Book picks similar to
Body Electric by Susan Squires


romance
science-fiction
sci-fi
artificial-intelligence

Determined Prince


Michelle M. Pillow - 2014
    Female shifters are all but going extinct on his planet of Qurilixen, and his people are desperate for mates—so much so they’re taking matters into their own hands. What better place to capture a woman than Earth? After all, dragonshifters had come from there centuries ago. Surely a human female would be honored to be selected by one as fine and fierce as himself. While on Earth, Kyran stumbles upon the most beautiful woman he’s ever imagined, singing something the natives call rock ’n’ roll. His blood simmers and he knows Eve is the one for him. But taming this feisty female is going to take much more than his training prepared him for. A Dragon Lords Romance About the Series Captured by a Dragon-Shifter is a modern day prequel series installment to those first books. They take place long before the princes you know and love ever found their mates, long before The Dragon’s Queen, in a time when the dragonshifters and catshifters actually—wait for it—liked each other and hung out as friends. They also don’t have Galaxy Brides to bring them women. What they do have is the old portal that they used to escape Earth. There’s no one left to marry on the planet and things are starting to get desperate.

Fire in the Woods


Jennifer M. Eaton - 2014
    But David’s not here to find a girlfriend. He’s from another planet, and if Jess can’t help him get back to his ship, he’ll be stuck on Earth with nothing to look forward to but the pointy end of a dissection scalpel. But her father runs their house like an army barracks. and with an alien on the loose, Major Dad isn’t too keen on the idea of Jess going anywhere. Ever. So how the heck is she supposed to help the sweetest, strangest, and cutest guy she’s ever met? Hiding him in her room probably isn’t the best idea. Especially since her Dad is in charge of the squadron searching for David. That doesn’t mean she won’t do it. It just means she can't get caught. Helping David get home while protecting her heart—that’s gonna be the hard part. After all, she can't really fall for a guy whose not exactly from here. As they race through the woods with Major Dad and most of the U.S. military one breath behind them, Jess and David grow closer than either of them anticipated. But all is not what it seems. David has a genocide-sized secret, and one betrayal later, they are both in handcuffs as alien warships are positioning themselves around the globe. Time is ticking down to Armageddon, and Jess must think fast if she's to save the boy she cares about without sacrificing Earth—and everyone on it. FIRE IN THE WOODS is Star-Crossed meets Close Encounters of the Third Kind!

Michael


Lisa Renee Jones - 2011
    One of an army of human soldiers injected with alien DNA, Michael is a legend within this new race, split between good and evil. Untamable, he has walked on the dark side and returned to the light. Feared and misunderstood, he leaves everything behind, including the one woman destined to be his mate. HE IS HER ENEMY...AND HER DESTINY... Cassandra holds the key to Michael's power, and his pain. With loyalties divided and against insurmountable odds, Cassandra's heart propels her to Michael's side-but can her love do anything but destroy him... No ordinary woman can control a creature such as Michael, and only one thing is clear-the world will never be the same...Originally published as The Legend of Michael by SourceBooks.

Once Upon a Time Travel


Sariah Wilson - 2017
    Once she enters the forbidden room, Emma learns more about the history of the museum than she ever intended to know.Waking up confused and shocked in 1816, all Emma wants is to return to her cozy home with flushing toilets and disposable razors. But when she’s mistaken for someone else, Emma must pretend to be everything she’s not. About to be engaged to the Earl of Hartley’s brother, Emma fails miserably at playing the role of a sophisticated lady.Hartley is determined to ensure that the quirky and adorable woman marries his brother – despite his ever-growing attraction to her. After loving and losing, he refuses to fall prey to the shackles of love. But as his desire for Emma increases, he knows he must forfeit his happiness for his brother’s future. After all, there’s no such thing as happily ever after.Or is there?

The Lasaran


Dianne Duvall - 2020
    When an ally reveals that she was seized and is being held prisoner on Earth, Taelon descends upon the blue planet, intent on freeing her and exacting vengeance. However, all does not go as planned. Before he can find her, Taelon is captured and becomes the subject of torturous experiments. For what feels like an eternity, all he knows is pain and fury… until a mind tentatively touches his own and a woman’s voice forever changes his world.After suffering tragic losses, Lisa is finally beginning to carve out a future for herself when chance sends her to the Anomalous Cognition Research Institute. What at first appears to be a benign organization seeking participants for a psychic study instead turns out to be a government facility harboring a much darker intent. Lisa discovers this too late and soon becomes the unwilling subject of a terrifying experiment. Just as fear and desperation threaten to consume her, a deep, compelling voice penetrates the looming insanity and lends her hope.Having seen only the worst of humanity, Taelon is shocked when Lisa risks everything to free him. Together the two make their escape, and Taelon finds himself fascinated by the small human woman who—despite all she’s suffered—can still laugh and tease and lure smiles from him. Friendship swiftly grows between them as they work together to evade soldiers intent on capturing them and find themselves hunted by mystifying preternatural beings. Through it all, Lisa steadfastly remains by his side, stealing more of his heart each day while she helps him unravel the mystery of his sister’s fate. Can they find his sister before the hunters find them? If they survive their quest, will Taelon have to bid Lisa farewell… or can he coax her into leaving her planet and joining him for the adventure of a lifetime?

