Book picks similar to
The X-Troop by Clay Davis


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The Green Unknown: Travels in the Khasi Hills


Patrick Rogers - 2017
    The book is an attempt to express what it’s like trying to explore, mile by mile, village by village, valley by valley, a place that’s beautiful, complex, and fascinating, but most of all, unique.

Writing Steampunk!


Beth Daniels - 2011
    This is Steampunk territory. WRITING STEAMPUNK is a journey into building Steampunk fiction. It doesn't tell how to write a book -- there are other books that will do that. It doesn't talk about the Steampunk society. It focuses only on the elements that go into WRITING STEAMPUNK.There are choices to be made in regards to era, characters, and world building. And there's research to do, for knowing what was really happening in Victoria or Edward's England, the American cities or frontier, and other locations around the world, and what masterpieces inventors and scientists were building and discovering is necessary. Why? Because Steampunk is alternative history and some tinkering will need to be done.Steampunk is also fantasy. It's mystery, suspense, romance, and action-adventure. It can even be comedic or dystopian. It's all up to the writer spinning the tale.Which is what WRITING STEAMPUNK is all about. Spinning the right sort of tale.A list of Steampunk novels is included, as well as a list of publishers likely to be interested in Steampunk, a brief overview of events, discoveries and inventions of the 19th and early 20th century, and a lot of encouragement, suggestions and examples are given.Multipublished author and frequent online workshop presenter Beth Daniels (aka Beth Henderson, J.B. Dane) is your tour guide. So step into our virtual parlour, accept a cup of tea or something stronger from our clockwork maids or steam powered automaton waiters. Do open the window should you feel the need to indulge in cigars or pipes. Those of you with paranormal leanings, please refrain from considering the other guests as possible snacks.It's time to start the journey of creation right now!

Creation


Greg Chase - 2016
    So when he’s offered a job repairing a derelict spaceship’s computer, he jumps at the chance to head to the Kuiper Belt, an area at the edge of the solar system reviled for its lawlessness and tenuous ability to sustain life. But the repair proves difficult, and the pirates who hired Sam leave him to die in the computer’s core. Fortunately, the inhabitants of a utopian village rescue him and show him that human relationships can be more open and connected once Earth habits have been broken. He’s content to live the rest of his days away from Earth until he learns his work on the spaceship inadvertently created a new, all-knowing—but misguided—technology-based species. And their mistakes threaten to tear the very fabric of human interaction. Forced to leave his Garden of Eden on the terraformed planet, he takes his wife, Jess—his link to all he holds dear—and goes back to Earth to face his responsibilities. Before Sam and Jess can ever hope to return to their village, they have to teach the next generation of the new species how to change the direction of mankind for the better.

A Rancher to Trust


Laurel Blount - 2020
    When tragedy makes Dan the guardian of little orphaned twins, he and Bailey are drawn back together. But can she forgive the past and open her heart to the family she’s always wanted?

Murder Book


Frank F. Weber - 2017
    So when Mandy Baker, the alluring new girl in town, pursued him, he was easily enamored. But on the day he ended their tryst, Mandy vanished. There is no doubt in the small Minnesota town of Pierz that the flirtatious girl is dead, and there is little doubt that Jon got away with murder.A decade later, Jon is made an investigator with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. While investigating a case near his hometown, Jon quietly reopens the murder book on Mandy Baker and begins to see commonalities between Mandy's disappearance and his new case. Digging up the past raises intriguing possibilities with an old friend, Serena Bell but also forces them to work through old betrayals. As the investigation intensifies, Jon realizes he has crossed paths with the killer before.Frank Weber, a forensic psychologist, expertly examines the intricacies of investigations, victim impact, and predatory thought in his debut thriller."

