyone else—his family, his friends, his doctors—was convinced that any moment could be his last. So when Lucas miraculously returns from the brink of death, Emma thinks her prayers have been answered.As the surprised town rejoices, Emma begins to question whether Lucas is the same boy she’s always known. When she finds an unidentifiable object on his family’s farm—and government agents come to claim it—she begins to suspect that nothing is what it seems. Emma’s out-of-this-world discovery may be the key to setting things right, but only if she and Lucas can evade the agents who are after what they have. With all her hopes and dreams on the line, Emma sets out to save the boy she loves. And with a little help from a distant star, she might just have a chance at making those dreams come true.
Black Rain
Matthew B.J. Delaney - 2016
And the hottest consumer products are artificially synthesized humans that serve as everything from domestic slaves to combatants in savage gladiatorial games. For Jack Saxton, the young heir to genetic design powerhouse Genico Inc., these Synthates are just a fact of life…until the murder of a high-profile genetic scientist leads a pair of seasoned NYPD detectives to Genico’s door.As a small band of Synthate rebels steps up its attack on the status quo, Jack encounters a pleasure-parlor girl who opens his eyes to their cause. When he dares to sympathize with the rebels, Jack is hunted down and arrested for the murder. Sentenced to die in the brutal games on Bloomberg Island, Jack will be forced to fight—for his life, for the future of all Synthates, and for a chance to uncover the mind-bending secret buried in his past.
A Girl from Nowhere
James Maxwell - 2020
No one knows it better than Taimin. Crippled, and with only his indomitable aunt to protect him, Taimin must learn to survive in a world scorched by two suns and frequented by raiders.But when Taimin discovers his homestead ransacked and his aunt killed, he sets off with one mission: to seek revenge against those who stole everything. With nowhere to call home, his hunt soon takes a turn when he meets a mystic, Selena, who convinces him to join her search for the fabled white city. Taimin and Selena both need refuge, and the white city is a place where Taimin may find someone to heal his childhood injury.As they avoid relentless danger, Taimin and Selena attempt to reach the one place that promises salvation. And they can only hope that the city is the haven they need it to be…
Recompense
Michelle Isenhoff - 2018
Jack knows the truth.Born into Capernica’s lowest social tier and not permitted to leave Settlement 56, Jaclyn Holloway refuses to pour out her years in the local fish cannery. She gambles on the one chance available to her to advance—the high school Exit Exam. In a country that still keenly remembers the horrors of the Provocation, the period of unexplained disappearances that led to revolution, the smartest and strongest are richly rewarded in exchange for military service. Jack is adamant that her best friend, Will Ransom, join her in striving for induction. But if Jack fails to pass the stringent physical standards and Will succeeds, she will not be allowed to see him again until his tour of duty is completed—in twenty years.Meanwhile, the government has been keeping a tight lid on a new string of abductions. Jack’s Exam score places her in a position to aid Axis, an underground organization charged with investigating events that threaten national security. The evidence leads her back forty-seven years, to a series of high-profile cover-ups linked to the Provocation. Blowing the whistle could place her in danger, but holding her silence means history will likely repeat.And Capernica could never survive a second Provocation.
Project Cain
Geoffrey Girard - 2013
But then Jeff discovers he was constructed in a laboratory only eight years ago, part of a top-secret government cloning experiment called Project CAIN. And scientists created him entirely from Jeffrey Dahmer's DNA.Jeff isn't the only teenage serial-killer clone. Others have been genetically engineered using the DNA of the Son of Sam, the Boston Strangler, and Ted Bundy. Some clones were raised, like Jeff, in caring family environments; others within homes that mimicked the horrific early lives of the serial killers they were created from.When the most dangerous of the boys are set free, the summer of killing begins. Worse, they hold a secret weapon even more deadly than the terrible evil they carry within.Can Jeff help catch the "monsters" before becoming one himself?
Blood Passage
Malcolm Pierce - 2016
His predicament turns desperate when he learns of his captors’ intent to eventually kill him. With no clues to the reason for his capture, Francisco has only his ingenuity to fashion an escape. But even if he can manage to break out of the brig, he faces a bigger problem: how to flee a ship in the middle of the ocean. The former soldier must summon all his resources in a desperate bid to outwit the ship’s crew as well as the band of cutthroat mercenaries responsible for his abduction. Along the way, he struggles to maintain his humanity…and discover the sinister reason for his capture.
Impersonator
Peter R. Stone - 2016
In the past week, her twin brother – a forager – has uncharacteristically run away from home and work after the mysterious death of a teammate. Something has also scared her normally unflappable father half to death, and, their family is threatened with eviction. But her brother’s disappearance presents her with a long-sought after opportunity to escape Newhome, since only the foragers – all men – are allowed to leave the town. All she has to do is impersonate her brother long enough to make her escape while foraging out in the ruins. But she never counted on the kindness of Ryan Hill, a forager new to the team. Nor on barbaric Skel attacking the team the moment she makes her escape. She has to choose between making good on her escape or saving Ryan and the others. Twenty-two-year-old Ryan Hill made one mistake at his last place of employment, and that earned the wrath of his fellow workmates, and cost him all of his friends. Alone and dejected, he begins a new job as a forager, expecting more of the same. But then he meets Chelsea, masquerading as her brother Brandon. And though he falls for her ruse, he sees in her a kindred spirit. Could he(she) spark in him the beginning of a true, genuine friendship that looks past the faults of the other? * Impersonator is Book One in a new trilogy set in the world of Peter R Stone’s Forager Trilogy. Although it starts three years before the events in Forager, it is not a prequel. It will catch up to, carry on, and draw to a conclusion the Forager Trilogy storyline. It can be read independently of Forager.
The Haunting of H. G. Wells
Robert Masello - 2020
G. Wells could not have imagined.
It’s 1914. The Great War grips the world—and from the Western Front a strange story emerges…a story of St. George and a brigade of angels descending from heaven to fight beside the beleaguered British troops. But can there be any truth to it?H. G. Wells, the most celebrated writer of his day—author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man—is dispatched to find out. There, he finds an eerie wasteland inhabited by the living, the dead, and those forever stranded somewhere in between…a no-man’s-land whose unhappy souls trail him home to London, where a deadly plot, one that could turn the tide of war, is rapidly unfolding.In league with his young love, the reporter and suffragette Rebecca West, Wells must do battle with diabolical forces—secret agents and depraved occultists—to save his sanity, his country, and ultimately the world.
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.