Book picks similar to
D.A. by Connie Willis


science-fiction
sci-fi
young-adult
fiction

The Dark Side of the Sun


Terry Pratchett - 1976
    Librarian Note: An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here Dom Salabos had a lot of advantages.As heir to a huge fortune he had an excellent robot servant (with Man-Friday subcircuitry), a planet (the First Syrian Bank) as a godfather, a security chief who even ran checks on himself, and on Dom's home world even death was not always fatal.Why then, in an age when prediction was a science, was his future in doubt?

Hammered


Elizabeth Bear - 2004
    Once she was somebody’s enemy. Now the former Canadian special forces warrior lives on the hellish streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in the year 2062. Racked with pain, hiding from the government she served, running with a crime lord so she can save a life or two, Jenny is a month shy of fifty, and her artificially reconstructed body has started to unravel. But she is far from forgotten. A government scientist needs the perfect subject for a high-stakes project and has Jenny in his sights. Suddenly Jenny Casey is a pawn in a furious battle, waged in the corridors of the Internet, on the streets of battered cities, and in the complex wirings of her half-man-made nervous system. And she needs to gain control of the game before a brave new future spins completely out of control.

Roman Holiday


Jodi Taylor - 2014
    Question: What sort of idiot installs his mistress in his wife's house? Especially when that mistress is Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator, Queen of Egypt and the most notorious woman of her time? Answer: Julius Caesar - poised to become King of Rome. Or as good as. Question: At this potentially sensitive point in your political manoeuvrings, who are the last people you'd want crashing through the door, observing, recording, documenting ...? I think we all know the answer to that one. Roman Holiday - an epic, stand alone tale set in Ancient Rome, 44 BC, featuring, in no particular order: an attempted murder, stampeding bullocks, Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, a bowl of poisonous snakes, a smallish riot, Julius Caesar, and Mr Markham's wayward bosoms.

The Spaceship Next Door


Gene Doucette - 2015
    It never opened its doors, and for all that time, the townspeople have wondered why the ship landed there, and what—or who—could be inside. Then one day a government operative—posing as a journalist—arrives in town, asking questions. He discovers sixteen-year-old Annie Collins, one of the ship’s closest neighbors and a local fixture known throughout the town, who has some of the answers. As a matter of fact, Annie Collins might be the most important person on the planet. She just doesn’t know it.

A Talent for War


Jack McDevitt - 1989
    But now, one man believes Sim was a fraud, and Alex must follow the legend into the heart of the alien galaxy to confront a truth far stranger than any fiction.

Provenance


Ann Leckie - 2017
    She hatches an audacious plan--free a thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned, and use them to help steal back a priceless artifact.But Ingray and her charge return to her home to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future and her world, before they are lost to her for good.

Behind the Throne


K.B. Wagers - 2016
    Gunrunner. Fugitive.Quick, sarcastic, and lethal, Hailimi Bristol doesn't suffer fools gladly. She has made a name for herself in the galaxy for everything except what she was born to do: rule the Indranan Empire. That is, until two Trackers drag her back to her home planet to take her rightful place as the only remaining heir.But trading her ship for a palace has more dangers than Hail could have anticipated. Caught in a web of plots and assassination attempts, Hail can't do the one thing she did twenty years ago: run away. She'll have to figure out who murdered her sisters if she wants to survive.A gun smuggler inherits the throne in this Star Wars-style science fiction adventure from debut author K. B. Wagers. Full of action-packed space opera exploits and courtly conspiracy - not to mention an all-out galactic war - Behind the Throne will please fans of James S. A Corey, Becky Chambers and Lois McMaster Bujold, or anyone who wonders what would happen if a rogue like Han Solo were handed the keys to an empire . . .

Lightless


C.A. Higgins - 2015
    But when a pair of fugitive terrorists gain access to the Ananke, Althea must draw upon her heart and soul for the strength to defend her beloved ship.   While one of the saboteurs remains at large somewhere on board, his captured partner—the enigmatic Ivan—may prove to be more dangerous. The perversely fascinating criminal whose silver tongue is his most effective weapon has long evaded the authorities’ most relentless surveillance—and kept the truth about his methods and motives well hidden.   As the ship’s systems begin to malfunction and the claustrophobic atmosphere is increasingly poisoned by distrust and suspicion, it falls to Althea to penetrate the prisoner’s layers of intrigue and deception before all is lost. But when the true nature of Ivan’s mission is exposed, it will change Althea forever—if it doesn’t kill her first.

