Book picks similar to
Boneland by Jeffrey Thomas
horror
ebooks
fiction
alternate-history
The Sky People
S.M. Stirling - 2001
Set in a countryside swarming with sabertooths and dinosaurs, Jamestown is home to a small band of American and allied scientist-adventurers.But there are flies in this ointment - and not only the Venusian dragonflies, with their yard-wide wings. The biologists studying Venus's life are puzzled by the way it not only resembles that on Earth, but is virtually identical to it. The EastBloc has its own base at Cosmograd, in the highlands to the south, and relations are frosty. And attractive young geologist Cynthia Whitlock seems impervious to Marc's Cajun charm.Meanwhile, at the western end of the continent, Teesa of the Cloud Mountain People leads her tribe in a conflict with the Neanderthal-like beastmen who have seized her folk's sacred caves. Then an EastBloc shuttle crashes nearby, and the beastmen acquire new knowledge… and AK47's.Jamestown sends its long-range blimp to rescue the downed EastBloc cosmonauts, little suspecting that the answer to the jungle planet's mysteries may lie there, among tribal conflicts and traces of a power that made Earth's vaunted science seem as primitive as the tribesfolk's blowguns. As if that weren't enough, there's an enemy agent on board the airship…
Season Of The Harvest
Michael R. Hicks - 2011
The group’s leader, Naomi Perrault, is a beautiful geneticist who Jack believes conspired to kill his friend, and is claiming that a major international conglomerate developing genetically engineered crops is plotting a sinister transformation of our world that will lead humanity to extinction. As Jack is drawn into a quietly raging war that suddenly explodes onto the front pages of the news, he discovers that her claims may not be so outrageous after all. Together, the two of them must battle a horror Jack could never have imagined, with the fate of all life on Earth hanging in the balance…
Prime Directive
Judith Reeves-Stevens - 1991
Its most honored captain is in disgrace, its most celebrated starship in pieces, and the crew of that ship scattered among the thousand worlds of the Federation... Thus begins Prime Directive, an epic tale of the Star Trek universe. Following in the bestselling tradition of Spock's World and The Lost Years, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens have crafted a thrilling tale of mystery and wonder, a novel that takes the Star Trek characters from the depths of despair into an electrifying new adventure that spans the galaxy. Journey with Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the former crew of the Starship Enterprise to Talin—the planet where their careers ended. A world once teeming with life that now lies ruined, its cities turned to ashes, its surface devastated by a radioactive firestorm—because of their actions. There, they must find out how—and why—this tragedy occurred and discover what has become of their captain.
Brasyl
Ian McDonald - 2007
Past, present, and future Brazil, with all its color, passion, and shifting realities, come together in a novel that is part SF, part history, part mystery, and entirely enthralling.Three separate stories follow three main characters:--Edson is a self-made talent impressario one step up from the slums in a near future São Paulo of astonishing riches and poverty. A chance encounter draws Edson into the dangerous world of illegal quantum computing, but where can you run in a total surveillance society where every move, face, and centavo is constantly tracked?--Marcelina is an ambitious Rio TV producer looking for that big reality TV hit to make her name. When her hot idea leads her on the track of a disgraced World Cup soccer goalkeeper, she becomes enmeshed in an ancient conspiracy that threatens not just her life, but her very soul. --Father Luis is a Jesuit missionary sent into the maelstrom of 18th-century Brazil to locate and punish a rogue priest who has strayed beyond the articles of his faith and set up a vast empire in the hinterland. In the company of a French geographer and spy, what he finds in the backwaters of the Amazon tries both his faith and the nature of reality itself to the breaking point.Three characters, three stories, three Brazils, all linked together across time, space, and reality in a hugely ambitious story that will challenge the way you think about everything.
