Book picks similar to
The Awakening by Adair Hart
science-fiction
sci-fi
space-opera
time-travel
Finder
Suzanne Palmer - 2019
He prefers the term finder.His latest job should be simple. Find the spacecraft Venetia's Sword and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. He'll slip in, decode the ship's compromised AI security, and get out of town, Sword in hand.Fergus locates both Gilger and the ship in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a gas-giant-harvesting colony called Cernee. But Fergus' arrival at the colony is anything but simple. A cable car explosion launches Cernee into civil war, and Fergus must ally with Gilger's enemies to navigate a field of space mines and a small army of hostile mercenaries. What was supposed to be a routine job evolves into negotiating a power struggle between factions. Even worse, Fergus has become increasingly--and inconveniently--invested in the lives of the locals.It doesn't help that a dangerous alien species thought mythical prove unsettlingly real, and their ominous triangle ships keep following Fergus around.Foolhardy. Eccentric. Reckless. Whatever he's called, Fergus will need all the help he can get to take back the Sword and maybe save Cernee from destruction in the process.
Containment
Christian Cantrell - 2010
Venus, being almost the same mass as Earth, is chosen over Mars as humanity’s first permanent steppingstone into the universe.Arik Ockley is part of the first generation to be born and raised off-Earth. After a puzzling accident, Arik wakes up to find that his wife is almost three months pregnant. Since the colony’s environmental systems cannot safely support any increases in population, Arik immediately resumes his work on AP, or artificial photosynthesis, in order to save the life of his unborn child. Arik’s new and frantic research uncovers startling truths about the planet, and about the distorted reality the founders of the colony have constructed for Arik’s entire generation. Everything Arik has ever known is called into question, and he must figure out the right path for himself, his wife, and his unborn daughter.
The Gemini Effect
Chuck Grossart - 2012
By dawn, only a dead city remains, eerily quiet and still, except for mutant beasts that hide from the light, multiply, and await the shadows of night to continue their relentless advance.Ordered to investigate the unfolding crisis, biowarfare specialist Carolyn Ridenour barely escapes the creatures’ nocturnal onslaught, saved in the nick of time by Colonel Garrett Hoffman, who lost hundreds of his troops to a swarm that neither bombs nor bullets can stop.As Carolyn and Garrett race to stop the plague, a battered and broken government prepares to release the fury of America’s nuclear arsenal on its own soil and its own citizens.
The Gemini Effect was originally published as The Mengele Effect. This edition has been completely edited and revised, including significant plot changes.
A Question of Will
Alex Albrinck - 2012
They burned down his house. They beat him within an inch of his life. And then they realized they had the wrong man.They should have killed him when they had the chance.Will Stark is a thirty-five-year-old self-made billionaire. He's happily married and father to a young son he adores. He's well-loved in his community for his philanthropic efforts. He lives in a beautiful home inside a private, secure community designed to provide safety for his family from those who would do them harm.His idyllic world is shattered when, despite his best efforts, men storm his community, murder his family in their home, and burn his house down. In his efforts to rush to the aid of those he loves, Will is seized, beaten, and nearly killed.And as it's happening, the men who've attacked him realize they've mistaken him for someone else.Will's rescue from certain death brings him into the midst of a battle between two factions of a secret society, one in which members learn the secrets of developing superhuman abilities. And it's a battle in which a man named Will Stark has been the focal point. Will seizes the opportunity to learn these secrets, and battle those who destroyed his family. His own rapid development, however, means he may become a target for attack of his own accord.As he builds his new life, however, Will is faced with a critical decision. Will he use his new abilities to seek out vengeance? Or will he risk everything he has to save those he holds most dear?
The Forever Watch
David B. Ramirez - 2014
According to Information Security, the missing man has simply "Retired," nothing unusual. Together they follow the trail left by the mutilated remains. Their investigation takes them through lost dataspaces and deep into the uninhabited regions of the ship, where they discover that the answer may not be as simple as a serial killer after all. What they do with that answer will determine the fate of all humanity in David Ramirez's thrilling page turner.
Bug Hunt
Isaac Hooke - 2017
Rade got his ex-military teammates together and they pooled their savings to buy a ship and six mechs. The Argonauts were born. But it wasn't easy. Ruthless bankers breathing down their necks, vengeful warlords promising to pursue them across the galaxy, and now a mysterious new client who wants Rade and his Argonauts to escort her to a frontier planet. Problem is, the new client won't reveal her cargo. It's probably something illegal. Well, Rade needs the money, so a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. They arrive to find the frontier colony strangely deserted. When the shit hits the fan and the Argonauts face a possible alien infestation, it's time to pull out the big guns. Because if there's one thing Rade and his Argonauts really love, it's a good bug hunt. And this one looks to be the hunt of a lifetime. For fans of Old Man's War, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Armor. From a USA Today bestselling author.
Echoes of Angels
Matt Larkin - 2013
Then they enslaved us. Yet five hundred years after the angels vanished, humanity continues to obey. Professor Rachel Jordan dared to defy 3000 years of angelic doctrine, teaching that the ancient angels were never the saviors they claimed to be. The Redeemers, self-appointed guardians of angelic law, branded her a heretic. Hunted by zealots who would brainwash her back into the angels’ good graces, she flees to the edge of civilized space. But not to hide. Rachel’s only hope is a fabled lost book of the Codex, written by a rogue angel: the Sefer Raziel. Tracking the book to a desolate former prison world, she delves into the criminal underworld to ferret out its location. But her search draws the ire of greedy megacorporations, shadowy puppet governments, and the zealots who chased her there in the first place. As conflicting forces close in, Rachel must rely on dangerous allies and question the limits of her moral code to be the first to claim the Sefer Raziel. Even if it kills her. Because the only fate worse than death is knowing that her failure doomed humanity to eternal servitude. Echoes of Angels is the first book of Sins of Angels, an epic space opera series set 3000 years after the fall of Earth. With the scope of Dune and the adventurous spirit of Indiana Jones, Sins of Angels delivers a conflict that spans galaxies and rests on the spirit of a single brave researcher. Follow the complete saga, and watch as the fate of our species hangs in the balance.
