Black Widows: Episode 1


Michael G. Thomas - 2016
    Aboard their heavily-armed ship Medusa, they embark on secretive missions throughout the crumbling Confederacy as it wages a terrible and bloody civil war. The lives of Syala and her twin sister Arana change forever on the day the slavers hit their new home on the Skylla Research Facility. It is a day that started like any other, before turning into a terrifying massacre as soldiers and hideous creatures swarm through the facility killing or enslaving anyone that stands in their way. The sisters struggle to survive as a desperate few try and fight back, but nothing can hold back the horde. Until they find a single mercenary dressed in black armour who refuses to back down. Her name is Zhang Wei, and she is a Black Widow. Black Widows is serialised over six short-read episodes per season, in the same fashion as a TV series. More adventures will be released over coming weeks before being combined into a 6 volume compilation. See my website for news on the next thrilling release at www.starcrusader.com

Luna


Garon Whited - 2007
    It's not as bad as we thought. From the very first line, "Luna" grabs the reader. Where most books start with a world in trouble and ride the story on into a happy ending or to the ultimate destruction, "Luna" starts with the end of the world. Things can only get better, right? With the world destroyed, the story centers on six survivors in the first lunar shuttle, on their way to shake down and tune up a robot-built underground tunnel complex on the Moon. They have to face a number of issues, not the least of which is the self-destruction of their homeworld and the survival of the species. Fortunately, any culture advanced enough to have a lunar colony and the capability to destroy its own civilization is likely to have people who are not on the planet at any given time. From these few survivors, the human race will have to either survive and grow, or wither away into nothing. They have to face many difficulties, ranging from purely scientific ones such as genetics, mechanics, chemistry, and nutrition, to the more complex difficulties of human nature, such as love, sex, and loneliness. The conflict between politics and military command also rears its ugly head, with uncertain results, aside from the obvious: War. Told from the point of view of Max, the officer in charge of the mechanical aspects of the lunar base, "Luna" takes us on a fast-paced tour of our own Moon, the LaGrange points, a number of habitable satellites, as well as the light and dark places in the human soul. Any science fiction reader will delight in the near-future possibilities of lunar colonization, along with the superb character development, snappy dialogue, and the dry humor that are so characteristic of Garon Whited's work.A gripping page-turner, Whited's "Luna" is more than a little reminiscent of Robert Heinlein, mixed with a dash of E.E. "Doc" Smith, and stirred with a sardonic sense of humor uniquely his own. Fans of Garon Whited's "Nightlord: Sunset" will want to add this one to the collection!

Phantom Bigfoot Strikes Again


Simon Okill - 2013
    The tall blond aliens known as The Elders must protect their pets - Bigfoot - in so doing they have chosen The Guardian to take on this massive task. But becoming The Phantom Bigfoot has its perks for this notorious prankster, scallywag, and local celebrity. Duane lets off steam by inflicting ludicrous pranks on the local Beaverites. To his dismay, a teenager with the same prankish ways disappears. Can Duane keep the Tribe of Bigfoot a secret and protect the forest as the authorities search for the missing teenager? Or will the alien Elders come to regret their choice of Protector and banish Duane from the forest forever?

A Planet for the President


Alistair Beaton - 2004
    He wants Americans to be adored by freedom-loving people everywhere. Instead, half the planet seems to be in permanent insurrection against US power. What's more, there's a growing environmental crisis that even he can't ignore. At a secret meeting in the Oval Office, the President is persuaded of one simple fact—there are too many people in the world. Only radical action, his advisers say, can deal with the problem. The solution they propose is frighteningly audacious and breathtakingly ruthless. Soon, the President has embarked upon a plan that will guarantee American supremacy for generations to come—or so he believes.

The Earl of Mercia's Father


M.J. Porter - 2013
    Leofwine must fight for his position and influence amongst an unruly mob of self-interested nobles, while coming to terms with his life changing injuries and new responsibilities, as both a husband, father and ealdorman. To make England safe again, he must also force his frightened king to combat a new wave of Viking Raiders with an offensive attack on those who aid the Raiders.The Earl of Mercia’s Father is the first book in the epic Earls of Mercia series charting the final century of Anglo-Saxon England, as seen through the eyes of Ealdorman Leofwine, the father of Earl Leofric, the Earl of Mercia, and ally of Lady Elfrida, England’s first queen.The Earl of Mercia's Father is where readers of The First Queen of England, and The King's Mother trilogies will first encounter Leofwine, the ealdorman of the Hwicce, and ally of Lady Elfrida.The Earls of Mercia Series The Earl of Mercia's FatherThe Danish King's EnemyNorthman Part 1Northman Part 2The King's EarlThe Earl of MerciaThe English EarlThe Earl's KingViking King (coming soon)PRAISE FOR THE EARLS OF MERCIA SERIES"This is a fantastic series of books, by an author who certainly knows his subject. I was into the Roman invasions but am rapidly converting to the Britons!" Amazon Reviewer"A must-read for fans of Viking age England. This promises to be a very good series of which I can't wait for the next instalment." Amazon Reviewer"Intriguing, well-written stories about the early days of Great Britain between Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror... at the time Athelred was King... the story is written from the perspective of one the emerging Earl's who sits on the Witan (counsel). The time period show the interplay between Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries (Viking raiders) as well." Amazon.com ReviewerABOUT THE AUTHORI'm an author of fantasy (Viking age/dragon-themed) and historical fiction (Anglo-Saxon, Vikings and the British Isles as a whole before the Norman Conquest), born in the old Mercian kingdom at some point since the end of Anglo-Saxon England. Raised in the shadow of a strange little building and told from a very young age that it housed the bones of the long-dead kings of Mercia, it's little wonder that my curiosity in the Anglo-Saxons ran riot. I can only blame my parents!I write A LOT. You've been warned!Find me at www.mjporterauthor.com and @coloursofunison on twitter

