Book picks similar to
Body Electric by Susan Squires
romance
science-fiction
sci-fi
artificial-intelligence
Vellum
Hal Duncan - 2005
Once they were human; now they are unkin, transformed by the ancient machine-code language of reality itself. They seek The Book of All Hours, the mythical tome within which the blueprint for all reality is transcribed, which has been lost somewhere in the Vellum - the vast realm of eternity upon which our world is a mere scratch.The Vellum, where the unkin are gathering for war.The Vellum, where a fallen angel and a renegade devil are about to settle an age-old feud.The Vellum, where the past, present, and future will collide with ancient worlds and myths.And the Vellum will burn. . . .
Zero Sum Game
S.L. Huang - 2014
Scary good.The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight. She can take any job for the right price and shoot anyone who gets in her way.As far as she knows, she's the only person around with a superpower . . . but then Cas discovers someone with a power even more dangerous than her own. Someone who can reach directly into people's minds and twist their brains into Moebius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world's puppet master.Someone who's already warped Cas's thoughts once before, with her none the wiser.Cas should run. Going up against a psychic with a god complex isn't exactly a rational move, and saving the world from a power-hungry telepath isn't her responsibility. But she isn't about to let anyone get away with violating her brain -- and besides, she's got a small arsenal and some deadly mathematics on her side. There's only one problem . . .She doesn't know which of her thoughts are her own anymore.
Captive Surrender
Angela Castle - 2012
He makes her body burn like she never dreamed possible.As the fights in the arena grow more vicious and the pressure to fall pregnant more desperate, Morrdrook and Anna find solace in each others arms. Soon, their chance at freedom must come.
Grim
M.K. Eidem - 2013
He has been sent by his Emperor to find and retrieve compatible females for their dying civilization.King Grim Vasteri is the strongest and most feared warrior in the Tornian Empire, King of Luda, blood brother to the Emperor, but his line will die with him as no female would join with him, for once he was scarred, he was considered 'unfit'. The Tornian Empire has been dying ever since the great infection caused the birth of females to become a rarity. Since then they have been searching the known universes for compatible females. The Emperor's discovery of a compatible female on a slave ship changed that. He'd ordered Grim to find his Empress' home world so more 'unprotected' females could be obtained, knowing Grim would never be allowed to Join with one.Lisa Miller is a widowed mother of two little girls, Carly and Miki. Her husband died just a year ago, after a long battle with cancer and she misses him immensely. Friends want her to start dating again but in her heart, she knows there isn't a man on the planet she could love like her Mark. Who could love their girls like their own. Therefore, she'll stay alone.When Lisa is discovered 'unprotected' at her husband's grave, she wakes on an alien ship heading for an alien world. Refusing to accept this she confronts the large males, demanding she be returned to her children. Seeing his chance to have a female, Grim agrees to accept and protect her offspring, if she agrees to Join with him and only him. Realizing this is the only way she can retrieve her children Lisa agrees and the Tornian Empire changes forever.
Shield
C.L. Scholey - 2012
With meteors exploding in their midst, the shuttle Grace boards takes flight in a last ditch effort to save human lives. With little food, water and eight stowaways the situation is volatile while they race to the new planet, Ulsy. A wormhole and a crash are their undoing. While fleeing into the strange surroundings on an even stranger planet two of Grace's shuttle pilots are killed by a massive ebony creature with fangs as white as ivory. Rask is a full blooded Castian warrior who thinks his planet has been stormed. When he comes across the little being that cowers from him he is intrigued. After four hundred years and virtual immortality Rask thought he had seen everything. When the being before him declares herself to be a human female he is beyond amazed. Females have been extinct as long as he can remember. But there is no denying her sweet scent. One inhaled breath is all it takes to drop his shield and reveal the muscular tanned male beneath. Rask had thought his armor impenetrable. One touch from a slender hand and he realizes he is powerless against the tiny human he must have
The Bargaining
Christine Warren - 2005
Ex-ring-fighter, top-shelf stellar navigator, rebel leader and confirmed idiot Eric Deacon sacrificed himself to the enemy to allow his partners to escape the Protectorate. Now he's stuck, imprisoned on a backwater rock, waiting for the executioner to arrive and put him out of his misery. Naturally, he's working on a plan, but finding a way out is straining even his formidable resources. If getting out is near-impossible for one, it's suicide for two. Yet that's exactly what pleasure slave Kili Broderick wants him to do. She's offered her knowledge of the prison system in exchange for his help escaping. And she's willing to trade her hard-learned sensual talents for a seat on the escape pod and passage to freedom. Deacon's in no position reject her offer, but it's not until he tastes Kili's passions that the bargaining really begins.
Ghost in the Machine
C.E. Kilgore - 2012
You stumble on to it blindly, it sucks you in and takes you somewhere completely unexpected. You can't fight it, because that would tear your ship apart. You can't control it, either. All you can do is set your thrusters on glide and let it take you where it's going to take you."Going against the rules of her Vesparian Sisterhood, which seeks to keep its entire existence a secret, Orynn is thrown into the open by a request for help that she could not refuse. Seeking to reconcile past mistakes and gain a forgiveness she feels she does not deserve, the fragile control over her empathic abilities is put to the test. The darkness that lives within her spirit has grown impatient and threatens to once again destroy any piece of happiness she allows herself to find.As a Mechatronic Automaton, Ethan navigates his world through a set of logically defined values and understandings. Encountering Orynn throws his system off balance as he tries to decide if he should trust the feelings he is developing, or if he should follow the logic telling him that she is trying to control him for some unknown purpose. As his understanding of her develops, he begins to question all of his preconceived notions about both himself and the universe around him.In his attempts to capture the Vesparian prey he has been hunting after for two decades, the First Commander of the Xen'dari fleet will stop at nothing and track Orynn to the ends of the universe. On a path of vengeance for a past he can't let go of, he will do everything in his power to burn her world down around her feet until nothing is left but ash and the bitter taste of regret.Ghosts of the past clash with hopes for the future in this first book of the series, set in a universe where nothing is as it seems at first glance and trust is a highly priced commodity.