The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters
Gordon Dahlquist - 2006
But for Miss Temple, Roger Bascombe’s cruel rejection will ignite a harrowing quest for answers, plunging her into a mystery as dizzying as a hall of mirrors—and a remote estate where danger abounds and all inhibitions are stripped bare.Nothing could have prepared Miss Temple for where her pursuit of Roger Bascombe would take her—or for the shocking things she would find behind the closed doors of forbidding Harschmort Manor: men and women in provocative disguise, acts of licentiousness and violence, heroism and awakening. But she will also find two allies: Cardinal Chang, a brutal assassin with the heart of a poet, and a royal doctor named Svenson, at once fumbling and heroic—both of whom, like her, lost someone at Harschmort Manor. As the unlikely trio search for answers—hurtling them from elegant brothels to gaslit alleyways to shocking moments of self-discovery-- they are confronted by puzzles within puzzles. And the closer they get to the truth, the more their lives are in danger. For the conspiracy they face—an astonishing alchemy of science, perverted religion, and lust for power—is so terrifying as to be beyond belief.
Paul of Dune
Brian Herbert - 2008
Herbert's next Dune book, Dune Messiah, picked up the story several years later after Paul's armies had conquered the galaxy. But what happened between Dune and Dune Messiah? How did Paul create his empire and become the Messiah? Following in the footsteps of Frank Herbert, New York Times bestselling authors Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are answering these questions in Paul of Dune.The Muad'Dib's jihad is in full swing. His warrior legions march from victory to victory. But beneath the joy of victory there are dangerous undercurrents. Paul, like nearly every great conqueror, has enemies--those who would betray him to steal the awesome power he commands. . . .And Paul himself begins to have doubts: Is the jihad getting out of his control? Has he created anarchy? Has he been betrayed by those he loves and trusts the most? And most of all, he wonders: Am I going mad?Paul of Dune is a novel everyone will want to read and no one will be able to forget.
Shadows on the Sun
Michael Jan Friedman - 1993
Leonard McCoy thought he had it all. But when the woman he loved betrayed him, McCoy fled to Starfleet, hoping to lose his pain in the depths of space. Now, more than forty years later, the "Enterprise"TM and her crew are ordered to transport a group of mediators to the planet Ssan, a world where assassination is a time-honored tradition, and McCoy is surprised to learn that his ex-wife, now remarried, is one of the mediators. And before he can come to terms with his conflicted feelings for his former love, she and Captain Kirk are trapped on Susan, and McCoy is caught in an explosive civil war, the only one with the power to save the woman who once nearly destroyed him.
The SF Collection
Richard K. Morgan - 2013
Dick award and was optioned by Hollywood. He followed this up with two further novels continuing the adventures of Takeshi Kovacs - BROKEN ANGELS and WOKEN FURIES. He also wrote two further standalone SF novels, MARKET FORCES and BLACK MAN (which won the Arthur C. Clarke award).All five of these novels are collected here as the perfect introduction to Richard's work, or a welcome reminder of his power as a writer. Richard has also written two computer games (CRYSIS 2 and SYNDICATE), comics for MARVEL and is currently working on a fantasy trilogy comprising OF THE STEEL REMAINS, THE COLD COMMANDS, THE DARK DEFILES.
Glimpses
Lewis Shiner - 1993
Veteran of failed garage bands, he works as a repairman of stereo equipment, tending the dying embers of his marriage, and dreaming of bygone days and the music that almost was. When he finds the music he dreams of has been mysteriously recorded by his tape deck, Ray is drawn into the past, to revisit the histories of Hendrix, Morrison, and the Beatles...along with the history of Ray Shackleford. Vividly recreating a lost era that might have been, Glimpses fuses the hopes and dreams in the music with a powerful vision of reality.
The Four Worlds of Bertie Cavendish
R.R. Haywood - 2021
The Undead. A Town Called Discovery and The Worldship Humility.A virtual reality.A fleet of spaceships.A shimmering blue door.A virus unleased upon the planet.Four worlds that do not co-habit the same time and space.But things are never quite as they seem…*This book is intended for existing fans of the series, The Undead, Extracted, A Town Called Discovery and The Worldship Humility, and as such, it may not appeal to new readers who have not read those series.
Innocents Lost
Michael McBride - 2010
Her father, FBI Special Agent Phil Preston of the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team, devotes his life to finding her and discovers a pattern in a recent string of abductions. Dr. Les Grant leads a group of graduate students into the Wyoming wilderness in search of an unidentified Native American medicine wheel photographed by an anonymous hiker. Instead, they stumble upon a macabre tableau of suffering. Fremont County Sheriff Keith Dandridge finds himself right at the heart of the mystery when twenty-seven bodies are disinterred in the Wind River Range at the westernmost edge of his jurisdiction, with the promise of more to come. All the while, an unknown evil is summoning the men to its killing grounds, where the remains of the lost innocents are left to rot...and a fate far worse than death awaits them.
