Book picks similar to
The Chair by James L. Rubart
christian-fiction
christian
fiction
fantasy
Mind's Eye
Douglas E. Richards - 2014
But they're about to get far worse. Because he's being hunted by a team of relentless assassins. Soon Hall discovers that advanced electronics have been implanted in his brain, and he now has two astonishing abilities. He can surf the web using thoughts alone. And he can read minds. But who inserted the implants? And why? And why is someone so desperate to kill him?As Hall races to find answers, he comes to learn that far more is at stake than just his life. Because his actions can either catapult civilization to new heights--or bring about its total collapse.Extrapolated from actual research on thought-controlled web surfing, Mind's Eye is a smart, roller-coaster ride of a thriller. One that raises a number of intriguing, and sometimes chilling, possibilities about a future that is just around the corner.
The Curiosity
Stephen P. Kiernan - 2013
Kate Philo and her scientific exploration team make a breathtaking discovery in the Arctic: the body of a man buried deep in the ice. As a scientist in a groundbreaking project run by the egocentric and paranoid Erastus Carthage, Kate has brought small creatures-plankton, krill, shrimp-"back to life." Never have the team's methods been attempted on a large life form.Heedless of the consequences, Carthage orders that the frozen man be brought back to the lab in Boston, and reanimated. As the man begins to regain his memories, the team learns that he was-is-a judge, Jeremiah Rice, and the last thing he remembers is falling overboard into the Arctic Ocean in 1906. When news of the Lazarus Project and Jeremiah Rice breaks, it ignites a media firestorm and massive protests by religious fundamentalists.Thrown together by circumstances beyond their control, Kate and Jeremiah grow closer. But the clock is ticking and Jeremiah's new life is slipping away. With Carthage planning to exploit Jeremiah while he can, Kate must decide how far she is willing to go to protect the man she has come to love.A gripping, poignant, and thoroughly original thriller, Stephen Kiernan's provocative debut novel raises disturbing questions about the very nature of life and humanity-man as a scientific subject, as a tabloid plaything, as a living being: A curiosity.
Scream
Mike Dellosso - 2009
Seconds later, a tragic accident claims his friend’s life. When this happens several more times--screams followed by an untimely death--he is compelled to act. Battling his failure as a husband and struggling with his own damaged faith, Mark embarks on a mission to find the meaning behind the screams and hopefully stop death from calling on its next victim. When his estranged wife is kidnapped and he again hears the screams as she calls from her cell phone, his search becomes much more personal and much more urgent.
The Last One
Alexandra Oliva - 2016
She never imagined it would go this far. It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it human-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them—a young woman the show’s producers call Zoo—stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game. Alone and disoriented, Zoo is heavy with doubt regarding the life—and husband—she left behind, but she refuses to quit. Staggering countless miles across unfamiliar territory, Zoo must summon all her survival skills—and learn new ones as she goes. But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways—and her ability to parse the charade will be either her triumph or her undoing. Sophisticated and provocative, The Last One is a novel that forces us to confront the role that media plays in our perception of what is real: how readily we cast our judgments, how easily we are manipulated.
Boo
Rene Gutteridge - 2003
For the past sixteen years, the reclusive writer has been the town’s greatest attraction, having unintentionally turned the once-struggling Skary into a thriving tourist-trap for the dark side: from the Haunted Mansion restaurant, famous for its “bloody fingers” (fries splattered with ketchup) to Spooky’s Bookstore (where employees dress like the walking dead). But when a newly reformed Wolfe suddenly quits the genre and subsequently starts to pursue Skary’s favorite girl-next-door, Ainsley Parker, the little town made famous by his writings becomes truly horrified. Soon, a scheme is plotted to put the fright back into Skary–and get their most famous resident out of love and back into the thrill business. Filled with humor, small town charm, and a gentle message of enduring faith, Boo shows how even the most colorful group of busybodies and hypocrites can become a community changed forever by God.
What She Knew
Gilly Macmillan - 2015
It’s an ordinary request on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, and Rachel has no reason to worry—until Ben vanishes.Police are called, search parties go out, and Rachel, already insecure after her recent divorce, feels herself coming undone. As hours and then days pass without a sign of Ben, everyone who knew him is called into question, from Rachel’s newly married ex-husband to her mother-of-the-year sister. Inevitably, media attention focuses on Rachel too, and the public’s attitude toward her begins to shift from sympathy to suspicion. As she desperately pieces together the threadbare clues, Rachel realizes that the greatest dangers may lie not in the anonymous strangers of every parent’s nightmares, but behind the familiar smiles of those she trusts the most.Where is Ben? The clock is ticking...
UR
Stephen King - 2009
Reeling from a painful break-up, English instructor and avid book lover Wesley Smith is haunted by his ex-girlfriend's parting shot: "Why can't you just read off the computer like everyone else?" He buys an e-book reader out of spite, but soon finds he can use the device to glimpse realities he had never before imagined, discovering literary riches beyond his wildest dreams...and all-too-human tragedies that surpass his most terrible nightmares.
