Book picks similar to
A Beacon of Hope by Walter E. Mark


fantasy
epic-fantasy
sci-fi
science-fiction

The Heir


Lynne Stringer - 2013
    Most of the other students ignore her. The only good thing about school is the presence of Dan Bradfield, the boy she adores. Dan is the heir to his father's multinational computer company, but he is dating Sarah's best friend, Jillian. When tragedy strikes, Dan is the one who is there for Sarah, but she can't shake the feeling there is something strange about him. Is he protecting her from something? Is there something going on that she doesn't know about? And did she really see a monster in the bushes? Sarah is desperate to uncover the truth, but it could take her to another galaxy, and change everything she believes about who she is. Will it bring Dan and Sarah closer together or tear them apart? The Heir is the first book in the Verindon Trilogy.

Echo


Alicia Wright Brewster - 2013
    The citizens are organized. Everyone's been notified and assigned a duty. The problem is . . . no one knows for sure how it will end.Energy-hungry Mages are the most likely culprit. They travel toward a single location from every corner of the continent. Fueled by the two suns, each Mage holds the power of an element: air, earth, fire, metal, water, or ether. They harness their powers to draw energy from the most readily available resource: humans.Ashara has been assigned to the Ethereal task force, made up of human ether manipulators and directed by Loken, a young man with whom she has a complicated past. Loken and Ashara bond over a common goal: to stop the Mages from occupying their home and gaining more energy than they can contain. But soon, they begin to suspect that the future of the world may depend on Ashara's death.

Control


Lydia Kang - 2013
    But before Zel has a plan, Dyl is taken by strangers using bizarre sensory weapons, and Zel finds herself in a safe house for teens who aren’t like any she’s ever seen before—teens who shouldn’t even exist. Using broken-down technology, her new friends’ peculiar gifts, and her own grit, Zel must find a way to get her sister back from the kidnappers who think a powerful secret is encoded in Dyl’s DNA. Set in 2150—in a world of automatic cars, nightclubs with auditory ecstasy drugs, and guys with four arms—this is about the human genetic “mistakes” that society wants to forget, and the way that outcasts can turn out to be heroes.

Death at Charity's Point


William G. Tapply - 1984
    He is fond of Mrs. Gresham—unflappable, uncouth, and never tardy with a check—and he has seen her through her husband’s suicide and her first son’s death in Vietnam. But he has never seen her crack until the day her second son, George, leaps into the sea at jagged Charity’s Point.The authorities call it a suicide, but Mrs. Gresham cannot believe her son, like his father, would take his own life. As Brady digs into the apparently blemish-free past of this upper-class prep school history teacher, he finds dark secrets. George Gresham may not have been suicidal, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t in trouble.

The Waking Land


Callie Bates - 2017
    But when he dies under mysterious circumstances, Elanna is accused of his murder and must flee for her life. Returning to the homeland of magical legends she has forsaken, Elanna is forced to reckon with her despised, estranged father, branded a traitor long ago. Feeling a strange, deep connection to the natural world, she also must face the truth about the forces she has always denied or disdained as superstition powers that suddenly stir within her. But an all-too-human threat is drawing near, determined to exact vengeance. Now Elanna has no choice but to lead a rebellion against the kingdom to which she once gave her allegiance. Trapped between divided loyalties, she must summon the courage to confront a destiny that could tear her apart.

Rabbit & Robot


Andrew Smith - 2018
    Meanwhile, Earth, in the midst of thirty simultaneous wars, burns to ash beneath them. And as the robots on board become increasingly insane and cannibalistic, and the Earth becomes a toxic wasteland, the boys have to wonder if they’ll be stranded alone in space forever.

