Book picks similar to
Trang by Mary Sisson


sci-fi
science-fiction
scifi
ebook

Scion of Conquered Earth


Michael J. Allen - 2016
    Fighters bombard the ruins. Monsters hunt the wastes – some humans serving the Welorin in order to indulge their petty cruelties. The last free survivors struggle against starvation and capture. It’s a world where friendship costs too dearly and heroics verge on suicide.One young man simply can’t resist either. Welorin torture machines ravage his world, filling it with literal nightmares. Cannibalistic aerobics instructors hunt him and snatcher teams dog his every step. Alaric attempts one rescue after another, hoping someone might possess keys to unlock memories stolen by the initial assault.An aborted rescue lands him in a three way fight between Welorin forces and interstellar raiders. He takes cover in the pirates’ ship, coercing its AI, Cassii, into helping him. Success comes with unexpected consequence as Cassii abandons her crew, his friends and Earth’s solar system.Cassii refuses to return to Earth, decrying her former captain’s despoiling of the ship’s weapons and armor. Alaric leverages goods stolen from Earth by Cassii’s former crew into a bid at privateering. Surrounded by tech he barely understands and exotic life forms, he’s easy prey for the Protectorate’s mercenary population.Escort Captain Manc Shepherd and the sultry pirate Tyne Ren – Manc’s onetime partner – manipulate, exploit and seduce him across the stars. Alaric’s perilous heroics complicate their tug-of-war, endangering both and Alaric’s ship – their intended prize.Alaric must decide who he is, what he holds dear and how far he’ll go to protect both. He must choose who to trust: his mentor, his temptress or his smitten ship’s AI. The right choice could save worlds. The wrong one could throw him into a desperate battle to save thousands from his betrayer at the cost of his truest friend.

Who Goes There?


John W. Campbell Jr. - 1938
    Campbell classic about an antarctic research camp that discovers and thaws the ancient, frozen body of a crash-landed alien. The creature revives with terrifying results, shape-shifting to assume the exact form of animal and man, alike. Paranoia ensues as a band of frightened men work to discern friend from foe, and destroy the menace before it challenges all of humanity! The story, hailed as "one of the finest science fiction novellas ever written" by the SF Writers of America, is best known to fans as THE THING, as it was the basis of Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World in 1951, and John Carpenter's The Thing in 1982. With a new Introduction by William F. Nolan, author of Logan's Run, and his never-before-published, suspenseful Screen Treatment written for Universal Studios in 1978, this is a must-have edition for scifi and horror fans!

Revenge of the Taken


Shane Scollins - 2012
    It's a power that may be as limitless as his imagination, if he could only learn how to control it. Waging a clandestine war in the shadows of the New York City underground, Humble has taken on an unassuming drug research facility, abducting women for nefarious mind control experiments. They're powerful, corrupt, and have perfected a brain-altering narcotic like the world has never seen. Beautiful and spunky Kat Carson is the latest victim. Taken from her comfortable suburban life, she represents a tipping point in the ongoing battle, but all she wants is her life back. With the help of Humble and a small band of refugees, she has a fighting chance. Even with the best plans, things can go horribly wrong. Unthinkable betrayal derails their efforts and backs them into a corner. But, that is the one place you don't want to put Humble Walker.

The Annihilation of Foreverland


Tony Bertauski - 2011
    Before they can go home, they will visit Foreverland, an alternate reality that will heal their minds.Reed dreams of a girl that tells him to resist Foreverland. He doesn’t remember her name, but knows he once loved her. He’ll have to endure great suffering and trust his dream. And trust he’s not insane.Danny Boy, the new arrival, meets Reed’s dream girl inside Foreverland. She’s stuck in the fantasy land that no kid can resist. Where every heart’s desire is satisfied. Why should anyone care how Foreverland works?

Sky Hunter


Chris Reher - 2013
    The difference between the well-ordered Union air fields and this dusty garrison is made painfully clear when she runs afoul a brutal commander of ground troops.Her assignment takes her from the midst of a bloody uprising to the elegant new space station where she hopes to train for her Hunter Class pilot grade. But not all runs according to protocol and she soon suspects that more than farming is being done up there. When she uncovers the treacherous and illicit schemes taking place, it seems that local riots are the least of their troubles.

The Breeders


Katie French - 2012
    When Riley was born, her mother escaped the Breeders, the group of doctors using cruel experiments to bolster the dwindling human race. Her parents do everything possible to keep her from their clutches-- moving from one desolate farm after another to escape the Breeders' long reach. The Breeders control everything- the local war lords, the remaining factories, the fuel. They have unchecked power in this lawless society. And they're hunting Riley.When the local Sheriff abducts the adult members of her family and hands her mother over to the Breeders, Riley and her eight-year-old brother, Ethan, hiding in a shelter, are left to starve. Then Clay arrives, the handsome gunslinger who seems determined to help to make up for past sins. The problem is Clay thinks Riley is a bender-- a genderless mutation, neither male nor female. As Riley's affection for Clay grows she wonders can she trust Clay with her secret and risk her freedom?The three embark on a journey across the scarred remains of New Mexico-- escaping the Riders who use human sacrifice to appease their Good Mother, various men scrambling for luck, and a deranged lone survivor of a plague. When Riley is shot and forced into the Breeder's hospital, she learns the horrible fate of her mother—a fate she'll share unless she can find a way out.