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.


Neal Stephenson - 2017
    The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: she must sign a nondisclosure agreement in return for the rather large sum of money.Tristan needs Mel to translate some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. Magic stopped working altogether in 1851, at the time of the Great Exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace—the world’s fair celebrating the rise of industrial technology and commerce. Something about the modern world "jams" the "frequencies" used by magic, and it’s up to Tristan to find out why.And so the Department of Diachronic Operations—D.O.D.O. —gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back, and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive . . . and meddle with a little history at the same time. But while Tristan and his expanding operation master the science and build the technology, they overlook the mercurial—and treacherous—nature of the human heart.Written with the genius, complexity, and innovation that characterize all of Neal Stephenson’s work and steeped with the down-to-earth warmth and humor of Nicole Galland’s storytelling style, this exciting and vividly realized work of science fiction will make you believe in the impossible, and take you to places—and times—beyond imagining.

Beyond the Rain


Jess Granger - 2009
    After five years behind enemy lines, Captain Cyani has to complete one final mission before she can return to Azra-a planet ruled by a sisterhood of celibate warriors. Along the way she finds a prisoner, chained and beaten-but radiating feral power and an unbroken spirit. For years Soren has endured torture as his captors leeched his very essence, a unique hormone then sold as a sexual narcotic in the shadow trade. Now he has been freed from slavery by a beautiful warrior woman with radiant blue eyes. After years in bondage, Soren's hormones are so unbalanced that he will die if he does not mate with a woman. Can Cyani be the woman he needs to survive, or will this forbidden bond destroy them?

Lexicon


Max Barry - 2013
    Instead, they are taught to persuade. Here the art of coercion has been raised to a science. Students harness the hidden power of language to manipulate the mind and learn to break down individuals by psychographic markers in order to take control of their thoughts. The very best will graduate as "poets", adept wielders of language who belong to a nameless organization that is as influential as it is secretive.Whip-smart orphan Emily Ruff is making a living running a three-card Monte game on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization's recruiters. She is flown across the country for the school's strange and rigorous entrance exams, where, once admitted, she will be taught the fundamentals of persuasion by Bronte, Eliot, and Lowell--who have adopted the names of famous poets to conceal their true identities. For in the organization, nothing is more dangerous than revealing who you are: Poets must never expose their feelings lest they be manipulated. Emily becomes the school's most talented prodigy until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love.Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Jamieson is brutally ambushed by two strange men in an airport bathroom. Although he has no recollection of anything they claim he's done, it turns out Wil is the key to a secret war between rival factions of poets and is quickly caught in their increasingly deadly crossfire. Pursued relentlessly by people with powers he can barely comprehend and protected by the very man who first attacked him, Wil discovers that everything he thought he knew about his past was fiction. In order to survive, must journey to the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, to discover who he is and why an entire town was blown off the map.As the two narratives converge, the shocking work of the poets is fully revealed, the body count rises, and the world crashes toward a Tower of Babel event which would leave all language meaningless. A brilliant thriller that connects very modern questions of privacy, identity, and the rising obsession of data collection to centuries-old ideas about the power of language and coercion, Lexicon is Max Barry's most ambitious and spellbinding novel yet.

Static


L.A. Witt - 2011
    Thanks to a forced implant, though, Alex is suddenly static—unable to shift—and male. Overnight, he’s out to a world that neither understands nor tolerates shifters . . . and to his heterosexual boyfriend.Damon is stunned to discover his girlfriend is a shifter, and scared to death of the dangers the implant poses to Alex’s health. He refuses to abandon Alex, but what about their relationship? Damon is straight, and with the implant both costly and dangerous to remove, Alex is stuck as a man.Stripped of half his identity and facing serious physical and social ramifications, Alex needs Damon more than ever, but he doesn’t see how they can get through this.Especially if he’s static forever.Note: This book was written several years ago, and since that time, the author's understanding of gender identity has evolved. Were Static to be written today, it would include (for example) non-binary identities rather than a male/female binary.

