Pandemic


A.G. Riddle - 2017
    It may be the start of a scientific experiment that could alter the human race forever--and reveal a shocking truth about our future.Experience the groundbreaking novel that will change everything you think you know about pandemics--and how to survive one.“Reads like a superior collaboration between Dan Brown and Michael Crichton.”—The GuardianNow an Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestseller.A hundred miles north of Alaska, a US Coast Guard vessel discovers a sunken submarine at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. It has no national identification and doesn’t match the records of any known vessel. Deep within, researchers find evidence of a scientific experiment that will rewrite our basic understanding of the human race.In Atlanta, Dr. Peyton Shaw is awakened by the phone call she has dreaded for years. As the CDC’s leading epidemiologist, she’s among the first responders to outbreaks around the world. It’s a lonely and dangerous job, but it’s her life—and she’s good at it. This time, she may have met her match.In Kenya, an Ebola-like pathogen has infected two Americans. One lies at death’s door. With the clock ticking, Peyton assembles her team and joins personnel from the Kenyan Ministry of Health and the WHO. What they find in the remote village is beyond their worst fears. As she traces the origin of the pathogen, Peyton begins to believe that there is more to this outbreak—that it may be merely the opening act in a conspiracy with far reaching consequences.In Berlin, Desmond Hughes awakens in a hotel room with no memory of how he got there or who he is. On the floor, he finds a dead security guard from an international pharmaceutical company. His only clue leads him to Peyton Shaw—a woman who seems to know him, but refuses to tell him how. With the police searching the city for him, Desmond desperately tries to piece together what happened to him. To his shock and horror, he learns that he may be involved in causing the outbreak—and could hold the only key to stopping it.As the pathogen spreads around the world, Peyton and Desmond race to unravel the conspiracy behind the pandemic—and uncover secrets some want to keep buried. With time running out, they face an unimaginable decision.Buy now and begin the journey (or read for free in Kindle Unlimited).Selected Praise and Published Reviews“I finished the book fast because I just couldn’t wait...”—WIRED GeekDad on Departure“Riddle makes an effort to keep the focus on how his characters react to each other (including to their future selves) rather than to the technological marvels that reshaped their world.”—Publisher’s Weekly on Departure“Well-constructed and tightly-wound as a fine Swiss watch—Departure has non-stop action, an engaging plot and, of course, wheels within wheels.”—Diana Gabaldon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Outlander on Departure About Pandemic

Cold Storage


David Koepp - 2019
    He contained it and buried it in cold storage deep beneath a little-used military repository.Now, after decades of festering in a forgotten sub-basement, the specimen has found its way out and is on a lethal feeding frenzy. Only Diaz knows how to stop it.He races across the country to help two unwitting security guards—one an ex-con, the other a single mother. Over one harrowing night, the unlikely trio must figure out how to quarantine this horror again. All they have is luck, fearlessness, and a mordant sense of humor. Will that be enough to save all of humanity?

Post-Human Omnibus


David Simpson - 2014
    What will happen when humans can live forever? Or die with just a few keystrokes? How will our governments react as they lose control of their citizens' data? And how do you feel about uploading your mind into a computer so that you may live on after death?The Post-Human Omnibus is the perfect book for these times. It's an epic series of stories that explore all sides of humanity's future through science fiction, from both near-future dystopias to far-future utopias (and everything in between). Written by award winning author & TEDx speaker David Simpson, this collection explores many different genres from thrillers to romances to mysteries and much more.

My Soul to Keep


Tananarive Due - 1997
    Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost. Now, his immortal brethren have decided David must return and leave his family in Miami. Instead, David vows to invoke a forbidden ritual to keep Jessica and his daughter with him forever. Harrowing, engrossing and skillfully rendered, My Soul to Keep traps Jessica between the desperation of immortals who want to rob her of her life and a husband who wants to rob her of her soul. With deft plotting and an unforgettable climax, this tour de force reminiscent of early Anne Rice will win Due a new legion of fans.

Lamentation


Ken Scholes - 2009
    From many miles away, Rudolfo, Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses, sees the horrifying column of smoke rising. Nearer to the Desolation, a young apprentice is the only survivor of the city — Nebios sat waiting for his father outside the walls and was transformed as he watched everyone he knew die in an instant.And within sight of Windwir sits Sethbert, the Overseer the Entrolusian City States, gloating in triumph. At his side Lady Jin Li Tam — her father's pawn in the game of statecraft, but destined to become her own Queen on the board.Soon all the Kingdoms of the Named Lands will be at another's throats, as alliances are challenged and hidden plots are uncovered.