Brilliance


Marcus Sakey - 2013
    In New York, a man sensing patterns in the stock market racks up $300 billion. In Chicago, a woman can go invisible by being where no one is looking. They’re called "brilliants," and since 1980, one percent of people have been born this way. Nick Cooper is among them; a federal agent, Cooper has gifts rendering him exceptional at hunting terrorists. His latest target may be the most dangerous man alive, a brilliant drenched in blood and intent on provoking civil war. But to catch him, Cooper will have to violate everything he believes in - and betray his own kind.From Marcus Sakey, "a modern master of suspense" (Chicago Sun-Times) and "one of our best storytellers" (Michael Connelly), comes an adventure that’s at once breakneck thriller and shrewd social commentary; a gripping tale of a world fundamentally different and yet horrifyingly similar to our own, where being born gifted can be a terrible curse.

ARV-3


Cameo Renae - 2013
    THE APOCALYPSE. A nuclear fallout wiped out every living thing on the planet, except for a few thousand of us who took shelter in underground bunkers across the globe. Now, after thirteen long years, we were finally able to return to the topside to begin to rebuild. We thought we were alone. We were never more wrong. Before the fallout, scientists had worked on creating an anti-radiation vaccine (ARV). The first two attempts failed, but despite the incomplete tests and results, the government approved and distributed the third serum to the masses in an effort to aid those who had no shelter. It worked. Keeping those who remained on the topside alive, but it also altered and mutated them. This new and infectious threat had completely outnumbered us. Now, we not only had to rebuild our planet. We would have to fight for it. My name is Abigail Park. I’m seventeen, and this is my story.

Armada


Ernest Cline - 2015
    Dreaming that the real world could be a little more like the countless science-fiction books, movies, and videogames he’s spent his life consuming. Dreaming that one day, some fantastic, world-altering event will shatter the monotony of his humdrum existence and whisk him off on some grand space-faring adventure. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little escapism, right? After all, Zack tells himself, he knows the difference between fantasy and reality. He knows that here in the real world, aimless teenage gamers with anger issues don’t get chosen to save the universe. And then he sees the flying saucer. Even stranger, the alien ship he’s staring at is straight out of the videogame he plays every night, a hugely popular online flight simulator called Armada—in which gamers just happen to be protecting the earth from alien invaders. No, Zack hasn’t lost his mind. As impossible as it seems, what he’s seeing is all too real. And his skills—as well as those of millions of gamers across the world—are going to be needed to save the earth from what’s about to befall it. It’s Zack’s chance, at last, to play the hero. But even through the terror and exhilaration, he can’t help thinking back to all those science-fiction stories he grew up with, and wondering: Doesn’t something about this scenario seem a little…familiar? At once gleefully embracing and brilliantly subverting science-fiction conventions as only Ernest Cline could, Armada is a rollicking, surprising thriller, a classic coming of age adventure, and an alien invasion tale like nothing you’ve ever read before—one whose every page is infused with the pop-culture savvy that has helped make Ready Player One a phenomenon.

The Explosionist


Jenny Davidson - 2008
    1) is the story of a 15-year-old girl growing up in an alternate version of 1930s Edinburgh. There, the legacy of Napoleon's victory a century earlier at Waterloo is a standoff between a totalitarian Federation of European States and a group of independent northern countries called the New Hanseatic League. This world is preoccupied with technology (everything from electric cookers to high explosives) but also with spiritualism, a movement our world largely abandoned in the early 20th Century; Sigmund Freud is a radio talk-show crank, cars run on hydrogen and the most prominent scientists experiment with new ways of contacting the dead.

Rasputin's Bastards


David Nickle - 2012
    And as Gods, they might have remade the world.But like the mad holy man Rasputin, who destroyed Russia through his own powerful influence... in the end, the psychic spies for the Motherland were only in it for themselves.* * *It is the 1990s.The Cold War is long finished.In a remote Labrador fishing village, an old woman known only as Babushka foresees her ending through the harbour ice, in the giant eye of a dying kraken – and vows to have none of it.Beaten insensible and cast adrift in a life raft, ex- KGB agent Alexei Kilodovich is dragged to the deck of a ship full of criminals, and with them he will embark on a journey that will change everything he knows about himself.And from a suite in an unseen hotel in the heart of Manhattan, an old warrior named Kolyokov sets out with an open heart, to gather together the youngest members of his immense, and immensely talented, family.They are more beautiful, and more terrible, than any who came before them.They are Rasputin's bastards.And they will remake the world.

The Black Gate


Michael R. Hicks - 2014
     But Peter Miller, an analyst at the headquarters of the Office of Strategic Services in Washington D.C., learns of a secret Nazi weapons project that may pose a far greater threat: the Black Gate. Sent alone on a perilous mission into the heart of Germany in the guise of an SS officer, Peter discovers that Nazi scientists have recreated an ancient machine that opens a portal to another universe, a gate they believe literally leads to Hell. With the help of Mina Hass, a beautiful woman who is also the lover and confidant of the madman leading the project, Peter must find a way to close the gate forever before the Nazis unwittingly unleash Armageddon…