The E.T. Guy


V.C. Lancaster - 2016
     Zir is a refugee from the planet Teiss, working in DETI's I.T. department. Lois and Zir just can't get along. As far as she's concerned, he's rude, abrasive, and condescending. She wants nothing to do with him. So why does he never leave her alone? He must be crazy if he thinks there could ever be anything between them... right?

The Star Thief


Jamie Grey - 2014
    There's just one problem - all she wants is to get out of the business.But after Renna rescues an injured boy on her final job, she finds herself on the run from the mob instead of enjoying retirement. She unwittingly becomes ensnared by MYTH, a top-secret galactic protection agency who offer her a choice - either help them on their latest mission, or spend the rest of her life on a prison ship.Forced to work under the watchful eye of handsome but arrogant Captain Finn, Renna learns the former mercenary-turned-hero has a few dirty secrets himself. As Renna works to discover the truth about Finn's past and keep the tantalizing man at arm's length, she unearths a plot to create an unstoppable army. The target? The human star fleet.Now Renna must pull off the biggest job of her career - saving the galaxy. And maybe even herself.

Escaping Fate


Regine Abel - 2017
    Exploited. Hunted.Born and raised on a slavers ship, Amalia is one of the rare survivors of the Veredian race. Like all Veredian females, Amalia possesses a unique psi ability which makes her the prized pet of her master Gruuk. She escapes to Xelix Prime, a warrior planet where slavery is prohibited. There, she participates in the Fastening to select one of countless hopeful warriors as her mate and protector. Except, she’s now torn between two cousins.For Khel and Lhor, time is ticking. Like most Xelixian males, they are Tainted. On top of marking them as a lesser class of society, the disease mars their bodies and reduces their lifespan to less than forty years. Only a compatible female can slow or revert the Taint. But the females at the Fastening shun the males with visible symptoms. Until Amalia…Between Gruuk’s dogged pursuit, deadly rivalries, assassins and corrupted nobles, can the cousins keep Amalia safe or will their respective feelings for her tear them apart?This MFM novel is a constant toe-curling, action-packed thriller. It is standalone with no cliffhanger.The Veredian Chronicles is the perfect read for fans of Nalini Singh and M.K. Eidem, pursuing their tradition of strong heroines, treacherous political intrigues, and the twists and turns you didn't see coming.LOSING AMALIA BONUS SCENE INCLUDED!

Alien Lord's Captive


Mina Carter - 2015
    An alien invasion means earth is in danger and the women of Sentinel Five are the only line of defence…But it’s hard to remember what she’s fighting against when her sexy alien lover has a thing about making sure her every need is met… and has some very inventive ways of doing so. Until she gives him a bad case of mating marks and all bets are off.Exploration yields an unexpected bounty… and a chance at love.Tarrick's duty to the Latharian Empire means little time for himself. Thanks to a genetic plague, the lathar have no females of their own, so a base full of human women is a bounty he can't ignore. Nor can he ignore the little human who defies him at every step.Then a dangerous rival challenges the K'Vass claim on Terran space and all its women. Tarrick can't afford to let any of the earth women be captured, especially not his little human, Cat.When she is taken from him, he'll do anything to rescue her. Up to and including starting an intergalactic war...

Claimed


Elle Kennedy - 2015
    Now she really sets it on fire in a new series about men and women living on the edge of violence, sex, and life and death.After a devastating war decimated most of the world, Hudson Lane has only known the oppressive life under her own father’s tyranny. She finally escapes, branding herself an outlaw and hunted by the Enforcers. Her best chance at survival is Connor Mackenzie, an aggressively sensual fugitive who opens her eyes to the wicked possibilities of a world without rules.As the leader of a band of outlaw fighters, Connor can’t resist the beautiful stranger who asks for his protection. Despite his reservations, he agrees to introduce her to a whole new way of life. But when Connor discovers Hudson’s connection to the enemies of liberty, he wonders how far he can trust the woman who has abandoned all inhibitions to challenge every forbidden desire.

Xander


Vivienne Savage - 2018
    Reassignment to a new ship is the second chance he needs, and spoiling it isn’t an option. Until he meets his one temptation, a woman his alien genes would kill for.Sergeant Thandi Kruger finds herself under the care of the navy’s sexiest cybertech doctor. She should resist him, but she’s fascinated, and his mysterious eyes hold a dozen secrets she’s eager to uncover.Although they’re divided by rank and his past, there are bigger problems in the galaxy. Cyborgs like Thandie are vanishing from colonies — and the navy — at an alarming rate. Xander may have to kill for her, after all.