Book picks similar to
The Cold Storm by John Etterlee
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By the Light of His Lantern: A Novel
Abe Moss - 2019
Disoriented, he blinks his eyes, rubs them for good measure, but the result is the same. The sky is as black as the beach below it. In this place, the sun and moon and stars are long dead. But the darkness, full of eyes and teeth, is very much alive. Others like him say it’s a curse. Someone he knows has sentenced him to an eternity here, and now Lewis must ask himself if it’s an eternity he deserves. Guided only by his own hands, hunted by otherworldly forces, it’s up to him to scour the darkness of his past in search of his own redemption. Only the truth will light the way.
Everything is Worth Killing: Isaac's Tale (An Apocalyptic LitRPG)
Alex Oakchest - 2019
Dozens of warmongering ogres. Hundreds of dynamite-wielding gnomes. And one normal guy in the middle of it all. Bad mornings. We've all had 'em. But what if you woke up in a post-apocalyptic land filled with wizards, dragons, and ogres? Not only that, but you woke up as a prisoner of a clan of mages who don’t even speak your language? What if these guys expected you to know magic, but left you to figure out for yourself how to cast it? These are the problems Isaac must solve. And what's he going to do when death knocks on his door? He's going to blast a fireball through the letterbox and send death running. But first...he just needs to learn how to even cast a fireball. Follow his journey through a land filled with creatures that want to kill him, and watch as he refuses to let them. Accompany him into a land of mystery and danger, where life is tough and learning spells and skills takes work. A land where Isaac is determined to stop being the prey and become the predator. This is his journey to make allies and friends in this new world. A journey through battles against slaver ogres and wingless dragons and gnome dictators. Through experimentation and adaptation, where he learns that killing one enemy helps him against the next. It’s also his journey to find a warm, comfy bed. This is the tale of a someone who used to be a normal guy. It's Isaac’s tale of adapting to a world where everything is worth killing. Over 500 pages of fast-moving fantasy, set in a brutal apocalyptic world. This is a mesmerizing story about one guy's quest for power and survival, with light litrpg/game-like elements and a focus on him learning how to use magic. 'Amazing - I love it because of how original it is. This is a hidden gem. The story is good and I'm enjoying the style.' - Early Reviewer 'A breath of fresh air. Isaac is not some over-powered or genius guy. He is just a dude trying to survive in the cruel world he was thrown in, and he is trying to make head and tail of what is going on.' - Early reviewer 'Enjoyable - I especially like the rationality of the main character and how he approaches problems. Unique, definitely worth reading.' - Early reviewer.
Adulting
Liz Talley - 2021
She’s been written off as a Hollywood casualty by almost everyone, including her own mother. But handsome superstar Spencer Rome has her back. So does an uncompromising stranger determined to start Chase at square one and help her pull her future into focus. If Chase is willing.Life coach Olivia Han is devoted to “adulting” boot camp therapy. It’s not just her professional specialty, though—it’s also one way to avoid focusing on building a life of her own. To escape the pressures of Tinseltown, the two women head to Olivia’s cabin in the wilds of Northern California. There they discover a place in need of TLC. As they work together to rehab the once-charming cabin, they create a refuge where Chase can come to terms with her unsettled past, and where Olivia has an unexpected reckoning with her own troubling history.For two women doing damage control, this is a time for second chances—in life, in finding love, in forgiving family, and in an emerging friendship that might be exactly what each of them needs to heal.
But The Stars
Peter Cawdron - 2020
How do you fight an enemy that distorts everything you see? What do you do when you can't trust your own senses, let alone anyone around you?
Pandora's Succession
Russell Brooks - 2010
CIA operative, Ridley Fox, never stopped hunting his fiancée's killers—a weapons consortium called The Arms Of Ares. When Fox follows a lead to one of their top-secret bioweapons facilities in Chechnya, he barely escapes alive. However, he's learned that Ares has weaponized a hyper-deadly microbe called Pandora. The trail leads Fox to Tokyo, where he teams up with an old flame and fellow operative, Nita Parris. Aside from Ares, they must contend with rogue agents who'll stop at nothing to get Pandora. This throws Fox and Parris into a deadly game of spy vs spy, as they must rely on each other to locate the microbe. For if it's unleashed, it could mean the end of humanity.
Return of the Phoenix
Heath Stallcup - 2012
For centuries, stories of things that go ‘bump’ in the night have been passed down and shared. When creatures of the night proved to be real, the best of America’s military came together to form an elite band of rapid response teams. Their mission: to face to challenge and keep the civilian populace safe from those threats and hide all evidence of their existence. But during a routine mission, when things go horribly wrong, the Monster Squad finds themselves having to rebuild from the ashes of what they once were.This time, they face not only the monsters that threaten the peaceful lives of the citizens they are sworn to protect, but their own government, as a dark storm brews on the horizon. A storm that will threaten not just the squad and their existence, but the lives of every human on earth…
Agent Zero
Jack Mars - 2019
Kent Steele, 38, a brilliant professor of European History at Columbia University, lives a quiet life in a New York suburb with his two teenage daughters. All that changes when late one night he gets a knock on his door and is abducted by three terrorists—and finds himself flown across the ocean to be interrogated in a basement in Paris. They are convinced that Kent is the most lethal spy the CIA has ever known. He is convinced they have the wrong man. Do they? With a conspiracy around him, adversaries as smart as he is, and an assassin on his tail, the wild game of cat and mouse leads Kent on a perilous road—one that may lead back to Langley—and to a shocking discovery of his own identity.