The Locket Thief


Daniel Patrick - 2013
    Robbing, cheating, murdering - their airships buzz around the city like wasps around a jar of honey. One ship above all inspires terror. Its captain, Lendon Sora, has found the prey he's been stalking for a decade and is about to claim his bounty.Down on the surface, Lara DeLarose is oblivious. Bored with her life at the orphanage, she spends her time searching for new ways to cause trouble until one day she makes a discovery that sends her hurtling into the murky world of the Sky Thieves.Smuggled aboard the airship Northern Light, Lara meets Captain Vaspine, who reveals a talisman in her possession to be Sora's long-lost prize. With Sora closing in and nowhere to hide, Lara and the crew must summon all of their wits and courage if they are to survive.

Hounds of Autumn


Heather Blackwood - 2013
    Chloe Sullivan is an amateur inventor whose holiday takes a dark turn when her friend and colleague, one of the few female mechanical experts in the British Empire, is murdered.A black mechanical hound roams the moors, but could it have killed a woman? And what secrets are concealed within the dark family manor?Accompanied by her naturalist husband and her clockwork cat, Chloe is determined to see her friend’s killer found.But some secrets have a terrible cost.

Finding Beautiful: Discovering Authentic Beauty Around the World


Rebecca Friedlander - 2019
    We set impossible standards and feel bad about ourselves when we don't reach them. Is beauty truly that difficult to attain? Or could it be that our idea of what's beautiful is simply too narrow?With engaging personal stories and dramatic before-and-after photography, filmmaker Rebecca Friedlander uncovers the true beauty of 12 women from various ethnicities and backgrounds, empowering us to shatter the lies of rejection, doubt, and low self-esteem. Utilizing compelling biblical truth and questions for personal reflection, Friedlander helps us identify our own personal battlegrounds, celebrate our uniqueness, and embrace God's definition of beautiful.Anyone who loves a great makeover story or who wants to explore their unique identity will love this eye-opening book. Let's stop letting the world define beauty and start being a voice that tells the world what true beauty actually looks like.

Kate on a Hot Tin Roof


Niall Teasdale - 2015
    The product of a mad scientist of great talent, she is the fusion of man and beast only made possible but the power of the Wonder Metal, Unobtainium. When Charles Barstow-Hall’s grandfather discovered Unobtainium in Scotland, he had no idea that it would change the world, and even less idea of the extent of that change. Thirty-five years later Charles still spends much of his time cleaning up after the messes made by those with less moral fibre than himself. When he discovers Kate, a truly ungodly use of his grandfather’s discovery if ever there was one, he determines that she must be cured of her unnatural condition. But there are other men with other ideas about Kate’s future and soon Kate and Charles, together with their friend Antonia Wooster, must brave the perils of the Dark Continent to bring an end to the vile schemes of evil men.

In Dark Service


Stephen Hunt - 2014
    He's living a comfortable, quiet life, obeying the law and minding his own business while raising his son Carter ...on those occasions when he isn't having to bail him out of one scrape or another. His days of adventure are - thankfully - long behind him. Carter Carnehan is going out of his mind with boredom. He's bored by his humdrum life, frustrated that his father won't live a little, and longs for the bright lights and excitement of anywhere-but-here. He's longing for an opportunity to escape, and test himself against whatever the world has to offer. Carter is going to get his opportunity. He's caught up in a village fight, kidnapped by slavers and, before he knows it, is swept to another land. A lowly slave, surrounded by technology he doesn't understand, his wish has come true: it's him vs. the world. He can try to escape, he can try to lead his fellow slaves, or he can accept the inevitable and try to make the most of the short, brutal existence remaining to him...unless Jacob gets to him first and, no matter the odds, he intends to. No one kidnaps his son and gets away with it - and if it come to it, he'll force Kings to help him on his way, he'll fight, steal, blackmail and betray his friends in the name of bringing Carter home. Wars will be started. Empires will fall. And the Carnehan family will be reunited, one way or another...

Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western


Jonathan Fesmire - 2017
    Marshal James Creed has known loss, starting from the untimely death of his wife and daughter in a sudden fire. His work, chasing down and arresting outlaws across the Wild West, is all he has left to live for. Then one day, in 1876, the infamous killer Corwin Blake catches Creed by surprise and guns him down.Creed awakes after a mysterious young woman resurrects him in a basement laboratory beneath a brothel. Half alive, Creed feels torn between his need for justice and his desire to fall back into the peace of death. Creed's instincts drive him to protect the city of Santa Cruz, California, from the outlaws it harbors while searching for Blake. He uncovers a secret criminal organization, likely protecting Blake, determined to use resurrection technology for its own ends. The former marshal, now faster, stronger, and a more deadly shot than ever before, must work with a brothel madam, a bounty hunter, and the remaining marshals to uncover the criminal syndicate before they can misuse the machines of rebirth and create more mindless zombies. Meanwhile, he must also stop Blake, before the outlaw kills the only people he cares about. His own death can wait.

The Unnaturalists


Tiffany Trent - 2012
    Syrus Reed’s Tinker family has always served and revered the Unnaturals from afar, but when his family is captured to be refinery slaves, he finds that his fate may be bound up with Vespa’s—and with the Unnaturals.As the danger grows, Vespa and Syrus find themselves in a tightening web of deception and intrigue. At stake may be the fate of New London—and the world.

Webley and The World Machine


Zachary Paul Chopchinski - 2019
    Let the war begin.Deep in the belly of a cave lies a door to a mechanical world that will change two lives forever.Webley and the steam-powered creations of the World Machine keep the Earth turning. But, when Adal and Arija unknowingly set the gears in motion on a fierce civil war, they could destroy billions of lies. Including their own.Adal and Arija have already lost so much, they can't lose each other too. But, when they're forced to fight a creature that couldn't possibly exist, they must adapt or they'll lose the only people they have left.

Waking


Emily Thompson - 2013
    Now he's traveling on an airship--with a crew that insists they're not pirates--on his way to find the clockwork princess because he's the only one who can fix her.In true Neo-Victorian style, Clockwork Twist is set in a lush and vibrant world where things are as you might expect in 1878. That is, of course, if fantastic creatures like djinn, faeries, kitsunes and vampires were commonplace. An increasing number of people are being born with supernatural senses, called Sights. While airship tourism is sweeping the globe, air-piracy is also on the rise. Twist is among the Sighted, but his Sight is unusual. While others might be able to see and hear over great distances, find anything they can imagine anywhere in the world, or even recognize every type of flower by scent alone, Twist's Sight shows him only damage. Whenever he touches a broken clock or machine, he can instantly understand the damage and can fix it easily. If he touches a person, even for a moment, his mind fills with a terrible vision of whatever trauma or pain once broke them. Naturally, he's chosen a solitary existence and shuns all human contact. Unfortunately, thanks to his seclusion, Twist is also unfamiliar with everything beyond his own clock shop, hidden away on a quiet and ever-drizzly London street. When a treasure hunter arrives at his door with proof that they have found the fabled clockwork princess--Twist's favorite old fairy tale--it's up to Twist alone to bring her back to life. The continuing series of Clockwork Twist begins with book one: Waking. Join Twist as he embarks on his first adventure, and find out first hand if he can actually survive it.

Into the Deep


Ken Grimwood - 1994
    One part thriller, one part spiritual adventure, the exhilarating story at the heart of Into the Deep involves a hard-hitting journalist, a beautiful scientist, a globe-traveling engineer, and a venerable Portuguese fisherman. Vastly different, their lives are about to intersect and to become irrevocably changed by a school of dolphins - as the fate of the world hangs in the balance. With the drama that unfolds from a silent war waged at the sea's greatest depths and from a single, fateful discovery, Into the Deep takes a tantalizing glimpse at the optimistic future this planet might achieve if humans and the creatures of the deep could learn to share and defend its remarkable bounty.