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Starflight by Ron Collins
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The Wolf at the End of the World
Douglas Smith - 2013
"I can’t remember the last time I read a book that spoke to me, so eloquently, and so deeply, on so many levels. ... I’ll be rereading it in the future because it’s that sort of book. Richly layered and deeply resonant. An old friend, from the first time you read it." —Charles de Lint, World Fantasy Award winner The Heroka walk among us. Unseen, unknown. Shapeshifters. Human in appearance but with power over their animal totems.Gwyn Blaidd is a Heroka of the wolf totem. Once he led his people in a deadly war against the Tainchel, the shadowy agency that hunts his kind. Now he lives alone in his wilderness home, wolves his only companions.But when an Ojibwe girl is brutally killed in Gwyn's old hometown, suspicion falls on his former lover. To save her, Gwyn must return, to battle not only the Tainchel, but even darker forces: ancient spirits fighting to enter our world…And rule it.~~~Cree and Ojibwe legends mix with current day environmental conflict in this fast-paced urban fantasy that keeps you on the edge of your seat right up to its explosive conclusion.
Immortal Remains
Sean Cummings - 2016
Human and supernatural beings avoid him like the plague because if you get too close he'll gleefully tell you the time and date of your own demise and that's before he punches you in the face.For nearly one hundred years, Tim Reaper (yes, that's what he calls himself) has been living as a fixer, a rum runner, an enforcer and occasionally, a gumshoe. He hasn't aged a day because of his habit of borrowing the bodies of the recently deceased. (A convenient trick when you're on the lam.) Banished to the human world for tinkering with the natural order of life and death, he's kept himself busy with a peculiar hobby: ending the lives of murderers and serial killers alike.Except now, the bodies are piling up in Mexico City, Boston and the port city of Halifax. In fact, someone just found a corpse at the shipping terminal and it's not entirely human. Called on by the Holy See to put an end to the madness, Reaper is about to learn that this particular serial killer has a hate-on for heavenly bodies and even the Supreme Being will pay the bounty if it means saving humanity from the abyss.
Blackhawk
Jay Allan - 2016
A wanderer, a man running from a dark and sinister past. A genetically-engineered warrior, a capable and accomplished killer, he is also a lost soul, a man who has fled to the deepest reaches of space seeking his true identity.The Far Stars. The farthest extent of human habitation in the galaxy, a sector of a hundred inhabited worlds, it is a dangerous expanse full of pirates, mercenaries, and cutthroats. The sector is a rough and rugged frontier, lying beyond the darkness of the great Void, and the only place in all the vastness of space where men live free of the brutal empire that rules the rest of mankind.Celtiboria. Once the premier world in the Far Stars, now a planet wracked by centuries of brutal civil war, driven to the edge of a dark age by the unending struggle among its Warlords for power and control.Augustin Lucerne. One of Celtiboria’s feuding Warlords, a brilliant tactician and a respected commander. Lucerne is something rare on Celtiboria, in all of the Far Stars…an honorable man who fights not for personal aggrandizement but to save his world.When Blackhawk meets Lucerne he comes to a stark choice. He can continue on his way, a drifter wandering from world to world, alone and without purpose. Or he can join with Lucerne, fight at the Warlord’s side in desperate battle for survival. But whatever he chooses, he will have to face the demons that have pursued him across the stars, the dark version of himself that still lives deep within his mind.Blackhawk is a prequel to the Far Stars series, set twenty years before the existing books. For those who have read the Far Stars trilogy, this is the origin story of Arkarin Blackhawk. And for those who have not read the existing Far Stars series, Blackhawk is an ideal place to start.The Far Stars SeriesShadow of EmpireEnemy in the DarkFuneral GamesAlso by Jay AllanCrimson Worlds SeriesMarines (Crimson Worlds I)The Cost of Victory (Crimson Worlds II)A Little Rebellion (Crimson Worlds III)The First Imperium (Crimson Worlds IV)The Line Must Hold (Crimson Worlds V)To Hell’s Heart (Crimson Worlds VI)The Shadow Legions (Crimson Worlds VII)Even Legends Die (Crimson Worlds VIII)The Fall (Crimson Worlds IX)Tombstone (Crimson Worlds Prequel Novella)Bitter Glory (Crimson Worlds Prequel Novella) The Gates of Hell (Crimson Worlds Prequel Novella)Crimson Worlds Successors SeriesMERCS (Successors I)The Prisoner of Eldaron (Successors II)The Black Flag (Successors III - Coming Summer 2016)Crimson Worlds Refugees SeriesInto the Darkness (Refugees I)Shadows of the Gods (Refugees II)Revenge of the Ancients (Refugees III)Portal Wars SeriesGehenna Dawn (Portal Wars I)The Ten Thousand (Portal Wars II)Homefront (Portal Wars III)Pendragon ChroniclesThe Dragon’s Banne
The Lead Cloak
Erik Hanberg - 2013
Except the people who tried to kill him. By 2081, privacy no longer exists. The Lattice enables anyone to re-live any moment of your life. People can experience past and present events—or see into the mind of anyone, living or dead. Most people love it. Some want to destroy it. Colonel Byron Shaw has just saved the Lattice from the most dangerous attack in its history. Now he must find those responsible. But there’s a question nobody’s asking: does the Lattice deserve to be saved? The answer may cost him his life.