Obscura Burning


Suzanne van Rooyen - 2012
     Kyle Wolfe’s world is about to crash and burn. Just weeks before graduation, a fire kills Kyle's two best friends and leaves him permanently scarred. A fire that Kyle accidentally set the night he cheated on his boyfriend Danny with their female friend, Shira. That same day, a strange new planet, Obscura, appears in the sky. And suddenly Kyle’s friends aren’t all that dead anymore. Each time Kyle goes to sleep, he awakens to two different realities. In one, his boyfriend Danny is still alive, but Shira is dead. In the other, it’s Shira who’s alive… and they’re friends with benefits. Shifting between realities is slowly killing him, and he's not the only one dying. The world is dying with him. He's pretty sure Obscura has something to do with it, but with his parents’ marriage imploding and realities shifting each time he closes his eyes, Kyle has problems enough without being in charge of saving the world. First Edition published by Etopia Press, 2012.

The Advent of Dreamtech (DREAMWORMS #1)


Isaac Petrov - 2021
    Definitely for the cerebral high concept sci fi fan.”A POST-APOCALYPTIC FIRST CONTACT EPIC — NO-BULL SCI-FI AT ITS BEST! Aliens, First-Contact, Collapse, Dreamtech, Revolution and Extinction. Twenty-first century: An exhausted Earth destroyed civilization.THAT WAS THE FIRST COLLAPSE.Twenty-second century: An intractable disease destroyed humanity.THAT WAS THE SECOND COLLAPSE.What little remains is the rural utopia known as Goah’s Gift, a rural paradise that expands a dying world. A world where you live quickly.A world where you love intensely.A world where you live quickly.A world where you love intensely.A WORLD WHERE YOU DIE CERTAINLYON YOUR TWENTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY.Aliens have been watching us for millennia. They know us well.They know humankind cannot take a Third Collapse.They just revealed themselves. To a few.INSIDE THEIR DREAMS.—————BOOK 1 of the DREAMWORMS series includes:EPISODE I: 2399 First ContactThe wu-sarc is truly a wonder of alien technology, the dream of every dreamer.EPISODE II: Alien MasterDo not let the words fool you, Overseer Yog. Human speech is as unstable as the surface of the ocean during a storm. After centuries of study, I have learned to find the truth beneath the waves. This human loves her parent with unusual intensity, even for a young female.EPISODE III: 31st December 2399Propaganda is like a recreational drug: it feels good, it feels right, but it eventually corrupts you, and kills you.—————Is this book for YOU? No-Bull Sci-Fi! Do you love Science Fiction that feels like it matters? That digs into the truth of human condition and the purpose of civilization? Engaging characters, escapist settings, intense adventures, wildly imaginative plots and EPIC stakes.

Aerenden: The Child Returns


Kristen Taber - 2012
    Her best friend, Nick, tells her the creatures are Mardróch. They come from another world and so does she. Now that the Mardróch have found her, she must return to her homeland of Ærenden or face death. Left with little choice, she follows Nick into a strange world both similar to Earth and drastically different. Vines have the ability to attack. Monkeys freeze their victims with a glare. Men create bombs from thin air. Even Meaghan’s newly discovered empath power turns into a danger she can't control. But control becomes the least of her worries once the Mardróch begin targeting her. When Nick confesses he knows the reason they want her, she learns the truth behind the kingdom’s fifteen-year civil war—a long-buried secret that could cost Meaghan her life.

Brightly Burning


Alexa Donne - 2018
    An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.Seventeen-year-old Stella Ainsley wants just one thing: to go somewhere—anywhere—else. Her home is a floundering spaceship that offers few prospects, having been orbiting an ice-encased Earth for two hundred years. When a private ship hires her as a governess, Stella jumps at the chance. The captain of the Rochester, nineteen-year-old Hugo Fairfax, is notorious throughout the fleet for being a moody recluse and a drunk. But with Stella he’s kind. But the Rochester harbors secrets: Stella is certain someone is trying to kill Hugo, and the more she discovers, the more questions she has about his role in a conspiracy threatening the fleet.