The Ultimax Man
Keith Laumer - 1978
Once in command of his new abilities, Dammy promptly commandeers Xorialle's ship & sets out to track down the "Galactic Concensus" in the neighborhood of Deneb. The closer he gets, the more bewildering his discoveries about the origin of the whole adventure--the most curious pieces of the puzzle being a mild-mannered, bee-like creature by the name of Floss & a telepathic protohominid called Sport. Laumer, who can develop a science-fiction idea with some ingenuity (Bolo, 1976), never finds the right tone or style for this one; most events coast along in a fog of adolescent facetiousness that doesn't match the overall ambitions of the plot.--Kirkus
The Biofab War
Stephen Ames Berry - 1984
Invaded by biofabs—the Scotar—a diabolically crafted life form dedicated to turning mankind into either supper or shuffling brainwipes.Cold and miserable on old Cape Cod, ex-CIA officer John Harrison and his lovely, handle-with-care Israeli partner Zahava stumble upon a Scotar nest. Going down before a wave of alien warriors, the pair is saved, flitted to the deck of the battle cruiser Implacable. But even with that ancient, mighty starship at its side, Earth’s survival hangs in the balance as Scotar reinforcements pour in and the fighting rages.And then there are the mindslaves. About the AuthorStephen Ames Berry’s novels have been published by Ace/Berkley and Tor/Macmillan. His latest novel is the technothriller The Eldridge Conspiracy. The Biofab War is the first of four novels that begin with a covert alien attempt to control Earth and end with the battered forces of galactic humanity battling hopeless odds as an AI armada sweeps in. (AIs--Artificial Intelligences--cyborgs evolved over vast time from simple machines to complex beings driven by the simple need to kill us all.) The books follow the crew of the Kronarin Fleet battleship Implacable and their Terran allies, from the discovery of biofabs on Earth through ever-growing confrontations and nefarious alien machinations to the final battle. The plot line’s akin to a nesting doll, each crisis revealing an even deadlier one. The blaster fire never stops--save for the occasional soothing cup of t'ata from Implacable's dodgy beveragers. (Implacable's a resurrected Imperial warship that sometimes chaffs at having been roused and pressed into the service of such rude hands.) To be bested along the way are space pirates, mindslavers, various machine intelligences, a vile alternate Earth, the undying hand of the dead Kronarin Empire, a ubiquitous insectoid-blonde and, of course, biofabs. All stirred into a rich bouillabaisse of an adventure that takes the reader on a far flung quest into the fantastic, but where in the end the old verities of valor and friendship trump all.
Alice Isn't Well
Amy Cross - 2015
The problem is, this one came crashing down to earth." Ten years ago, Alice Warner was attacked and disfigured by an attacker in her own home. She remembers nothing of the attack, and she has been in a psychiatric hospital ever since. When she's finally released, however, she starts working as a security guard at an abandoned shopping mall. And that's when she starts to realize that something is haunting her, keeping just one step out of sight at all times... Meanwhile, seventy years earlier, a little girl named Wendy is left orphaned after a World War 2 fighter plane crashes onto her house. Taken to a monastery, Wendy is quickly singled out by the nuns for special attention. They say she has been possessed by a demon, and that there's only one way to save her soul. Fortunately for Wendy, however, there's someone else who seems to know far more about the situation. What is the shocking connection between Alice and Wendy, reaching out across the years? Does a demon really lurk in the girl's soul? And who is Hannah, the mysterious figure who tries to help Wendy, and who seventy years later begins to make her influence felt in Alice's life too? Alice Isn't Well is the first book in the Death Herself series, about a dark figure who arrives in the night, promising to help deal with the forces of evil whenever they appear.
Operation Chaos
Poul Anderson - 1971
In a war waged against black magic, a werewolf and his witch wife are called upon to neutralize an enemy's ultimate weapon--the world's most powerful demon.Set in a fantasy alternate history United States where magic and technology combine. Werewolfery is not only hereditary, but a recessive gene, and the polarized component of moonlight has been isolated, so that the hero can use a Were-flash to transform without the full moon.