Jurassic Jail (Time Wars Book 1)
William Alan Webb - 2018
Future America is dangerous and bankrupt. The interstate highways are littered with the rusted hulks of ambushed cars and trucks, and only Mad Max would dare travel the back roads. When an arms race with Russia and China to develop time travel for military purposes achieves success, the body count skyrockets as both patriot and enemy try to hijack the new technology. Like the Manhattan Project and Operation Overtime before it, such a project attracts the best and the brightest as well as the worst and the psychotic. But not everyone has given up on the rule of law. In Tennessee, Fayette County D.A. Pete Dance wants to prosecute the murder of a man whose fossilized remains turn up after a series of devastating earthquakes. The problem is that the victim is still alive. When the violence starts, it doesn’t stop until the final whirlwind of teeth and claws and lasers. The first spinoff series from William Alan Webb’s immensely popular series The Last Brigade is described by one critic as “…Spectre agents chasing Fast and Furious through Jurassic World,” while another reviewer added “…with a heavy dose of Harry Bosch for good measure.” “After the heart-pounding finale, you won’t see the shocking ending coming. Guaranteed to keep you awake at night.”
Snowfall on Mars
Branden Frankel - 2015
Now, the few remaining colonists on Mars scratch out their living in the worn husk of New Houston, a once vibrant settlement. Outside its walls, a perpetual storm rages - acidic snow and rain - the result of a failed attempt to terraform the planet decades earlier. The human race, once numbering in the billions, has dwindled to five hundred or so souls. David Adler has survived in these circumstances by keeping a low profile and minding his own business. But when he gets a knock on the door from his old flame, Oksana Levi, everything changes. Mars’ lead engineer and Oksana’s current boyfriend, Carl Epstein, has been brutally murdered in his workshop, and Oksana pleads for Adler’s help. Adler soon finds himself pulling at the threads of a conspiracy by a millenarian cult and its bloodthirsty father figure to do away with life on the red planet once and for all.
Marcher
Chris Beckett - 2009
Known as shifters, they materialize from parallel timelines, bringing with them a mysterious drug called slip which breaks down the boundary between what is and what might have been, and offers the desperate and the dispossessed the tantalizing possibility of escape. When a shifter-led gang commits murder in the name of the old Norse pantheon and then uses slip to escape justice, Charles and his girlfriend Jaz decide to cross to another universe themselves in a bid to confront the problem at source and prevent their own society from degenerating into tyranny.But is that Charles' real motive? Or does he have other reasons which even he can't clearly see?
Archangel Down
C. Gockel - 2015
They’re wrong.Commander Noa Sato plans a peaceful leave on her home planet Luddeccea ... but winds up interrogated and imprisoned for her involvement in the Archangel Project. A project she knows nothing about.Professor James Sinclair wakes in the snow, not remembering the past twenty four hours, or knowing why he is being pursued. The only thing he knows is that he has to find Commander Sato, a woman he’s never met.A military officer from the colonies and a civilian from Old Earth, they couldn’t have less in common. But they have to work together to save the lives of millions—and their own.Every step of the way they are haunted by the final words of a secret transmission:The archangel is down.
IN SITU
David Samuel Frazier - 2013
When paleontologist Alexandra Moss ventures into the high deserts of Utah in search of a rare dinosaur fossil she gets more than she bargained for: she inadvertently discovers a highly intelligent species from the late Cretaceous that has been in hibernation since the great K-T asteroid disaster--and he is alive!
Soul Identity
Dennis Batchelder - 2007
but what if you could? Most people believe their souls outlive their bodies. Most people would find an organization that tracks their souls into the future and passes on their banked money and memories compelling. Scott Waverly isn't like most people. He spends his days finding and fixing computer security holes. And Scott is skeptical of his new client's claim that they have been calculating and tracking soul identities for almost twenty-six hundred years. Are they running a freaky cult? Or a sophisticated con job? Scott needs to save Soul Identity from an insider attack. Along the way, he discovers the importance of the bridges connecting people's lives.
Agent of the Imperium: A Story of the Traveller Universe
Marc W. Miller - 2015
In the service of the Empire, he has killed more people than anyone in the history of Humanity, to save a hundred times as many. He died centuries ago, but they re-activate his recorded personality whenever a new threat appears. When the crisis is over, they expect he will meekly return to oblivion. He has other ideas. The chronicle of Bland reveals secrets of the history of the star-spanning Third Imperium and spans 400 years from early Imperium (about year 300) through the mid-post Civil War period (about year 700) touching known and unknown events you may have encountered in your own reading of the Imperium: everyday events, political intrigue, deadly dangers, Arbellatra, Capital, Encyclopediopolis, the Karand's Palace, and a Tigress-class Dreadnought. If you know the Traveller science-fiction role-playing game, then some of this is already familiar; if not, no matter; this story introduces the vast human-dominated interstellar empire of the far future in ways only the designer and chronicler of this particular universe can.