The Breeders


Katie French - 2012
    When Riley was born, her mother escaped the Breeders, the group of doctors using cruel experiments to bolster the dwindling human race. Her parents do everything possible to keep her from their clutches-- moving from one desolate farm after another to escape the Breeders' long reach. The Breeders control everything- the local war lords, the remaining factories, the fuel. They have unchecked power in this lawless society. And they're hunting Riley.When the local Sheriff abducts the adult members of her family and hands her mother over to the Breeders, Riley and her eight-year-old brother, Ethan, hiding in a shelter, are left to starve. Then Clay arrives, the handsome gunslinger who seems determined to help to make up for past sins. The problem is Clay thinks Riley is a bender-- a genderless mutation, neither male nor female. As Riley's affection for Clay grows she wonders can she trust Clay with her secret and risk her freedom?The three embark on a journey across the scarred remains of New Mexico-- escaping the Riders who use human sacrifice to appease their Good Mother, various men scrambling for luck, and a deranged lone survivor of a plague. When Riley is shot and forced into the Breeder's hospital, she learns the horrible fate of her mother—a fate she'll share unless she can find a way out.

Wager's Price


G.P. Ching - 2016
     Book 1 of 3 in the Soulkeepers Reborn Trilogy Finn Wager's luck has run out. Arrested for the one crime he didn't actually commit, he's forced to finish his education at an alternative school. The Revelations Institute is an upscale, private reform school with a 100% success rate. Delinquents go in and model citizens come out. But students who don't perform to expectations disappear. And although their bodies return model citizens, their minds are hardly their own. Something evil lurks inside Revelations, and if Finn and his new friend Hope can't find a way to stop it, they'll risk more than their lives. The repercussions could cost them their souls. Soulkeepers Reborn Trilogy: Wager's Price Hope's Promise Lucifer's Pride Get the newest installment in the Soulkeepers world today!

Into the Parallel


Robin Brande - 2011
    She also discovers something else: a parallel version of herself, living the kind of life Audie never could have imagined for herself.Now Audie is living that life, too, full of adventure, romance, and reality-bending science. It’s all more than she could have hoped for—until something goes wrong.

Time's Edge


J.M. Dattilo - 2010
    After all, the job is a basic training mission, not a usual assignment for an officer of his rank and caliber. However, his Chief-Commander, Alrick Zartollis, has assured him that he is perfect for the mission so he prepares to depart accompanied by a smart-mouthed, know-it-all computer named Max. The "simple assignment" rapidly becomes complicated when he meets Kate, a young woman who prevents him from retrieving the lost probe. When he and Kate are literally blasted from Old Earth to another place and time, Michael realizes he has been set up by his esteemed Chief-Commander. "Probe retrieval, indeed," he mutters as he surveys his new surroundings and the odd individuals who live there: Edgar, a mechanical servant, who disdains the implication that he is a robot. "The robot was my ancestor," he sniffs to Michael, "just as the amoeba was yours."; Jafrey, an irreverent old man with a long gray ponytail, sharp tongue, and a dangerously powerful talent; Nick, the giant Sarzonian monster who can quote Shakespeare; Ivar, the master of a mysterious place called Belencourt, who got so tired of powerful visitors blowing up his electromagnetic door that he had it replaced with an old-fashioned hinged door which was less susceptible to strong auras. Michael soon discovers he is on a mission so secret he is not even allowed to know what it's all about. To make matters worse, Alrick Zartollis, the one man who knows the truth, is nowhere to be found while the events he carefully put in place one hundred years earlier unfold in ways he never intended. Time's Edge is the first place winner of the Tassy Walden Award, a literary prize given by the Shoreline Arts Alliance of Connecticut. A fast-paced, lighter tale, the story blends adventure, humor, and romance in a fun-to-read mix of sci-fi and fantasy.

Dead Things


Matt Darst - 2011
    And the rise of the church to fill the void. Nearly twenty years since Ian Sumner lost his father. And the dead took to the streets to dine on the living. Now Ian and a lost band of survivors are trapped in the wilderness, miles from safety. Pursued by madmen and monsters, they unravel the secrets of the plague ...and walk the line of heresy. Ian and this troop need to do more than just survive. More than ever, they must learn to live.