Germ


Robert Liparulo - 2006
    Business leaders, housewives, politicians, celebrities, janitors, children. None of them is aware of what is about to happen--but all will be part of the most frightening brand of warfare the world has ever known.The germ--an advanced form of the Ebola virus--has been genetically engineered to infect only those people whose DNA matches the codes embedded within it. Those whose DNA is not a match simply catch a cold. But those who are a match experience a far worse fate. Within days, their internal organs liquify.Death is the only escape.The release of the virus will usher in a new era of power where countries are left without defense. Where a single person--or millions--could be killed with perfect accuracy and zero collateral damage. Where your own DNA works against you.The time isn't coming. It is now. Pray the assassins get you first.

Demons of the Void


David Adams - 2011
    It is told primarily from the perspective of one Captain Melissa Liao of the People's Navy, who is given command of one of three great warships built to fight the "demons", the TFR Beijing.

Do You Dream of Terra-Two?


Temi Oh - 2019
    Have you ever hoped you could leave everything behind? Have you ever dreamt of a better world? Can a dream sustain a lifetime? A century ago, an astronomer discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star. She predicted that one day humans would travel there to build a utopia. Today, ten astronauts are leaving everything behind to find it. Four are veterans of the twentieth century’s space-race. And six are teenagers who’ve trained for this mission most of their lives. It will take the team twenty-three years to reach Terra-Two. Twenty-three years locked in close quarters. Twenty-three years with no one to rely on but each other. Twenty-three years with no rescue possible, should something go wrong. And something always goes wrong.

The Brief History of the Dead


Kevin Brockmeier - 2003
    The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out. Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory.

Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials


Reza Negarestani - 2008
    Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. CYCLONOPEDIA is a middle-eastern Odyssey, populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth's tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun. 'The Middle East is a sentient entity - it is alive!' concludes renegade Iranian archeologist Dr. Hamid Parsani, before disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The disordered notes he leaves behind testify to an increasingly deranged preoccupation with oil as the 'lubricant' of historical and political narratives. A young American woman arrives in Istanbul to meet a pseudonymous online acquaintance who never arrives. Discovering a strange manuscript in her hotel room, she follows up its cryptic clues only to discover more plot-holes, and begins to wonder whether her friend was a fictional quantity all along. Meanwhile, as the War on Terror escalates, the US is dragged into an asymmetrical engagement with occultures whose principles are ancient, obscure, and saturated in oil. It is as if war itself is feeding upon the warmachines, leveling cities into the desert, seducing the aggressors into the dark heart of oil ...

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars


Christopher Paolini - 2020
    Now she's awakened a nightmare. During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she's delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn't at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human. While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity's greatest and final hope...

Flood


Stephen Baxter - 2008
    Another wet summer, another year of storm surges and high tides. But this time the Thames Barrier is breached and central London is swamped. The waters recede, life goes on, the economy begins to recover, people watch the news reports of other floods around the world. And then the waters rise again. And again.Lily, Helen, Gary and Piers, hostages released from five years captivity at the hands of Christian Extremists in Spain, return to England and the first rumours of a flood of positively Biblical proportions…Sea levels have begun to rise, at catastrophic speed. Within two years London and New York will be under water. The Pope will give his last address from the Vatican before Rome is swallowed by the rising water. Mecca too will vanish beneath the waves.The world is drowning. A desperate race to find out what is happening begins. The popular theory is that we are paying the price for our profligacy and that climate change is about to redress Gaia’s balance. But there are dissenting views. And all the time the waters continue to rise and mankind begins the great retreat to higher ground. Millions will die, billions will become migrants. Wars will be fought over mountains.

Join


Steve Toutonghi - 2016
    But as two best friends discover, the light of that miracle may be blinding the world to its horrors.Chance and Leap are jolted out of their professional routines by a terrifying stranger—a remorseless killer who freely manipulates the networks that regulate life in the post-Join world. Their quest for answers—and survival—brings them from the networks and spire communities they’ve known to the scarred heart of an environmentally ravaged North American continent and an underground community of the “ferals” left behind by the rush of technology.In the storytelling tradition of classic speculative fiction from writers like David Mitchell and Michael Chabon, Join offers a pulse-pounding story that poses the largest possible questions: How long can human life be sustained on our planet in the face of environmental catastrophe? What does it mean to be human, and what happens when humanity takes the next step in its evolution? If the individual mind becomes obsolete, what have we lost and gained, and what is still worth fighting for?

The Dark Tower: And Other Stories


C.S. Lewis - 1977
    S. Lewis’s adult religious books, a repackaged edition of the revered author’s definitive collection of short fiction, which explores enduring spiritual and science fiction themes such as space, time, reality, fantasy, God, and the fate of humankind.From C.S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—comes a collection of his dazzling short fiction.This collection of futuristic fiction includes a breathtaking science fiction story written early in his career in which Cambridge intellectuals witness the breach of space-time through a chronoscope—a telescope that looks not just into another world, but into another time. As powerful, inventive, and profound as his theological and philosophical works, The Dark Tower reveals another side of Lewis’s creative mind and his longtime fascination with reality and spirituality. It is ideal reading for fans of J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis’s longtime friend and colleague.

Boneshaker


Cherie Priest - 2009
    Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.