Europe in Autumn
Dave Hutchinson - 2014
Following multiple economic crises and a devastating flu pandemic, Europe has fractured into countless tiny nations, duchies, polities and republics. Recruited by the shadowy organisation Les Coureurs des Bois, Rudi is schooled in espionage, but when a training mission to The Line, a sovereign nation consisting of a trans-Europe railway line, goes wrong, he is arrested, beaten and Coureur Central must attempt a rescue. With so many nations to work in, and identities to assume, Rudi is kept busy travelling across Europe. But when he is sent to smuggle someone out of Berlin and finds a severed head inside a locker instead, a conspiracy begins to wind itself around him. With kidnapping, double-crosses and a map that constantly re-draws, Rudi begins to realise that underneath his daily round of plot and counter plot, behind the conflicting territories, another entirely different reality might be pulling the strings...
Bringing Stella Home
Joe Vasicek - 2011
OTHERS GIVE ALL TO SAVE THE ONES THEY LOVE. The war has arrived at home. James McCoy, the youngest son of a starfaring merchanter family, never thought he would face an invasion. But when an undefeated enemy slags his homeworld and carries off his brother and sister, nothing in the universe will stop him from getting them back. Not all wars are fought on the battlefield. Hard times show the greatness in men, and those who give all are changed forever. When James got stuck with dockyard duty while Ben and Stella get to go planetside without him, he never thought he might never see his older brother and sister again.But shortly after they leave, a Hameji battle fleet invades the star system, turning it into a deadly war zone. As James flees with his father on the family starship, he can only look on powerlessly as the Hameji reduce their homeworld to molten slag. But Ben and Stella are not dead. When James learns that they've been captured and enslaved, he vows to rescue them, no matter the cost.
Sleepers
Darcy Pattison - 2017
Allow us to live in the seas.” Rison will implode soon. They desperately need a new blue planet, a water planet. But Earth is crowded. Will humans be able to open their hearts to an alien race? SLEEPERS, Book 1 A rogue militia. A diabolical sabotage. Is an alien teen is the only hope for either blue planet? Sleepers is the first book of an exciting science fiction trilogy that forces a dying world to beg for refuge on Earth. A test-tube baby, fifteen-year-old Jake Rose is half human and half alien. After living with his mother on Rison for most of his life, he finally comes to Earth to live with his human father’s grandparents on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound. His mother, Dayexi Quad-de is Rison’s ambassador to Earth. She’s tasked with finding Risonians a new home on Earth in a peaceful manner. Jake accidentally discovers that Earth’s elite ELLIS forces are tying to sabotage Mt. Rainier and make it explode so that they can blame it on the Risonian aliens. Can Jake stop them in time or will they ruin the Risonians chances at a refuge on Earth? Sirens is the continuing story in a science fiction trilogy. When aliens beg refuge on Earth, they ask only for a home in the seas. But what if Earth’s oceans aren’t empty? The Phoke, the mer men and women of Earth have remained hidden for centuries. But a Risonian water-borne illness forces them to come out of hiding and take a place at the negotiation table. Pilgrims is the exciting conclusion of an epic science fiction trilogy that pits Risonians and Earthlings against inevitable implosion of a planet. A small team from Earth travels to Rison to find the cure for a water-borne disease that threatens the Phoke, the mermen and mermaids of Earth. But Rison’s implosion is pending. In a rush against time, they must deal with the politics of desperate men and the tricks of a dying planet. Will they find the cure and escape in time?
The Warrior's Knife: A 26th Century Murder Mystery
Eric Thomson - 2017
Starships engaged in commerce have replaced the battlecruisers, and much of that commerce flows through free ports established on what was once a disputed frontier. Yet even long after the armistice, the relationship between humans and an unfathomable, easily offended species remains tense. When someone assassinates a Shrehari trade emissary on Aquilonia Station, a human-owned free port dug into the crust of an airless moon, leaving a Commonwealth Navy officer as the sole suspect, everyone fears the worst.An alien envoy killed by a member of the Armed Services is a case for the Commonwealth Constabulary, humanity's interstellar police force. And with galactic peace at stake, the investigation lands on the desk of Chief Superintendent Caelin Morrow.As head of the Rim Sector's internal affairs division, Morrow has one of the more challenging and unpleasant jobs in the Constabulary. She investigates those in authority -- members of the police, the military or government officials. That makes her one of the most disliked if not outright hated cops in the Commonwealth. However, Morrow and her officers are also known as the last of the incorruptibles. They're the ones with nothing left to lose, those who are highly skilled at uncovering and prosecuting malfeasance, no matter how powerful or wealthy their suspects might be. It makes them the ideal investigators to satisfy an angry Shrehari government.But soon after Morrow arrives on Aquilonia to establish the truth, she realizes there is something more ominous behind the Shrehari envoy's assassination than one of the seven deadly sins that usually motivate violent crimes. Was his murder an act of passion, or an act of politics? And what will the results of her investigation mean for the future of humanity's relations with its restive alien neighbor?