Book picks similar to
Birds of Prey by David Drake


science-fiction
fiction
alternate-history
sci-fi

The Warmasters


David Weber - 2002
    Midshipwoman Harrington" by David Weber: Before she saved the galaxy, she was "Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington," and then an encounter with "pirates" who were more than they seemed began Honor Harrington's Brilliant Career. "Choosing Sides" by David Drake: Lieutenant Huber stepped off the starship into an ambush--but Slammers aren't supposed to get ambushed. Huber can save his career if he survives a suicide mission. "The Island" by Eric Flint: Think General Belisarius was tough? Meet the wife of one of his officers. She is determined to reach her wounded husband--going over the broken bodies of the enemy if necessary.

The Dancer From Atlantis


Poul Anderson - 1971
    Bound to him were three of the strangest humans he had ever encountered... a medieval Russian, and a fourth-century Hun, and a sacred priestess who worshiped him as a god. And all shared the same fate--pulled through a hole in time to a present which was ancient history. Together the quartet formed a strange alliance which none dared break. For not only were their own futures at stake... but the very future of the world they had found....

Sunrise Alley


Catherine Asaro - 2004
    Samantha and the man soon find themselves on the run.

Heart of the Comet


David Brin - 1986
    An odyssey of discovery, from a shattered society through the solar system with a handful of men and women who ride a cold, hurtling ball of ice to the shaky promise of a distant, unknowable future.

The Hawks of Kamalon


Michael Reisig - 1999
    If it wasn't for the reward -- and the women who stole their hearts -- they probably wouldn't have stayed....This novel was a "number one" nationally best-selling book for Books In Motion Audio Books!!!

Camber of Culdi


Katherine Kurtz - 1976
    In later legends, he was to become a figure of mystery, known as both the defender of humanity and the patron saint of dark magic. But now he sought only retirement on his family estates.His dream of justice and amicable relations between the races had turned to ashes in his mind. The medieval kingdom of Gwynedd groaned under the tyranny of Imre and his sister and mistress, Ariella. Normal humans were savagely persecuted by the king, whose Deryni ancestors had seized the throne from the rightful human Haldane line a century before. Camber could not even save his own son from the murderous treachery of Imre.When Camber learned that Cinhil Haldane, a descendant of the previous kings, still lived, he realized that the only hope for the kingdom lay in overthrowing Imre and restoring Cinhil to the throne. But Cinhil was a cloistered monk, hidden under his religious name in one of many monasteries, unaware of his heritage, untrained in politics. Could he be persuaded to leave the only life he knew and take on the leadership of a rebellion? And lacking the Deryni powers, could he hope to overcome the magic of the king? Grimly, Camber set out to locate Cinhil and spirit him from the cloister into a struggle that seemed doomed from the start.And behind came the minions of the king—for Imre was already aware of the plot and bent on destroying all involved in it.

The Spell Sword


Marion Zimmer Bradley - 1974
    Most of the planet's wild terrain was unexplored...and many of its peoples seclusive and secretive.But for Andrew Carr there was an attraction he could not evade. Darkover drew him, Darkover haunted him--and when his mapping plane crashed in unknown heights, Darkover prepared to destroy him.Until the planet's magic asserted itself--and his destiny began to unfold along lines predicted only by phantoms and wonder workers of the kind Terran science could never acknowledge.THE SPELL SWORD is a Darkover novel to stand with the great ones of the series.

Digital Knight


Ryk E. Spoor - 2003
    The a body with two holes in its neck and no blood left turned up at his back door, and he found himself dealing with the kind of information that can get a man killed, or worse, much worse.Being chased by things out of myth and nightmare, Jason has only two weapons: his best friend, and his won quick wits.In a battle against darkness, the brightest weapon is the light of reason.

There Will Be Dragons


John Ringo - 2003
    The world is a paradise - and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net falls out and goes to war. Everywhere people who have never known a moment of want or pain are left wondering how to survive.