Marking Time
April White - 2012
a mother who mysteriously disappears, a stranger who stalks her around London, and even the noble English Grandmother who kicked Saira and her mother out of the family. But when an old graffiti tag in a tube station transports Saira to the 19th Century and she comes face-to-face with Jack the Ripper, she realizes she needs help after all. Saira meets Archer, a charming student who helps her blend in as much as a tall, modern American teen can in Victorian England. He reveals the existence of the Immortals: Time, Nature, Fate, War and Death, and explains to Saira that it is possible to move between centuries – if you are a Descendant of Time. Saira finds unexpected friendships at a boarding school for Immortal Descendants and a complicated love with a young man from the past. But time is running out for her mother, and Saira must embrace her new identity as she hides from Archer a devastating secret about his future that may cost him his life.
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.
Legacy Code
Autumn Kalquist - 2014
Beaten. Broken in more ways than one. Their descendants carry the Legacy Code—mangled genes that force them to abort half their unborn children.When Era and Dritan Corinth get placements on the safest ship in the fleet and win a chance to have a child, they feel lucky. Until the day Era's supposed to find out if her baby has the Defect, and the ship suffers a hull breach.An investigation uncovers new threats. Dangerous secrets. Lies. Treason.Era begins to question everything she’s been taught about the fleet, their search for a new Earth, and the Defect. But the answers she seeks were never meant to be found...Legacy Code is a suspenseful, dark post-apocalyptic read that has earned five star reviews from fans of books like Hunger Games, Divergent, and Red Rising, and has been compared favorably to Wool, 1984, and the new Battlestar Galactica.
Embers of War
Gareth L. Powell - 2018
Seeking to atone, she joins the House of Reclamation, an organisation dedicated to rescuing ships in distress.But, stripped of her weaponry and emptied of her officers, she struggles in the new role she’s chosen for herself. When a ship goes missing in a disputed system, Trouble Dog and her new crew of misfits and loners, captained by Sal Konstanz, an ex-captain of a medical frigate who once fought against Trouble Dog, are assigned to investigate and save whoever they can.Meanwhile, light years away, intelligence officer Ashton Childe is tasked with locating and saving the poet, Ona Sudak, who was aboard the missing ship, whatever the cost. In order to do this, he must reach out to the only person he considers a friend, even if he’s not sure she can be trusted. What Childe doesn’t know is that Sudak is not the person she appears to be.Quickly, what appears to be a straightforward rescue mission turns into something far more dangerous, as Trouble Dog, Konstanz and Childe, find themselves at the centre of a potential new conflict that could engulf not just mankind but the entire galaxy.If she is to survive and save her crew, Trouble Dog is going to have to remember how to fight.
Tracer
Rob Boffard - 2015
It's broken, rusted, falling apart. We've wrecked our planet, and now we have to live with the consequences: a new home that's dirty, overcrowded and inescapable.What's more, there's a madman hiding on the station. He's about to unleash chaos. And when he does, there'll be nowhere left to run.In space, every second counts. Who said nobody could hear you scream?
Ancestral Night
Elizabeth Bear - 2019
Haimey and her small crew run afoul of pirates at the outer limits of the Milky Way, and find themselves on the run and in possession of universe-changing information.When authorities prove corrupt, Haimey realizes that she is the only one who can protect her galaxy-spanning civilization from the implications of this ancient technology—and the revolutionaries who want to use it for terror and war. Her quest will take her careening from the event horizon of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core to the infinite, empty spaces at its edge.To save everything that matters, she will need to uncover the secrets of ancient intelligences lost to time—and her own lost secrets, which she will wish had remained hidden from her forever.
The Salvage Crew
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne - 2020
They thought wrong.An AI overseer and a human crew arrive on a distant planet to salvage an ancient UN starship. The overseer is unhappy. The crew, well, they're certainly no A-team. Not even a C-team on the best of days.And worse? Urmahon Beta, the planet, is at the ass-end of nowhere. Everybody expects this to be a long, ugly, and thankless job.Then it all goes disastrously wrong. What they thought was an uninhabited backwater turns out to be anything but empty. Megafauna roam the land, a rival crew with some terrifyingly high-powered gear haunts the dig site, and a secret that will change humanity forever is waiting in the darkness.Stuck on this unmapped, hostile planet, lacking resources, and with tech built by the cheapest bidder, the salvage crew must engineer their way to payday...and beat Urmahon Beta before it kills them all.Experience this space exploration adventure told from the perspective of a snarky artificial intelligence you won't soon forget.
Star King
Susan Grant - 2000
Are they fated mates, or is fate stacked against them? Love and war on a galactic scale.Rom B’Kah is fighting for the survival of his people. During combat he encounters a beautiful and mysterious woman who saves his life. When she vanishes without a trace, he vows to find her again. Years after battlefield trauma sends her life into a tailspin, Jas Hamilton has given up on love. When a galactic empire makes first contact with Earth, she sets out to reclaim her lost sense of adventure—and finds it in the arms of the golden-eyed alien warrior she’s spent a lifetime trying to forget.When an old enemy resurfaces, will they be forced to choose between duty and a future together? Saving the galaxy has just gotten personal…