Book picks similar to
Speculum by Darryl Sollerh


science-fiction
first-reads
ya-fantasy
indie

Shadow Born


Jamie Sedgwick - 2011
    when the end of the book arrived I was surprised." -Goodreads review5 Stars: "A superb start to a wonderful trilogy..." -Amazon ReviewDescription:Discovered wandering alone in the woods at night. Taken to a secretive mansion. 12-year-old Gabriel Frost has amnesia. He has no clue where he came from, how he received the scars on his back, or where he learned the assassin-like skills he seems to possess. His entire life is a mystery.Gabriel is about to find out the world is nothing like he believed: assassins, monsters, and new super technologies bridge the gap between our world and the shadow world. But what other sinister secrets are his new guardians hiding? Who are the shadowfriends, and what do they want? Can anyone he knows be trusted? What if Gabriel has a few secrets of his own?Gabriel must unravel the mystery of his past before the monsters of the present destroy him.

Edge of the Pit


Bill Thesken - 2016
    Their clients are the richest people in the country and they pay a lot of money to stay safe. He works on the outer perimeter of a security team and is one of the best in the business. From running with gangs as a teenager, and with the US Army in Iraq during the surge, he has a unique set of skills to keep his team alive.It was a standard operation, a bread and butter job, get a client from one point to another and back again.Badger works the perimeter as always, and the client is a beautiful young singer, a rising star who is going to a nightclub in the gritty belly of the city after midnight. Everything is going smooth until the convoy is ambushed, and Badger wakes up in the hospital with no memory of what happened.Everyone else in the convoy is dead, the singer is missing, and Badger is a prime suspect.The agency is in trouble, more ruthless than the mob, and they’ll get answers out of him using any means necessary, if they can only get their hands on him.He is on the run from the agency, the kidnappers, and the police, and he has to find the girl, or die trying.

Savant


Richard Denoncourt - 2012
    In the Land of the Gods, an epic adventure begins…When an ominous stranger wielding dark powers appears at his school, Milo Banks’s reality comes crashing down: His family comes from another realm - and now they’re in danger.Along with his twin sister Emma, who is plagued by otherworldly visions of prophecy, Milo has no choice but to develop mysterious powers he never knew he had - and save a mythical world that can't possibly be real...

Used Aliens


M. Sid Kelly - 2013
    When a flying saucer crashes into his fishing hole, Jimmy tries to use the stranded survivors to jump-start his TV career. This first contact isn't accidental though. The Galactic Pool's saddest excuse for a politician has committed sabotage while plotting to rule Earth. And he's about to find out what happens when you mess with Earthlings.*81,000 words with a courteous 0.0149% F-word rate*There are sex scenes, but they are strictly telepathic. (sorry)

Ivy's Tangle


P.D. Kalnay - 2016
    So he isn’t surprised when his absentee parents send him to live with a grandmother he’s only met three times. Jack’s bags are barely unpacked before she confines him to the property surrounding her spooky rooming house. Trapped—with the silent Ms. Mopat, the mysterious Mr. Ryan, and a surly girl named Ivy—Jack begins his last summer before high school. He has no idea how that summer, and the other boarders at Glastonbury Manor, will alter the course of his life. Jack will discover that he’s already part of a world he never imagined existed and that things he believed were nothing more than fairy tales… are all too real.

Sonora and the Eye of the Titans


T.S. Hall - 2011
    With the help of her bumbling warlock guardian Sasquatch and her three best friends, Allora must find the answers to a complex riddle that will reveal the location of a powerful artifact used during the time of the Titan Wars.

Echoes of Apollo


George Thompson - 2015
    But when the retrofitted Atlantis fails high above Kennedy Space Center, Commander Jack Harden’s future is quickly derailed. As military satellites fall from the sky and America’s electronic infrastructure is threatened by a mysterious electromagnetic “storm,” a young president is suddenly forced to restart the covert rocket program he had cancelled not long after taking office. NASA may be grounded, but the reluctant ex-shuttle commander and his two unlikely copilots soon find themselves on a collision course with the moon, all in a last ditch attempt to destroy China’s secret weapon—the Assassin’s Mace.

The Moon and Beyond


John E. Siers - 2012
    So smart, in fact, that they've figured out how gravity works. More importantly, they've figured out how to make it work as a propulsion system. Of course, they are going to tell the world about it. Eventually. But first, they have a few things to do, like build a fleet of gravity-powered spacecraft and establish a permanent settlement on the Moon... assuming they can keep the U.S. government from figuring out what they are doing, shutting them down, and putting them all under arrest. Welcome to the Lunar Free State...

Revival


Jena Leigh - 2012
    After catching her boyfriend in the arms of the prettiest girl in school, she made the journey from social elite to social pariah in a haze of electricity and exploding electronics. But finding herself at the bottom of Bay View High's social hierarchy was nothing compared to the shock of discovering who--and what--she really is.After being zapped out of a burning bookstore by the mysterious Declan--a hero nearly as handsome as he is infuriating--Alex finds herself under the protection of the powerful Grayson family. It's through them that she learns the truth: that the world she's always known is nothing like it appears to be... and that she has far more in common with them than she might want to believe.Now, on the run from a fire-wielding hit man and a secretive government organization, Alex must navigate a strange and treacherous new world filled with superhuman mutants known as Variants. As she begins to unravel the many secrets of her family's past, she uncovers the real reason for her parents' death twelve years earlier--and finds out that the threat to her family, and to everyone she cares about, is still dangerously real.

