Book picks similar to
Ill Wind by Karen Perkins


pirates
historical-fiction
adventure
historical

XBestia


Melissa Conway - 2011
    Grafts of animal skin have replaced tattoos in popularity, which gives rise to a unique new demographic: xenofreaks. Bryn Vega's father is head of the Pure Human Society and when she's kidnapped by the Bestia Butcher, the most notorious of the criminal xenosurgeons, she assumes it's payback for her father's anti-xeno activities. Scott Harding is her taciturn jailer-called Cougar because of the claws replacing his fingers-but Scott is not who he seems. Deep under cover for the Xenofreak Intelligence Agency, he's been given unprecedented immunity to find the Bestia Butcher's lair and do whatever it takes to bring him to justice. When Bryn is forced to undergo a radical xenoalteration, she discovers a terrible secret: her father is using The Pure Human Society as a front for his own purposes. His willingness to sacrifice his daughter to accomplish them sends her running to Scott for protection, and into the hard-core underground subculture of the very xenofreak society she once despised. Winner, 2012 Global eBook Awards in the category of Speculative Fiction - Science Fiction.

The Grotto's Secret


Paula Wynne - 2016
    A TV show host who stands to lose everything.Castile de Granada, 1492: Risking her life, Spanish author Ana-María de Carbonela vowed to keep an unknown yet powerful healing herb’s location hidden. It remained a secret …Until now.TV show host Kelby Wade is forced into the search when her niece is targeted by the relentless assassin who killed her brother. She is pursued on a perilous quest, from a grotto in rural Andalusia to a bizarre hospital in Surrey, to uncover the mystery found between crumbling sheets of parchment in the ruins of a rural Spanish farm. In a race against a conspiracy who want the herb’s power, she struggles to piece together the puzzle and follow the trail her brother left to trace the mysterious plant before the deadly conspirators locate it. It’s only a matter of time before the ancient secret gets exposed ...

The Assassin's Curse


Cassandra Rose Clarke - 2012
    But that only prompts the scorned clan to send an assassin after her. When Ananna faces him down one night, armed with magic she doesn't really know how to use, she accidentally activates a curse binding them together.

The Tournament


Matthew Reilly - 2013
    Under its charismatic Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, it is an empire on the rise. It has defeated Christian fleets. It has conquered Christian cities.Then the Sultan sends out an invitation to every king in Europe: send forth your champion to compete in a tournament unlike any other.We follow the English delegation, selected by King Henry VIII himself, to the glittering city of Constantinople, where the most amazing tournament ever staged will take place.But when the stakes are this high, not everyone plays fair, and for our team of plucky English heroes, winning may not be the primary goal. As a series of barbaric murders take place, a more immediate goal might simply be staying alive…

Jesse James and the Secret Legend of Captain Coytus


Alex Mueck - 2013
    When a Harvard history professor receives a thesis paper titled Jesse James and the Secret Legend of Captain Coytus, from Ulysses Hercules Baxter-an underwhelming student-he assumes the paper must be a prank. He has never read such maniacal balderdash in his life. But after he calls a meeting with the student, Professor Gladstone is dismayed when Baxter declares the work is his own. As he takes a very unwilling Professor Gladstone back in time via his thesis, Baxter's grade hangs in the balance as he attempts to prove his theory. It is 1864 as philanderer and crusader Captain Coytus embarks on a mission to avenge his father's death and infiltrates the Confederate Bushwacker posse looking for the man responsible, Jesse Woodson James. Accompanied by the woman of his dreams, Coytus soon finds himself temporarily appointed to be the sheriff of Booneville and commissions his less-than-loyal deputy to help him carry out his plan. But when tragedy strikes, the Captain is forced to change his immature ways and redefine his lofty mission-more or less.

Autumn


David Moody - 2001
    After 99% of the population of the planet is killed in less than 24 hours, for the very few who have managed to stay alive, things are about to get much worse. Animated by phase two of some unknown contagion, the dead begin to rise. At first slow, blind, dumb and lumbering, quickly the bodies regain their most basic senses and abilities... sight, hearing, locomotion... As well as the instinct toward aggression and violence. Held back only by the restraints of their rapidly decomposing flesh, the dead seem to have only one single goal - to lumber forth and destroy the sole remaining attraction in the silent, lifeless world: those who have survived the plague, who now find themselves outnumbered 1,000,000 to 1...Without ever using the 'Z' word, Autumn offers a new perspective on the traditional zombie story. There's no flesh eating, no fast-moving corpses, no gore for gore's sake. Combining the atmosphere and tone of George Romero's classic living dead films with the attitude and awareness of 28 Days (and Weeks) later, this horrifying and suspenseful novel is filled with relentless cold, dark fear.

The Landing


Colin Taber - 2013
    There, after tests, adventures and challenges, he will leave a legacy that will grow to become the strongest nation the world has ever seen.The Landing is the first book in The United States of Vinland series and is an alternate history that begins the saga with the establishment of the first Markland halls.Welcome to Norse America.

No Way Home: A Time Travel Novel of Adventure and Survival


Christy Cooper-Burnett - 2020
    When she gets up for the day, her plan is simple: wake up and head off to work, traveling back in time to 1867, Oklahoma to deport a cyber-criminal. After work it's back to 2070, Los Angeles to prepare for a vacation with her son, Michael.That's the plan.Then the system fails, leaving Christine and dozens of other transporter trapped in the past with no supplies and minimal training.What starts as a bad situation only gets worse when she is flung even further away to a place in time where her actions and decisions mean so much more to the world than whether or not she ever gets back home again.As her goals shift from simply getting home to something much more dire to all of humanity, Christine must make the choice between what it easy and what is right. Even if it costs her everything--including her one chance of ever getting home.

