Book picks similar to
Dark Matters by Michael Dow


science-fiction
sci-fi
scifi
thriller

The Rule of One


Ashley Saunders - 2018
    Everyone follows the Rule of One. But Ava Goodwin, daughter of the head of the Texas Family Planning Division, has a secret—one her mother died to keep and her father has helped to hide for her entire life.She has an identical twin sister, Mira.For eighteen years Ava and Mira have lived as one, trading places day after day, maintaining an interchangeable existence down to the most telling detail. But when their charade is exposed, their worst nightmare begins. Now they must leave behind the father they love and fight for their lives.Branded as traitors, hunted as fugitives, and pushed to discover just how far they’ll go in order to stay alive, Ava and Mira rush headlong into a terrifying unknown.

The Cold Between


Elizabeth Bonesteel - 2016
    She knows Trey is innocent—he was with her when Danny was killed. So who is the real killer and why are the cops framing an innocent man?While retracing Danny’s last hours, they discover that his death may be tied to a mystery from the past: the destruction of a Central Corps starship at a wormhole near Volhynia. For twenty-five years, Central Gov has been lying about the tragedy, even willing to go to war with the outlaw tribe PSI to protect their secrets.With the authorities closing in, Elena and Trey head to the wormhole, certain they’ll find answers on the other side. But the truth that awaits them is far more terrifying than they ever imagined—a conspiracy deep within Central Gov that threatens all of human civilization throughout the inhabited reaches of the galaxy . . . and beyond.

Goldilocks


Laura Lam - 2020
    The future of humanity hangs in the balance. But a team of women are preparing to save it. Even if they’ll need to steal a spaceship to do it.Despite increasing restrictions on the freedoms of women on Earth, Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the Goldilocks Zone, where conditions are just right for human habitation.The team is humanity's last hope for survival, and Valerie has gathered the best women for the mission: an ace pilot who is one of the only astronauts ever to have gone to Mars; a brilliant engineer tasked with keeping the ship fully operational; and an experienced doctor to keep the crew alive. And then there's Naomi Lovelace, Valerie's surrogate daughter and the ship's botanist, who has been waiting her whole life for an opportunity to step out of Valerie's shadow and make a difference. The problem is that they’re not the authorized crew, even if Valerie was the one to fully plan the voyage. When their mission is stolen from them, they steal the ship bound for the new planet.But when things start going wrong on board, Naomi begins to suspect that someone is concealing a terrible secret -- and realizes time for life on Earth may be running out faster than they feared . . .Goldilocks is a bold and thought-provoking new thriller for readers of The Martian and The Handmaid's Tale.

Here and Now and Then


Mike Chen - 2019
    But his current life is a far cry from his previous career…as a time-traveling secret agent from 2142.Stranded in suburban San Francisco since the 1990s after a botched mission, Kin has kept his past hidden from everyone around him, despite the increasing blackouts and memory loss affecting his time-traveler’s brain. Until one afternoon, his “rescue” team arrives—eighteen years too late.Their mission: return Kin to 2142, where he’s only been gone weeks, not years, and where another family is waiting for him. A family he can’t remember.Torn between two lives, Kin is desperate for a way to stay connected to both. But when his best efforts threaten to destroy the agency and even history itself, his daughter’s very existence is at risk. It’ll take one final trip across time to save Miranda—even if it means breaking all the rules of time travel in the process.A uniquely emotional genre-bending debut, Here and Now and Then captures the perfect balance of heart, playfulness, and imagination, offering an intimate glimpse into the crevices of a father’s heart and its capacity to stretch across both space and time to protect the people that mean the most.

The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer


Laxmi Hariharan - 2012
    Criminals run the streets of Bombay. Jam-packed with the worst degenerates. The city is a shell of the pride and joy it used to be. Ruby knows something must be done, but it isn’t until her best friend is kidnapped by the despotic Dr. Braganza that she knows that she and she alone must save city, save her best friend, save the world from total destruction. Armed only with with Vikram, a cop-turned-rogue they are about to embark on a road they may never return from.

Forager


Peter R. Stone - 2013
    Is this part of a larger plan that could spell the town's doom?Meanwhile, the last thing Ethan expects when he and his companions rescue a two-car convoy from the Skel is a Japanese teenage girl with an outlandish dress-sense, who after they take her back to Newhome, goes to great lengths to ingratiate herself into his life. But is it in gratitude for saving her life or is she seeking something more?And what a quandry she places him in, for he knows the rules, that no man is permitted to be alone with an unmarried woman. But how can he drive such a gentle soul away when she touchs his heart so deeply, even though she clearly carries the pain of a broken heart.At the same time, Newhome's police force, the Custodians, are suspicious of Ethan's foraging team's successes and are pulling out the stops to find out which member of his team has the illegal mutant ability that gives them an edge over the other teams. Should these peacekeepers discover Ethan is the mutant they seek, they will haul him away and dissect him like a frog.

Sea of Tranquility


Emily St. John Mandel
    Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.

One Way


S.J. Morden - 2018
    But the company that's been contracted to construct a new Mars base, has made promises they can't fulfill and is desperate enough to cut corners. The first thing to go is the automation . . . the next thing they'll have to deal with is the eight astronauts they'll send to Mars, when there aren't supposed to be any at all.Frank - father, architect, murderer - is recruited for the mission to Mars with the promise of a better life, along with seven of his most notorious fellow inmates. But as his crew sets to work on the red wasteland of Mars, the accidents mount up, and Frank begins to suspect they might not be accidents at all. As the list of suspect grows shorter, it's up to Frank to uncover the terrible truth before it's too late.Dr. S. J. Morden trained as a rocket scientist before becoming the author of razor-sharp, award-winning science fiction. Perfect for fans of Andy Weir's The Martian and Richard Morgan, One Way takes off like a rocket, pulling us along on a terrifying, epic ride with only one way out.

