Book picks similar to
The Black Gate by Michael R. Hicks


science-fiction
horror
michael-r-hicks
fiction

Covert Action


Dick Couch - 2005
    Now IFOR, the surgical strike team led by former Navy Seal Garrett Walker, returns in an adventure charged with authenticity and suspense.

Pete, Popeye and Olive (Privateer Tales Shorts Book 2)


Jamie McFarlane - 2016
    When an opportunity to join the Mechanized Infantry presents itself, Pete is first in line. He knows that he's going to get shot at one way or another, but the idea of sitting in a warm and more importantly, dry mechanized suit appeals to him almost beyond reason. While still training in the jungle, Pete's squad is called out to intervene in a skirmish in a nearby village. Of course, the Marines haven't seen fit to certify his squad with ordnance. The fact that they'll be up against a platoon of squishies doesn't convince him that's it's any better of an idea and things turn quickly to crap when they discover the squishies are protected by grav-tanks. Pete, Popeye and Olive is a fast paced, short-story with plenty of action.

The Darwin Effect


Mark Lukens - 2016
    They are all suffering from short-term memory loss and they can't remember why or how they got on this ship. The onboard computer (MAC) tells them that it was programmed to wake them up early. They believe MAC woke them up by mistake. They can't re-enter suspended animation, there's only enough food for a few months, and they are too far away to return to Earth ... but even if they could return, MAC tells them that the Earth has been destroyed by nuclear war. They realize that they are all going to die on this ship.Cromartie, the unelected leader of their group, tries his best to keep the others calm, but soon they are at each other's throats. After one of them is found murdered, Cromartie and Sanders form an alliance. Cromartie tells Sanders that pieces of his memories are beginning to come back to him in his dreams; he believes he's seeing clues to their survival.But after the next murder, Cromartie and Sanders must work fast to find the mind-blowing key to their survival and figure out which one of them is the killer before it's too late.

City Of The Damned


Stephen Knight - 2011
    And they have plans.After blitzing a vampire coven in Arizona, former U.S. Army captain Mark Acheson leads his highly trained team into a new and unexpected battle zone: suburban Los Angeles. Hard contact with the vampires, led by arch-vampire master Osric, results in Acheson's lover being taken and his team left wounded and in disarray. As Acheson and his people struggle to regroup, it becomes clear that Osric's master plan, which involves ancient occult magic from the bowels of Eastern Europe, is in motion.Time is running out, for Los Angeles...and the human race.

The Gods of War


Graham Brown - 2014
     Pollution, war and overpopulation have darkened the skies, photosynthesis is failing and most of the Earth’s twenty billion souls face starvation and death. The only hope for survival lays with the fertile fields of Mars, where a thirty year terraforming effort is turning vast swaths of the red planet to green. But to the leaders of the Cartel, a conglomeration of the world’s most powerful families, using Mars to feed the overpopulated masses of the Earth is a waste of resources. They have another plan—take Mars for themselves and leave the Earth to self-destruct on its own. The only thing standing in their way is the idealistic President Jackson Collins, head of the United World Government and unquestioned leader of the World Military Forces, who believes that humanity must rise or fall as one. As the tide of war rises, the James Collins, the President’s son, a lifelong soldier and a weary veteran of his father’s military campaigns returns from the field disillusioned and doubtful as to whether humanity is even worth saving. Though he wants nothing more than to walk away, James soon finds himself drawn into the swirling vortex of battle and caught in the titanic struggle that will decide the fate of two worlds.

Phantoms / The Servants of Twilight / The Bad Place


Dean Koontz
    

Smilodon


Alan Nayes - 2011
    Jason, with Norah's assistance, soon discovers the ghosts of his past are nothing compared to the battle he's undertaken.Smilodon. A saber-toothed cat. He's angry, he's frightened, he's hungry, and he's 12,000 years from home!Smilodon--75,000 words or about 300 pages

The John Connolly Collection #2: The White Road, The Black Angel, and The Unquiet