Bloodline


Eric J. Gates - 2012
    Amy Bree’s reckless actions result in death and her dismissal from the FBI.A visit from a mysterious priest propels her back into the fray, as she is partnered with an ex-spy, with fearsome computer skills, and tasked to hunt down and kill the serial killer known as the Blood Sucker.Their quarry is not what they expect: old, very old, and needs blood to survive.The body count rises… and the hunters become the hunted!

Drachen


Brendan Le Grange - 2015
    A psychopath with mother issues. A hitman who hates failure. A soldier with a point to prove. And a treasure that tests every allegiance.Brett Rivera has spent three years searching for the Drachen. The day she finds it is the day her life changes: there is no sign of its legendary treasure and now a cold-blooded killer is hunting her. What does he know that she doesn’t?Brett is chased in Finland, double-crossed in Tallinn, abducted in Lübeck, and shot at in Bremen as this action-packed thriller dashes across northern Europe, barely pausing for breath.A shipwreck. A lost treasure. A hell of a race from one to the other.Readers' Favorite give it 5 stars, calling it an "enthralling adventure tale filled with secret passageways, puzzles, codes and clues."

The Spider and the Sparrow


A.L. Sowards - 2016
    After tragedy strikes during the Second Battle of Artois, Frenchman Julian Olivier will do anything to get out of the trenches. So when British Intelligence recruits him to spy behind enemy lines, he jumps at the opportunity. Just before he begins, however, he has a chance encounter with a young French woman who leaves his heart marked for the remainder of the war—even if he doesn’t know her name.Warren Flynn is a Canadian airborne hero, and dogfights with the Germans are all in a day’s work. Second only to his love of flying is his fascination with Claire Donovan, the daughter of an American munitions manufacturer living in Paris. Warren flies Julian into Germany and soon receives orders to post the Allies’ newest operative—an attractive peasant woman named Evette—in Claire’s home.As a dangerous ring of spies and saboteurs threatens to turn the war against the Allies, Julian discovers goodness in his enemies’ hearts. But even if he survives, will he ever be reunited with the woman whose memory he can’t erase? Will Warren survive the war, and will Evette unearth the infiltrator in her own territory before it’s too late?

The Pursuit of William Abbey


Claire North - 2019
    A young and naive English doctor by the name of William Abbey witnesses the lynching of a local boy by the white colonists. As the child dies, his mother curses William.William begins to understand what the curse means when the shadow of the dead boy starts following him across the world. It never stops, never rests. It can cross oceans and mountains. And if it catches him, the person he loves most in the world will die.

The Moonstone


Nikki Broadwell - 2012
    So why is this woman standing on her stoop claiming to be just that? Catriona arrives bearing a gift—a luminous moonstone that holds the secrets to Finna’s heritage. What heritage? Catriona insists that the two of them must journey to the castle of the Celtic moon goddess, Arianrhod.The story Catriona weaves is preposterous. A parallel reality, known as the ‘Otherworld’, exists next to this one. “The moonstone will show the way,” Catriona intones cryptically.Newly pregnant Finna is naturally skeptical, but Catriona is uncannily persuasive, convincing her despite her misgivings.What a trip through this alternate reality really means, and the secrets Catriona reveals about their family and the baby Finna carries, have Finna questioning everything she has ever known. With her life and that of her unborn child in jeopardy, Finna must find a way to survive.

The Girl in the Steel Corset


Kady Cross - 2011
    except the "thing" inside her.When a young lord tries to take advantage of Finley, she fights back. And wins. But no normal Victorian girl has a darker side that makes her capable of knocking out a full-grown man with one punch...Only Griffin King sees the magical darkness inside her that says she's special, says she's one of them. The orphaned duke takes her in from the gaslit streets against the wishes of his band of misfits: Emily, who has her own special abilities and an unrequited love for Sam, who is part robot; and Jasper, an American cowboy with a shadowy secret.Griffin's investigating a criminal called The Machinist, the mastermind behind several recent crimes by automatons. Finley thinks she can help and finally be a part of something, finally fit in.But The Machinist wants to tear Griff's little company of strays apart, and it isn't long before trust is tested on all sides. At least Finley knows whose side she's on even if it seems no one believes her.

V Games


Caroline Peckham - 2017
    But with her stepfather's blood fresh on her hands, she finds herself walking into an eight by six prison cell where she'll live out the next twenty five years of her life.Or so she thought...When a man as beautiful as he is terrifying walks into the prison, Selena is the only one seemingly unaffected by his charms. But Varick's impossibly dark eyes are trained on her and her alone, frightening Selena of what his presence forewarns. It's not long before she finds out as she wakes on a ship in the dead of night, a captive of the forbidding Varick who seems more beast than man.But when she arrives at a barren and isolated island in the stormy north sea, she soon realises that the obnoxious Varick may be her only hope of survival. Because, in a place where polar night reigns for the next six months, a powerful and cruel family are about to start this year's season of the V Games. And Selena is marked to participate in the blood sport, hunted by ravenous vampires and surviving the harsh terrain of the bleak island. And, not only that, but Selena just became the highest bid on contestant in a century...Find out why in Book 1 of the V Games Trilogy - 0.99 release price for a limited time only!