Discovery


Nate Johnson - 2017
     Machinist Mate Nick Barns goes from ship’s mechanic, to bodyguard, to Mission Leader. His only job, keep everyone alive until they are rescued. A task, the primitive Eundai are determined to make difficult. Xeno-sociologist Amanda Rogers' dreams have come true. Humans have finally found an intelligent species. They may be primitives, barely out of their own bronze age. The last thing these Eundai need is to be overwhelmed with human technology. History is filled with examples of primitive cultures being ruined after initial contact. It is her job to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Stray


Andrea K. Höst - 2011
    Surrounded by the wrong sort of trees, and animals never featured in any nature documentary, Cass is only sure of one thing: alone, she will be lucky to survive. The sprawl of abandoned blockish buildings Cass discovers offers her only more puzzles. Where are the people? What is the intoxicating mist which drifts off the buildings in the moonlight? And why does she feel like she's being watched? Increasingly unnerved, Cass is overjoyed at the arrival of the formidable Setari. Whisked to a world as technologically advanced as the first was primitive, where nanotech computers are grown inside people's skulls, and few have any interest in venturing outside the enormous whitestone cities, Cass finds herself processed as a 'stray', a refugee displaced by the gates torn between worlds. Struggling with an unfamiliar language and culture, she must adapt to virtual classrooms, friends who can teleport, and the ingrained attitude that strays are backward and slow. Can Cass ever find her way home? And after the people of her new world discover her unexpected value, will they be willing to let her leave?

Brainrush


Richard Bard - 2010
     Before he slid into the MRI machine, Jake Bronson was just an ordinary guy with terminal cancer. But when an earthquake hits during the procedure, Jake staggers from the wreckage a profoundly changed man, now endowed with uncanny mental abilities. An ocean away, Luciano Battista wants a piece of Jake's talent. Posing as a pioneering scientist, the terrorist leader has been conducting cerebral-implant experiments in a sinister quest to create a breed of super jihadist agents...and Jake's altered brain may be the key to his success. But Jake refuses to play the pawn in an unholy war--and when an innocent woman and autistic child are taken hostage to force his cooperation, he embarks on a jihad of his own. Jake and his band of loyal friends are thrust into a deadly chase that leads from the canals of Venice through Monte Carlo and finally to an ancient cavern in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan--where Jake discovers that his newfound talents carry a hidden price that threatens the entire human race.

Genesis Earth


Joe Vasicek - 2011
    He only studied planetology to satisfy his parents, two of humanity's most brilliant scientists. But when they open a wormhole to an alien planet—one emitting a signal that can only be a sign of intelligent life—he soon becomes caught up in the mission to explore it. His sole mission partner, Terra, doesn't care nearly as much about the science as he does, though. The child of a bitter divorce, she sees the mission as a chance to escape from the expectations of others. Before they can work out their differences, a mysterious alien ship begins to hunt them down. Alone, twenty light-years from the nearest human being, they must learn to open up and trust each other—but how can they do that when they can't even agree why they're there? As Michael struggles to keep the mission from falling apart, he is forced to reexamine his deepest, most unquestioned beliefs about the universe—and about what it means to be human. GENESIS EARTH is a 70,000 word (200-250 page) Young Adult Science Fiction novel.

Star Frontier


Hamish Spiers - 2013
    with everyone.Corinthe, the minister of security, has been granted emergency powers in response to an external military threat and has initiated a campaign to strengthen the Federation by annexing independent worlds along its borders. The problem though is that there is no such threat. The members of the Frontier resistance movement know it, the commander of the Federation's navy knows it and so do the crew of the Lady Hawk, who have no idea what they're about to be swept up in.Meanwhile, independent worlds along the Frontier are being swallowed up under Corinthe's policy of aggressive expansion and things are about to reach a boiling point...

The Engines of God


Jack McDevitt - 1994
    Now, as faster-than-light drive opens the stars to exploration, humans are finding other relics of the race they call the Monument-Makers - each different, and each heartbreakingly beautiful. But except for a set of footprints on Jupiter's moon Iapetus, there is no trace of the enigmatic race that has left them behind. Then a team of scientists working on a dead world discover an ominous new image of the Monument-Makers. Somehow it all fits with other lost civilizations, and possibly with Earth's own future. And distant past. But Earth itself is on the brink of ecological disaster - there is no time to search for answers. Even to a question that may hold the key to survival for the entire human race...

Watchers


S.T. Boston - 2013
    The following day US President John Remy is found dead of a heart attack in his hotel room.Meanwhile two friends on a road trip across North America come to the aid of a mysterious woman they find washed up and battered on the banks of The Colorado River. Somehow all these events are linked.Choosing to help her plunges them into a nightmarish race across the globe for she holds a secret that defies all we know about human evolution.Pursued by a deadly force intent on stopping them they must recover a relic so ancient it’s fallen into legend. A relic that will not only save them but the whole of humanity.

The Last Voyage


T.S. Snow - 2016
    She's far from it.Together, they’re Earth's last hope... they just don’t know it yet.Sinbad sh'en Singh had everything. A thriving smuggling career, his hologram on wanted posters on eleven planets, and plenty of women. Then she walked into his life.Andrea Talltrees, member of a backwards cult not believing in space travel or anything else invented after the Twentieth Century.She wants him to find her husband, a fugitive accused of being an Albegensian spy, the planet currently at war with Earth.He doesn’t want anything to do with an Earther, but a massive culture clash and a heavy dose of instant attraction get in the way, sending good sense flying out the viewport.They'll brave some very unsavory characters, maybe even prevent a second interplanetary war...if they can stop arguing.

Outside Context Problem


Christopher G. Nuttall - 2012
    But even as they rush to unlock the technological secrets in the alien craft, the aliens launched the first step in their plan to invade the Earth and enslave the human race. With a giant mothership approaching the planet and the inhabitants promising peace and plenty, humanity must defeat a vastly superior foe with uncertain motives or lose its freedom forever.On one side, a powerful alien force…On the other side, a divided humanity…The battle for Earth has begun.