Book picks similar to
Black Onyx by Victor Methos
sci-fi
mystery
amazon
action
Invasion Day
Scott Moon - 2020
One night he saddles himself with a hitchhiker, a nuisance who’s more than she seems. And that’s when everything changes.No one was ready for an alien invasion. Death is raining from the sky and the only question left is do you run, fight, or submit.For David Osage and his family, answering is as easy as giving the alien invaders the finger.
Punishment
Scott J. Holliday - 2018
Thanks to a technologically advanced machine, detectives have access to the memories of the living, the dying, and the recently dead. But extracting victims’ experiences firsthand and personally reliving everything up to the final, brutal moments of their lives—the sights, the sounds, the scents, the pain—is also the punishment reserved for the criminals themselves.Barnes has had enough. Enough of the memories that aren’t his. Enough of the horror. Enough of the voices inside his head that were never meant to take root…until a masked serial killer known as Calavera strikes a little too close to home.Now, with Calavera on the loose, Barnes is ready to reconnect, risking his life—and his sanity. Because in the mind of this serial killer, there is one secret even Barnes has yet to see…
Amongst My Enemies
William F. Brown - 2011
In this WW II spy versus spy action adventure thriller, the only one who knows the truth is Mike Randall, a battle-scarred American aviator who survived the bitter winter of 1945 in the battered old port city of Konigsberg. After his B-17 crashed in East Prussia, rather than internment in a German POW camp or being executed as a spy, Randall and one crew mate find a worse fate, being thrown into in a Nazi forced labor battalion clearing rubble in the frozen hell of the north Baltic shore. Also trapped in Konigsberg is Kapitan Eric Bruckner and one of Germany’s last surviving U-Boats. Bruckner has been ordered east to meet with SS Major Heinz Kruger, Martin Bormann’s sinister hatchet man, for a top secret mission. When a British bomber sends the U-573 to the bottom of the Baltic, it carries a secret that only Mike Randall knows. Seven years later, in this cold war military political thriller, when he does speak up, Randall puts a target on his own forehead, one which the Russians, the West Germans, the U-boat’s former Nazi owners, the US government, and even the Israeli Mossad quickly take aim at. In this KGB CIA spy thriller, some want the gold, some want Randall dead, and some want proof that there is a high-ranking spy inside NATO itself. What Randall wants is much simpler in this historic military political thriller novel. Caught between the Kremlin, spies, killers, and a new, deadly, 4th Reich, he wants his revenge and to satisfy some old debts with a steel-jacketed bullet.
Phoenix Rising
Pip Ballantine - 2011
Clandestine Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences is forbidden to investigate. But Eliza Braun, with bulletproof corset, fondness for dynamite, remarkable devices, drags along timorous new partner Wellington Books, of encyclopedic brain, against Phoenix intent on enslaving Britons.
Super
Ernie Lindsey - 2014
Life is good, simple, until an ultra-secretive government agency hires Leo to execute two impossible tasks: eliminate the world's foremost superhero, Patriotman, and hunt down a fellow assassin whose target is the President of the United States.When everyone wears a mask, trust is hard to come by - and even the elusive truth can be caught in a web of lies.
NanoStrike
Pete Barber - 2012
First responder, Detective Chief Inspector Quinnborne, defies orders and hunts for the weapon’s unhinged genius creator. The authorities label Quinnborne a traitor, but when the nanotechnology spirals out of control, his grit and bloody-minded determination become humankind’s last thin hope of surviving a weapon of mass destruction that can be deployed at will and against which there is no defense.
Nocturnal
Scott Sigler - 2012
Homicide detective Bryan Clauser is losing his mind. How else to explain the dreams he keeps having—dreams that mirror, with impossible accuracy, the gruesome serial murders taking place all over San Francisco? How else to explain the feelings these dreams provoke in him—not disgust, not horror, but excitement? As Bryan and his longtime partner, Lawrence “Pookie” Chang, investigate the murders, they learn that things are even stranger than they at first seem. For the victims are all enemies of a seemingly ordinary young boy—a boy who is gripped by the same dreams that haunt Bryan. Meanwhile, a shadowy vigilante, seemingly armed with superhuman powers, is out there killing the killers. And Bryan and Pookie’s superiors—from the mayor on down—seem strangely eager to keep the detectives from discovering the truth.Doubting his own sanity and stripped of his badge, Bryan begins to suspect that he’s stumbled into the crosshairs of a shadow war that has gripped his city for more than a century—a war waged by a race of killers living in San Francisco’s unknown, underground ruins, emerging at night to feed on those who will not be missed. And as Bryan learns the truth about his own intimate connections to the killings, he discovers that those who matter most to him are in mortal danger…and that he may be the only man gifted—or cursed—with the power to do battle with the nocturnals. Featuring a dazzlingly plotted mystery and a terrifying descent into a nightmarish underworld—along with some of the most incredible action scenes ever put to paper, and an explosive, gut-wrenching conclusion you won’t soon forget—Nocturnal is the most spectacular outing to date from one of the genre’s brightest stars.