Captain Nemo


Kevin J. Anderson - 2002
    But what if Nemo was a real man, whose actual life was more fantastic and adventurous than all the fictions it inspired?Here is the tale of Andre Nemo, the man behind the myth. The free-spirited and inventive son of a French shipbuilder, Nemo goes to sea as a cabin boy, faces marauding pirates and bloodthirsty sharks, is marooned for years on a mysterious island, battles prehistoric monsters long believed extinct, journeys to the center of the Earth, balloons across Africa, escapes from Arab slavers, discovers the fabled city of Timbuktu, endures a plague of locusts, survives the Charge of the Light Brigade, tends to the wounded with Florence Nightingale, is pressed into service by the ruthless Robert the Conqueror, and, ultimately, wages war on War itself as the captain of his greatest creation: the legendary underwater vessel known as the Nautilus.Captain Nemo is also the story of Nemo’s childhood friend, Jules Verne, who would bestow immortality upon the captain’s exploits, and of the remarkable woman they both loved to the very end.

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus


Orson Scott Card - 1996
    In one of the most powerful and thought-provoking novels of his remarkable career, Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch interweaves a compelling portrait of Christopher Columbus with the story of a future scientist who believes she can alter human history from a tragedy of bloodshed and brutality to a world filled with hope and healing.

Our Friends from Frolix 8


Philip K. Dick - 1970
    Dick was largely concerned with humanity’s most achingly familiar heartaches and struggles. In Our Friends From Frolix 8, he clashes private dreams against public battles in a fast-paced and provocative tale that ultimately addresses our salvation both as individuals and a whole.Nick Appleton is a menial laborer whose life is a series of endless frustrations. Willis Gram is the despotic oligarch of a planet ruled by big-brained elites. When they both fall in love with Charlotte Boyer, a feisty black marketer of revolutionary propaganda, Nick seems destined for doom. But everything takes a decidedly unpredictable turn when the revolution’s leader, Thors Provoni, returns from ten years of intergalactic hiding with a ninety-ton protoplasmic slime that is bent on creating a new world order. Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Mute


Piers Anthony - 1981
    The protagonist, Knot, is a double mutant: he has a physical deformity, and the psi power to make others forget him. He's satisfied with his life--until the lovely Finesse walks into his life to recruit him for a dangerous galactic mission. She is aided by two small animal mutants: a telepathic weasel and a clairvoyant crab. Knot tries to resist, aided by his psi, but the woman's beauty and the animals' powers doom him to a phenomenal adventure. The prior edition was cut; this is the complete version.

The Doomsday Vault


Steven Harper - 2011
    At 21, her age and her unladylike interest in automatons have sealed her fate as an undesirable marriage prospect. But a devastating plague sends Alice off in a direction beyond the pale—towards a clandestine organization, mad inventors, life-altering secrets, and into the arms of an intrepid fiddle-playing airship pilot.

1635: The Wars for the Rhine


Anette Pedersen - 2016
    Time travelers from our modern age are thrown into the deadly straits of the Thirty Years War in Europe of the 1600s.In the year 1635, the Rhineland is in turmoil. The impact of the Ring of Fire, the cosmic accident which transported the small modern West Virginia town of Grantville to Europe in the early seventeenth century, has only aggravated a situation that was already chaotic. Perhaps nowhere in central Europe did the Thirty Years War produce so much upheaval as it did in the borderlands between France and Germany. Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne shares the religious fanaticism of his older brother, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. He is determined to restore the power of the Catholic Church over the middle Rhine, the so-called “Bishop’s Alley,” and has unleashed a plot for that purpose. But that same middle Rhine is territory which Landgrave William V of Hesse-Kassel is determined to seize for himself, under the guise of expanding the influence of the United States of Europe. Add to the witch's brew the deaths in battle of Duke Wolfgang of Jülich-Berg and his son, which leaves his young widow Katharina Charlotte as the heir to those much-prized territories. She is now on the run, in disguise—and pregnant. Add the unexpected arrival of Austria’s most capable general, Melchior von Hatzfeldt, along with the most ruthless spy and torturer in the Rhineland, Felix Gruyard. The wars for the Rhine have erupted, and only the devil knows how they will end. About Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire series: “This alternate history series is . . . a landmark . . .”—Booklist “[Eric] Flint's 1632 universe seems to be inspiring a whole new crop of gifted alternate historians.”—Booklist “. . . reads like a technothriller set in the age of the Medicis . . .”—Publishers Weekly