Where I Found You
Amanda Brooke - 2014
She knows which routes around the park are easiest to navigate; she knows what time of year the most beautiful flowers bloom; and she knows which bench by the pond allows you to hear the joyful chatter of children throwing bread to the ducks without risking getting splashed by over-enthusiastic flapping. But she’s never seen any of these things. Maggie is blind: her senses of touch, smell and hearing have built an image of the place she loves most in the world, and she’s never felt held back by her unseeing eyes. And yet, newly married and expecting her first baby, Maggie has suddenly started to doubt her ability to cope.Elsie is also expecting her first child, but unmarried, alone and without the support of her family, she’s terrified her baby will be taken away. When Maggie meets Elsie one day in the park she tries to comfort this distressed young woman – but all is not as it seems. Because Elsie lost her baby sixty years earlier, and now, suffering from the first stages of Alzheimer’s, she can’t stop re-living the most traumatic event in her life.Determined to bring Elsie back to the present, Maggie sets out to find out what happened all those years ago and bring peace to Elsie memories … before it’s too late.
The Invitation
Nancy Moser - 2016
Four ordinary people with little in common other than a vague dissatisfaction with their lives, and an unpretentious invitation that seems to come out of nowhere.Each dismisses the mysterious invitation as a practical joke. But when strange--some might even call them miraculous--things start happening, all four find themselves embarking on a journey that takes them beyond their wildest imaginings and tests their faith to the breaking point.Before it's over, each discovers that, with God, nothing is impossible. Faith can move mountains if you open your heart to the One who has called you.God uses ordinary people--in extraordinary ways.
The Choice
Suzanne Woods Fisher - 2010
Her choice begins a torrent of change for her and her family, including a marriage of convenience to silent Daniel Miller. Both bring broken hearts into their arrangement--and secrets that have been held too long. Filled with gentle romance, The Choice opens the world of the Amish--their strong communities, their simple life, and their willingness to put each other first. Combined with Fisher's exceptional gift for character development, this novel, the first in a series, is a welcome reminder that it is never too late to find your way back to God.
Constance
Matthew FitzSimmons - 2021
For the wealthy, cheating death is the ultimate luxury. To anticloning militants, it’s an abomination against nature. For young Constance “Con” D’Arcy, who was gifted her own clone by her late aunt, it’s terrifying.After a routine monthly upload of her consciousness—stored for that inevitable transition—something goes wrong. When Con wakes up in the clinic, it’s eighteen months later. Her recent memories are missing. Her original, she’s told, is dead. If that’s true, what does that make her?The secrets of Con’s disorienting new life are buried deep. So are those of how and why she died. To uncover the truth, Con is retracing the last days she can recall, crossing paths with a detective who’s just as curious. On the run, she needs someone she can trust. Because only one thing has become clear: Con is being marked for murder—all over again.
Arena
Karen Hancock - 2002
As her orientation proceeds, Callie becomes frightened by the secrecy and evasion she encounters. When she demands to be released from the program, she is suddenly dropped into a terrifying alien world and into a perilous battle between good and evil. With limited resources and only a few cryptic words to guide her, Callie embarks on a life-changing journey. Will she decipher the plans the Benefactor has established for her escape, or will she succumb to the deception of the Arena?
Child of Fire
Harry Connolly - 2009
He's the driver for Annalise Powliss, a high-ranking member of the Twenty Palace Society, a group of sorcerers devoted to hunting down and executing rogue magicians. But because Ray betrayed her once, Annalise is looking for an excuse to kill him - or let someone else do the job.Unfortunately for both of them, Annalise's next mission goes wrong, leaving her critically injured. With the little magic he controls, Ray must complete her assignment alone. Not only does he have to stop a sorcerer who's sacrificing dozens of innocent lives in exchange for supernatural power, he must find - and destroy - the source of that inhuman magic.
The Nature of Fragile Things
Susan Meissner - 2021
Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed.
Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right.Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved.The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear.From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War and As Bright as Heaven comes a gripping novel about the bonds of friendship and mother love, and the power of female solidarity.
Now and Then and Always
Melissa Tagg - 2019
Just a weathered old house in a hidden grove, shuttered and still . . . " Last year, after traumatic circumstances forced her from her job as a nanny, Mara Bristol finally found a place to belong-the winsome Everwood Bed & Breakfast at the edge of Maple Valley, Iowa. For months, she's helped its owner, Lenora, maintain the ramshackle property despite their shortage of guests. But when Lenora fails to return from a month-long trip and the bank threatens foreclosure, Mara worries she's once again alone . . . abandoned . . . about to lose the only true home she's ever known.Detective Marshall Hawkins is no closer to whole today than he was two years ago . . . the day his daughter died. Between his divorce, debilitating migraines, and a dependence on medication, his life is falling apart. And when a reckless decision on the job propels him into administrative leave, he has no other plan but to get in his truck and drive. A one-night stay at the Everwood was supposed to be just that. But there's something about the old house-or maybe its intriguing caretaker-that pulls him in.Together, Mara and Marshall set out to save the Everwood. But its secrets run deeper than they could've imagined. As they renovate the house and search for its missing owner, they'll each confront the pain that brought them to the Everwood in the first place . . . and just maybe discover a faith and love to help them carry on.