The Zero Stone


Andre Norton - 1968
    Murdoc Jern, gem trader, finds that possession of the stone has led him to the center of a web of intrigue and murder.With his companion Eet, an inscrutable feline mutant with phenomenal ESP powers, he is hunted through space, coming finally to a long forgotten planet inhabited by apelike "sniffers." There, facing the predatory sniffers, the antagonistic Patrol and the laser-guns of the Thieves' Guild, Murdoc must seek the source of the Zero Stone and bargain for his right to pursue his destiny as a free man.

Valor's Choice


Tanya Huff - 2000
    They must act as soldier/protectors of the far more civilized races who have long since turned away from war... — Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr was a battle-hardened professional. So when she and those in her platoon who'd survived the last deadly encounter with the Others were yanked from a well-deserved leave for what was supposed to be "easy" duty as the honor guard for a diplomatic mission to the non-Confederation world of the Silsviss, she was ready for anything.At first it seemed that all she'd have to contend with was bored troops getting into mischief, and breaking in the new Second Lieutenant who had been given command of her men.Sure, there'd been rumors of the Others - the sworn enemies of the Confederation - being spotted in this sector of space. But there were always rumors. The key thing was to recruit the Silsviss into the Confederation before the Others either attacked or claimed this lizardlike race of warriors for their own side. And everything seemed to be going perfectly. Maybe too perfectly...

R is for Rocket


Ray Bradbury - 1962
    feel things that no flesh-and-blood creature has ever felt. He can create visions so compelling that they literally seem to dance before your eyes. He can push you back to the beginnings of time and then suddenly, without warning, thrust you forward t the outmost limits of the future. He can make you so much a part of his strange worlds that you literally scream to get out.Seventeen breathtaking stories by the master of the weird and wonderful, including the space-age classic, FROST AND FIRE.

Cities in Flight


James Blish - 1970
    Named after the migrant workers of America's Dust Bowl, these novels convey Blish's "history of the future," a brilliant and bleak look at a world where cities roam the Galaxy looking for work and a sustainable way of life.In the first novel, They Shall Have Stars, man has thoroughly explored the Solar System, yet the dream of going even further seems to have died in all but one man. His battle to realize his dream results in two momentous discoveries anti-gravity and the secret of immortality. In A Life for the Stars, it is centuries later and anti-gravity generations have enabled whole cities to lift off the surface of the earth to become galactic wanderers. In Earthman, Come Home, the nomadic cities revert to barbarism and marauding rogue cities begin to pose a threat to all civilized worlds. In the final novel, The Triumph of Time, history repeats itself as the cities once again journey back in to space making a terrifying discovery which could destroy the entire Universe. A serious and haunting vision of our world and its limits, Cities in Flight marks the return to print of one of science fiction's most inimitable writers.A Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club

The Mote in God's Eye


Larry Niven - 1974
    Intelligent beings are finally found from the Mote, an isolated star in a thick dust cloud. The bottled-up ancient civilization, at least one million years old, are welcoming, kind, yet evasive, with a dark problem they have not solved in over a million years.

Year Zero


Rob Reid - 2012
    But Frampton and Carly are highly advanced (if bumbling) extraterrestrials. And boy, do they have news. The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on humanity’s music ever since “Year Zero” (1977 to us), when American pop songs first reached alien ears. This addiction has driven a vast intergalactic society to commit the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang. The resulting fines and penalties have bankrupted the whole universe. We humans suddenly own everything—and the aliens are not amused. Nick now has forty-eight hours to save humanity, while hopefully wowing the hot girl who lives down the hall from him.

The City in the Middle of the Night


Charlie Jane Anders - 2019
    But she survives--with the help of a mysterious savior from beneath the ice.Burdened with a dangerous, painful secret, Sophie and her ragtag group of exiles face the ultimate challenge--and they are running out of time.Welcome to the City in the Middle of the Night.