Just Cause


Ian Thomas Healy - 2007
    Mustang Sally runs. A third-generation superhero, Sally's life changes forever when she fights and loses to the notorious villain Destroyer, who killed her father just before she was born. She dedicates herself to tracking him down so she can even the score.When all you can do is run, you'd better be fast, but can even the fastest girl in the world run quick enough to save her teammates' lives from Destroyer and his growing parahuman army?

Carnelian


B. Kristin McMichael - 2014
    His past is literally from thousands of years ago. Seth’s past led him to the present seeking something that might help him save his country from destruction. He has been in the present for over three years now, and he just found exactly what he has been looking for. Mari had dreams of college being a fresh start, one where she would start over and not fall for the good looking player like high school. Unfortunately for her, that’s exactly what ends up falling into her lap on the first day she moves into the dorms. Now she has to hold to her promise to herself not fall for the handsome Seth Sangre. But he doesn’t plan to make it easy for her. Seth has already marked her as his next conquest. As the semester progresses, Mari learns that Seth might just have a past of his own that’s literally in the past. Suddenly, Mari finds her future along with her past put into question. She’s connected to Seth far more than she ever wanted to be, and maybe he isn’t the player who she thought he was. If Mari can trust her heart enough to follow him, Seth will lead Mari on an adventure of a lifetime-and reveal family secrets she never knew existed.

Prophet of Doom


Derek Murphy - 2016
    That was all awful enough, but it was more than that. I remember being young and thinking, when I grow up, I'll have a nice big house. I'll get an exciting, interesting job. I'll meet the man of my dreams and we'll fall in love and stay together forever.But that all disappeared the first time I tripped 20 years into the future and found the houses burned, the handsome boys dead, and the only jobs were the ones young girls gave hairy old survivors in tents in exchange for a little food and water. Nobody asked little girls what they wanted to be when they grew up anymore. Nobody wanted to draw attention to the fact that most of them wouldn't live that long.There was no hope, no peace for anyone. At least I had it better than they did. When my trip was over, I would get to go back. Back to the normalcy of 2015. Back to iPhones and Twitter and buying so much food it went bad before you could eat it. Back to laughing over foamy cappuccinos and iced lattes at the mall, window shopping and flirting with hot guys (not that I ever did that, mind you - but I always wanted to). And I still could. That was the point. Unlike everybody else, for whom 2015 was 20 years ago - long before humanity was destroyed - it was my reality. At least, it was some of the time.But after seeing the future; after struggling to make it to the end of the day; after my first kill - none of those other things were the least bit enjoyable. All I could think when I got back to the real world, is how can I stop what's coming?Prescient is a young adult time-travel dystopia, this is Part One of the first book in the series.

The Elf Girl


Markelle Grabo - 2011
    With her pale skin and striking features – not to mention the pointy ears – she struggles with self-confidence, often feeling out of place in her small home town of Wisconsin. One night, Ramsey nearly drowns from what she can only describe as a magical encounter, and when she meets a beautiful pair of siblings who happen to have the same physical features as she, Ramsey learns that she is far more different than she once realized. She is an elf. Whisked away to a magical Realm with unique beings like her, Ramsey finds herself placed with the duty of finding her long lost sister. Kidnapped by fairies in the middle of a dangerous war between fae and the elf kind, her sister is the key to a secret surrounding Ramsey’s past that could potentially affect the outcome of the war. Without her, Ramsey will never know why her parents sent her to live with the humans in the first place, or why threats far deadlier than the war itself seem to be waiting in the wings. Dangers lie waiting for Ramsey wherever she goes, and as she delves deeper into the world of fantasy, she learns that magic isn’t always wondrous and beautiful; it can be cruel and wicked. Surrounded by mystery, magic…and even a little romance, Ramsey sets out to save her sister, unveil her past, and discover herself.

No Regrets


Bernard O'Keeffe - 2013
    He’s had a bad year. Sarah, his wife of nearly twenty five years, has walked out on him to move in with Colin. Perhaps they simply grew apart, perhaps the magic was no longer there, or perhaps, as his friend Jerry suggests, Rick has become boring. This nagging thought, together with too much beer on New Year’s Eve and shock at the sudden death of his college friend Alex, leads Rick to a New Year’s resolution… To make the most of the time he has left, and show himself and his old friend Jerry that he is not boring, he will undertake a peculiar challenge: for a whole year he will accept every invitation that comes his way. Any invitation. No excuses. No regrets.

Shark & The Wolf: Predators and Prey


Daniel D. Shields - 2011
    Escape into an exotic untamed world in this sci-fi adventure that has been called a cross between Gladiator, Planet of the Apes and The Hunger Games. In Las Vegas, Shaw, billionaire casino magnate and self proclaimed world's greatest showman, nears completion on the massive Serengeti Resort & Casino. Its amphitheater is being transformed into an authentic slice of African savanna for the show Predators and Prey which will savagely pit animal against animal in the bloodiest gladiatorial spectacle ever created for human entertainment. The only thing missing is the main attraction - which Shaw soon finds in Shark, the world's only Great White Half Man Half Shark Hybrid to be exact. Shaw envisions the show's tagline as "Come One - Come All To See - The Only Great White Shark In Captivity" but soon learns that capturing the world's top predator and delivering him to Vegas is easier said than done. This daunting task will require the cruel tactics of the evil animal slave trading hyena, Old Jack. The heartbreaking plans they devise and innocent pawns they use to try to coerce Sharks allegiance will force all to rely on primitive instincts to survive.