Pelquin's Comet
Ian Whates - 2015
Forced to combat enemies without and within, they strive to overcome the odds under the watchful eye of an unwelcome guest: Drake, agent of the bank funding their expedition, who is far more than he seems and may represent the greatest threat of all.“Intrigue and action in this high octane collision between Firefly, the Bourne films and Indiana Jones. A two-fisted SF adventure, space opera as it should be written!” – Gavin Smith, author of Veteran“It is his characters who live through the story and make the reader need to know just how it’s all going to pan out, human characters who may seem familiar but then there’s that one thing, that shifted alteration that changes the world and changes the reader too.” – Interzone
Gridlinked
Neal Asher - 2001
Unfortunately Cormac is nearly burnt out, "gridlinked" to the AI net so long that his humanity has begun to drain away. He has to take the cold-turkey cure and shake his addiction to having his brain on the net.Now he must do without just as he's sent to investigate the unique runcible disaster that's wiped out the entire human colony on planet Samarkand in a thirty-megaton explosion. With the runcible out, Cormac must get there by ship, but he has incurred the wrath of a vicious psychopath called Arian Pelter, who now follows him across the galaxy with a terrifying psychotic killer android in tow. And deep beneath Samarkand's surface there are buried mysteries, fiercely guarded.This is fast-moving, edge-of-the-seat entertainment, and a great introduction to the work of one of the most exciting new SF talents in years.
Nightflyers
George R.R. Martin - 1985
Nine misfit academics on an expedition to find the volcryn, a mythic race of intersteller nomads, and the only ship available for this strange quest is the Nightflyer, a cybernetic wonder with a never-seen captain...Nine innocents are about to find themselves in deep space, trapped with an insane murderer who can go anywhere, do anything, and intends to kill them all.
Another Life
Peter Anghelides - 2007
Captain Jack Harkness, from UK BBC Doctor Who TV series leads Gwen Cooper, and Toshiko Sato to a monster in a bathroom, a mystery at an army base, and stolen nuclear fuel rods. Meanwhile, Owen Harper vanishes from the hub, when a Second Reality game leads him to an ex-girlfriend.
Open Minds
Susan Kaye Quinn - 2011
Zeros are outcasts who can’t be trusted, leaving her no chance with Raf, a regular mindreader and the best friend she secretly loves. When she accidentally controls Raf’s mind and nearly kills him, Kira tries to hide her frightening new ability from her family and an increasingly suspicious Raf. But lies tangle around her, and she’s dragged deep into a hidden world of mindjackers, where having to mind control everyone she loves is just the beginning of the deadly choices before her.TOP 5 FINALIST for 2012 Best Indie Book, Young Adult Fiction - The Kindle Book ReviewMINDJACK SERIES READING ORDEROpen Minds (Book 1)Closed Hearts (Book 2)Free Souls (Book 3)Locked Tight (Book 4)Cracked Open (Book 5)Broken Wide (Book 6)Mindjack Short Story Collection (Book 7)The Locksmith is a standalone novella that can be read independently of the trilogy and novellas.
City of the Falling Sky
Joseph Evans - 2011
But the worms aren’t the only thing that he finds. Staring at him through the darkness, with wide, innocent eyes, is something that makes Seckry’s heart almost stop.A girl.She’s shaking, petrified, and has no recollection of who she is or what she’s doing there.Floodlights bleach the area and Seckry has no choice but to grab a hold of the girl and escape with her.Suddenly the question of what Endrin were doing with a few worms becomes the last thing on Seckry’s mind. What were Endrin doing with a human?
iSEAL
Jude Hardin - 2014
Four weeks as a lab rat and his military career will be back on course.Unfortunately, by the end of day one, he finds himself on the run from the police, the CIA, and a mysterious criminal mastermind named Oberwand.With no memory of his past, and with little hope for a meaningful future, Brennan must utilize every weapon in his binary arsenal just to stay alive.
Minutes to Burn
Gregg Andrew Hurwitz - 2001
Through widening holes of ozone depletion, the tropical sun burns human skin to a crisp. Powerful earthquakes and monstrous hurricanes wrack South America, exploding Ecuador's already anarchic instability.Cameron Kates, a hard-hitting Navy SEAL hiding the secret of her early pregnancy, gets pulled begrudgingly into a mission with her husband, Justin. Along with a ragtag squad of soldiers, ordered on this babysitting mission against their will, she must escort Dr. Rex Williams, a renowned ecotectonicist, to the chaotic continent. Rex is forced to brave the extreme and unprecedented dangers of such an expedition for one reason alone--so that he can position critical seismic equipment on Sangre de Dios, a desolate and depopulated island in the Galapagos. Others have recently vanished from the island without a trace.Cameron's platoonmates--a crackpot demolition expert, a chief who wears her brawn over her considerable intelligence, an unhinged lieutenant recovering from a personal tragedy--are an erratic but expert crew. Yet ultimately it is the newcomer, William Savage, a brooding Vietnam vet with raging warrior instincts, from whom Cameron must learn when the straightforward mission escalates into a battle for survival.In the forest of the island awaits a scientific phenomenon the likes of which man has never witnessed. As the stunned scientists and soldiers furiously unravel the threads of the ecological mystery they've encountered, they discover that they're trapped within a lethal, predatory battle where only the fittest survive. And the fate of the world is hanging in the balance.A riveting and spine-tingling thriller, Minutes to Burn takes you on a terrifying, unforgettable expedition through an ecological disaster in the not-too-distant future. This of-the-moment story of daring and terror in Darwin's backyard is one of today's most compelling and unrelenting reads.