John Connolly - 2012
    It's a case that nobody wants to touch, deeply rooted in old evil—and old evil is Charlie Parker's specialty. He's about to enter a living nightmare, a dreamscape of sorrow haunted by the murderous specter of a hooded woman, by a black car waiting for a passenger that never comes, and by the sinister complicity of both friends and enemies in Larousse's brutal death. Soon, all will face a final reckoning in an unearthly realm where the paths of the living and the dead converge. A place known only as the White Road. THE BLACK ANGELWhen a young woman disappears from the streets of New York City, ties of friendship and blood inevitably draw ingenious, tortured detective Charlie Parker into the search. Soon he discovers links to a church of bones in Eastern Europe, a 1944 slaughter at a French monastery, and to the myth of an object known as the Black Angel—considered by evil men to be beyond priceless. But the Black Angel is not a legend. It is real. It lives. It dreams. And the mystery of its existence may contain the secret of Parker's own origins. THE UNQUIETDaniel Clay, a once-respected psychiatrist, has gone missing. His daughter insists that he killed himself after allegations surfaced surrounding the harm done to patients in his care. Now, a killer obsessed with finding the truth about his own daughter’s disappearance is seeking revenge—and private investigator Charlie Parker finds himself trapped between those who want the truth about Clay’s disappearance to be revealed, and those who will go to any length—no matter the cost—to keep a deep, dark secret about a local town hidden.

Red Team: Strigoi


John O'Brien - 2017
    Or pulled the blankets over your head and imagined creatures inching across your bedroom. Well, they’re real. The Organization, as it’s called, is tasked with keeping the nightmares of myth and legend from invading the public eye. The group must be kept a secret along with the fact that the creatures exist. As civilization expands its boundaries, that undertaking becomes more difficult. A very few are selected to stand on the lines between humankind and the horrors lurking in the dark recesses of the world. Follow Jack Walker and Red Team as they’re pulled into the shadows to combat creatures that once kept them awake at night.

Condition Black (A novella)


Tom Barber - 2013
    Everyone around him is dead. He has no idea where he is, or who shot him and his squad down.He soon discovers he’s on one of the moons orbiting Mars, not far from the main colony and his transport back to Earth. Two members of a mining team stationed on the moon come out to investigate. They take Miller back to their base where he manages to send out a call for help.He has ninety minutes to wait for rescue.But those ninety minutes are going to feel like a lifetime.Miller quickly realises that something in the station is wrong.There seems to be more to this place than meets the eye.Strange and unsettling events suggest things are not quite as they appear.As the minutes until his rescue tick by and he begins to finally figure out what is going on, Miller is forced to confront echoes from his past as well as his deepest fears in a situation that is becoming more terrifying by the second.And he soon learns that some nightmares don’t stop when you wake up.

Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10.5: Carnie's Tale


Randolph Lalonde - 2017
    The material was recorded while he was on Iora, a technically advanced world as the holocaust virus struck it. She is to review all materials and create a report that includes insights into the young pilot's personality, strategic information about Iora and any other details that could help Haven Fleet. Before long, Alice becomes personally invested in the plight of her subject, and makes discoveries that could change her forever. Meanwhile, a permanent government is taking hold in Haven Shore, and the Fleet is undergoing one last shakeup that could break the Apex class apart. All the while Alice is left to wonder where her father and his ship, the Revenge have gone while they wait for the rest of their active fleet to return from the Iron Head Nebula. The Spinward Fringe saga continues in Carnie's Tale, the connective tissue between Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10: Freeground and Spinward Fringe Broadcast 11: Revenge, telling Alice's story between those books from a more personal perspective. Version 2.

A Memory Of Demons


David Ambrose - 2003
    But Tom's demons return with a vengeance as he discovers the baby is possessed by the spirit of another girl, who went missing 10 years ago - the night Tom had his last drug-fuelled blackout.

My Name Is Lydia


Stephen Leather - 2014
    Supernatural detective Jack Nightingale is called in to investigate a young girl who appears to be possessed by an evil spirit.

The Complete Predator Omnibus


Nathan Archer - 2018
    Contains CONCRETE JUNGLE, COLD WAR and BIG GAME

7th Son: Obsidian


J.C. Hutchins - 2008
    Hutchins invited the biggest names in podcast fiction — and 7th Son fans across the globe — to contribute to 7th Son: OBSIDIAN, an innovative audio and video fiction anthology set in the 7th Son universe.OBSIDIAN, an innovative “in world” addition to the 7th Son trilogy, tells the tale of the nationwide blackout seen briefly in 7th Son: Destruction. More than 100 authors and fans contributed content to this project. OBSIDIAN was a history-making experience; it was the first time in podcast fiction where the lines between author and audience were fundamentally blurred in this way.While these tales of survival were crafted as stand-alone stories, J.C. Hutchins recommends listening to the 7th Son trilogy in its entirety before experiencing OBSIDIAN.