The Feed


Nick Clark Windo - 2018
    It destroys us.The Feed is everywhere. It can be accessed by anyone, at any time. Every interaction, every emotion, every image can be shared through it.Tom and Kate use The Feed, but they have resisted addiction to it. And this will serve them well when The Feed collapses.Until their six-year-old daughter, Bea, goes missing.Because how do you find someone in a world devoid of technology? And what happens when you can no longer trust that your loved ones are really who they claim to be?

The Heirs of Earth


Daniel Arenson - 2017
    Our planet is lost. We are the last humans, and we must go home. Two thousand years ago, aliens destroyed Earth. Our fleets shattered. Billions died. The last humans fled a burning planet, heading to the stars. Today we are still refugees. Hungry. Afraid. Our enemies hunt us everywhere. So we hide. On distant asteroids. In rundown space stations. In deep caves on frozen worlds. And we dream. Of green hills. Blue skies. Golden fields. We dream of Earth. And for the first time, we have hope. A few of us, just a handful of brave souls, form the Heirs of Earth. We are humans who stand tall. Who fight back. Aliens call us terrorists. The humans we save call us heroes. We have starships, weapons, and warriors. We can bring humanity home. Earth is far. We have not seen her in many generations. But we have not forgotten. Earth is our heritage. Earth is our birthright. We will return! ________ In 2016, the Earthrise series became a surprise bestseller, captivating hundreds of thousands of readers around the world. Set two thousand years later, Children of Earthrise begins a new story, one for both new readers and old fans.

Gravity


A.B. Bloom - 2016
    The world is plunging into darkness, the days growing shorter and the nights longer. Meteor showers are falling to the earth and there are some who would take advantage of the growing darkness.For sixteen-year-old Bronte Bell, her problems are closer to home. Since her birthday she's become weaker, her bones breaking, her hair falling out and plagued with constant migraines. No one can explain why. Until a mysterious new boy arrives and tells her that everything is not as it seems. She is not what she seems.Drawn into a war that divides the sky, Bronte is torn between her desire to save the world and her growing connection with Nick. But she will have to let go of reality as she knows it, if she is to accept her role in destiny before the Hunter, who has been tracking her since birth, finds and destroys any chance she has of making the choice which is her birthright to make.Her destiny will change everything . . .

Emily Eternal


M.G. Wheaton - 2019
    That is, until she finds a potential answer buried deep in the human genome. But before her solution can be tested, her lab is brutally attacked, and Emily is forced to go on the run with two human companions - college student Jason and small-town Sheriff, Mayra.As the sun's death draws near, Emily and her friends must race against time to save humanity. But before long it becomes clear that it's not only the species at stake, but also that which makes us most human.

Tainted


Alexandra Moody - 2014
    All she has ever known are the artificial confines of underground fallout shelter, the ARC. Under the Council’s rule, ruthless officials roam the hallways, community comes first and everyone lives in fear of failing their annual testing. With one simple blood test you could be taken away without any warning or a word of goodbye.There are only a few people in the ARC who Elle truly cares about and she desperately tries to keep them at arm’s length away for fear of losing someone else. Especially, her best friend Sebastian who she denies her feelings for, even from herself. Chilling secrets and mysterious disappearances plague the ARC, but Elle would never dare to voice the forbidden questions that linger on her lips. That is until they take the wrong person.No one is truly safe in the ARC and Elle is about to experience her own personal apocalypse. With nothing left to lose she will risk everything to uncover the truth about the tainted.Will she find what she's looking for or are some secrets better left buried deep underground?Don't miss the first book in this young adult series!

The Similars


Rebecca Hanover - 2019
    Who are these six clones? What are the odds that all of them would be Darkwood students? Who is the madman who broke the law to create them? Emma couldn't care less. Her best friend, Oliver, died over the summer and all she can think about is how to get through her junior year without him. Then she comes face-to-heartbreaking-face with Levi—Oliver's exact DNA replica and one of the Similars.Emma wants nothing to do with the Similars, but she keeps getting pulled deeper and deeper into their clique, uncovering dark truths about the clones and her prestigious school along the way. But no one can be trusted…not even the boy she is falling for who has Oliver's face.

The Apocalypse Seven


Gene Doucette - 2021
    Not with a bang, but a whatever.The whateverpocalypse. That’s what Touré, a twenty-something Cambridge coder, calls it after waking up one morning to find himself seemingly the only person left in the city. Once he finds Robbie and Carol, two equally disoriented Harvard freshmen, he realizes he isn’t alone, but the name sticks: Whateverpocalypse. But it doesn’t explain where everyone went. It doesn’t explain how the city became overgrown with vegetation in the space of a night. Or how wild animals with no fear of humans came to roam the streets.Add freakish weather to the mix, swings of temperature that spawn tornadoes one minute and snowstorms the next, and it seems things can’t get much weirder. Yet even as a handful of new survivors appear—Paul, a preacher as quick with a gun as a Bible verse; Win, a young professional with a horse; Bethany, a thirteen-year-old juvenile delinquent; and Ananda, an MIT astrophysics adjunct—life in Cambridge, Massachusetts gets stranger and stranger.The self-styled Apocalypse Seven are tired of questions with no answers. Tired of being hunted by things seen and unseen. Now, armed with curiosity, desperation, a shotgun, and a bow, they become the hunters. And that’s when things truly get weird.