Alternate Cover Edition ASIN B009UFHA0O
The Eyre Affair
Jasper Fforde - 2001
Baconians are trying to convince the world that Francis Bacon really wrote Shakespeare, there are riots between the Surrealists and Impressionists, and thousands of men are named John Milton, an homage to the real Milton and a very confusing situation for the police. Amidst all this, Acheron Hades, Third Most Wanted Man In the World, steals the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and kills a minor character, who then disappears from every volume of the novel ever printed! But that's just a prelude . . .Hades' real target is the beloved Jane Eyre, and it's not long before he plucks her from the pages of Bronte's novel. Enter Thursday Next. She's the Special Operative's renowned literary detective, and she drives a Porsche. With the help of her uncle Mycroft's Prose Portal, Thursday enters the novel to rescue Jane Eyre from this heinous act of literary homicide. It's tricky business, all these interlopers running about Thornfield, and deceptions run rampant as their paths cross with Jane, Rochester, and Miss Fairfax. Can Thursday save Jane Eyre and Bronte's masterpiece? And what of the Crimean War? Will it ever end? And what about those annoying black holes that pop up now and again, sucking things into time-space voids . . .Suspenseful and outlandish, absorbing and fun, The Eyre Affair is a caper unlike any other and an introduction to the imagination of a most distinctive writer and his singular fictional universe.
Chosen
Stacy Jones - 2017
The next, she wakes to find herself in a cold, sterile cage surrounded by monsters, with no memory of how she got there. Accidentally abducted by alien poachers, unsure if she will live or die, she is dreading the worst. What she doesn’t expect is for her captors to dump her on an alien planet to fend for herself. Now, she must fight to survive the planet… or die trying. Frrar, Tor, and Arruk have been searching endlessly for a mate to belong to, someone to finally accept them, but they are losing hope. The time of cleansing, when the great waters drown the land, draws near. They are on the verge of abandoning their search and fleeing the forest when they spot a strange, tiny, two-armed female. They are immediately drawn to her, fascinated by her differences, but they must act fast to save her life, and their own, from the coming flood.
Palimpsest
Catherynne M. Valente - 2009
Valente. Now she weaves a lyrically erotic spell of a place where the grotesque and the beautiful reside and the passport to our most secret fantasies begins with a stranger’s kiss.…
Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse—a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers: Oleg, a New York locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They’ve each lost something important—a wife, a lover, a sister, a direction in life—and what they will find in Palimpsest is more than they could ever imagine.
Archangel
Sharon Shinn - 1996
Through science, faith and force of will, the Harmonics carved out for themselves a society that they conceived of as perfect. Diverse peoples held together by respect for each other and the prospect of swift punishment if they disobeyed their laws. Fertile land that embraced a variety of climates and seasons. Angels to guard the mortals and mystics to guard the forbidden knowledge. Jehovah to watch over them all... But an age of corruption has come to the land, threatening their peace and placing the Samarians in grave danger. Their only hope lies in the crowning of a new Archangel. The oracles have chosen for this honor the angel named Gabriel, and further decreed that he must first wed a mortal woman named Rachel. It is his destiny and hers. And Gabriel is certain that she will greet the news of her betrothal with enthusiasm, and a devotion to duty equal to his own. Rachel, however, has other ideas...
Shadows Cast By Stars
Catherine Knutsson - 2012
When a search threatens Cassandra and her family, they flee to the Island: a mysterious and idyllic territory protected by the Band, a group of guerrilla warriors— and by an enigmatic energy barrier that keeps outsiders out and the spirit world in. And though the village healer has taken her under her wing, and the tribal leader's son into his heart, the creatures of the spirit world are angry, and they have chosen Cassandra to be their voice and instrument...Incorporating the traditions of the First Peoples as well as the more familiar stories of Greek mythology and Arthurian legend, Shadows Cast by Stars is a haunting, beautifully written story that breathes new life into ancient customs.
Alif the Unseen
G. Willow Wilson - 2012
He goes by Alif—the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the state’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the "Hand of God," as they call the head of state security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground. When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.
The Light Within Me
Carly Fall - 2011
She longs to feel a real connection with someone, and she finally does when she meets Noah.Unbeknownst to Abby, Noah is from another world and his sole purpose is to hunt down the evil of his people that was unleashed on Earth hundreds of years ago. He's certain he isn't going to be able to return to his home, and anger and the need for revenge are his constant companions. His focus has been eradicating the evil and making them pay for taking his life on his world away from him.Noah tries desperately to fight his attraction to Abby so he can keep his focus on his mission. But when Abby gets dragged into the evil and mayhem from Noah's world, he realizes that maybe with Abby he can find a home here on Earth...if he can save her in time.
Time and Again: Time Was / Times Change
Nora Roberts - 2001
Though Caleb knows he belongs in the future, how can he leave the past, and Liberty, behind?Times ChangeCynical Jacob Hornblower has followed his brother, Caleb, back in time, hoping to convince him to return home. His mission is soon forgotten, however, when he finds himself captivated by Liberty's spitfire sister, Sunny. But can a man who is down on love truly understand the unbounded strength of the human heart?