The Last Survivors
T.W. Piperbrook - 2014
Technology has been reduced to legend, monsters roam the forests, and fear reigns supreme. But that is just the beginning... The wind-borne spores are spreading, disfiguring men and twisting their minds, turning them into creatures that threaten to destroy the townships. Among the townsfolk, political and the religious, dissension is spreading. Through it all, a mother must protect her son...
A Beginner's Guide to Free Fall
Andy Abramowitz - 2020
Brothers and sisters. Mothers and daughters. Okay, everybody. Hold on tight.
Davis Winger has it all. A respected engineer who designs roller coasters in theme parks across the country, he is deeply in love with his wife and has a beautiful young daughter and a happy home. Until an accident strikes on one of his rides. Nothing fatal—except to his career. And to his marriage, when a betrayal from his past inadvertently comes to light. In one cosmically bad day, Davis loses it all.His sister, Molly, is at a crossroads herself. She’s coasting through a dire relationship with an incompatible man-child. And she’s a journalist whose deeply personal columns about mothers and daughters are forcing her to confront the truth about her own mother, who abandoned Molly and Davis years ago and disappeared.For these two siblings, it’s just a matter of bracing themselves for one turbulent summer in this redemptive and painfully funny family drama about making the best of the sharp turns in life—those we choose to take and those beyond our control.
The Fourth Descendant
Allison Maruska - 2015
All she has to do is find a century-old key. Three others – a guitarist, an engineer, and a retiree – receive similar calls. Each family possesses a key to a four-lock safe found buried in a Virginia courthouse, though their connection is as mysterious as the safe itself. Their ancestors should not have interacted, had no apparent reason to bury the safe, and should not have disappeared thereafter. Bearing their keys, Michelle and the other descendants converge in the courthouse basement and open the safe, revealing the truth about their ancestors - a truth stranger, more deadly, and potentially more world-changing than any of them could have imagined. Now it’s up to them to keep their discovery out of the wrong hands. “I rarely read a story that I can’t wait to get back to, and this was one. It’s full of drama and suspense. It’s fresh and new, something very much needed, and it’s totally unpredictable." - John Darryl Winston, author of IA: Initiate
The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clock
Jane Riley - 2020
Is there really room for something as unpredictable as love?
Oliver Clock has everything arranged just so. A steady job running the family funeral parlour. A fridge stocked with ready meals. A drawer full of colour-coded socks. A plan (of sorts) to stay trim enough for a standard-sized coffin. And in florist Marie, he’s even found the love of his life—not that she’s aware of it.When a terrible tragedy takes Marie out of his life but leaves him with her private journal, he discovers too late that she secretly loved him back. Faced now with an empty love life, a family funeral business in trouble, a fast-approaching fortieth birthday and a notebook of resolutions he’s never achieved, Oliver resolves to open himself up to love—and all the mess that comes along with it.But, with a habit of burying his feelings, can he learn to embrace his lovability and find the woman who will make him feel whole?
The Hidden Ship
Mark Wayne McGinnis - 2019
Sleep is over-rated. Don Prior Brian Polk had been stateside for barely a year after leaving the Air Force when the unthinkable happened. It was an interstellar invasion—the beginning of the end of known civilization. First, military installations and the largest cities across the globe were turned to rubble. Tens of millions of souls lost during a horrific reign of terror. Government centers and law enforcement resources were next. Finally, the aliens eliminated humanity’s means to electronically communicate with each other. The Earupitan’s technology and weaponry was so remarkable, so advanced, humanity never really had a chance. The aliens now walk brazenly among humans—their reptilian eyes always watchful, always scrutinizing. No one is safe, and almost everyone who gets taken into an OEC center never sees the light of day again. Humanity now lives in fear—freedom is a thing of the past. And then there are those who have befriended the enemy . . . But not Captain Brian Polk. He’s far more interested in taking back a little of what was stolen. When he acquires some of the alien technology, he finally has hope of making some small difference. He might even be able to pull off the impossible—that or he'll die trying.
Another World
Samuel Best - 2020
Surviving the trip to a nearby spiral arm of our own galaxy is a journey like no other.Merritt Alder is done with Earth. The planet is polluted and overpopulated, and its people are hungry.Earth’s first colony, Galena, is a pioneer world 10,000 light years away. It has clean air, unpolluted water, and continents of arable land.For Merritt, the journey is only the beginning. Obstacles arise every step of the way, forcing compromise and sacrifice. And not everyone on the ship is pure of heart.The bonds he forges on the journey will be the key to surviving on another world — a world anyone has yet to fully explore.A world with secrets of its own.Another World is a bold new entry in the realm of planet colonization and pioneer science fiction, an odyssey across our own galaxy to start a new life on Earth’s first colony.
The King Tides
James Swain - 2018
And that of strangers, too. Wherever she goes, she’s being watched. Each stalker is different from the last, except for one thing—their alarming obsession with Nicki.Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Nicki’s father is turning to someone who can protect her: retired private detective and ex–Navy SEAL Jon Lancaster. Teaming up with FBI agent and former abduction victim Beth Daniels, Lancaster can help—his way. He’s spent most of his career dispatching creeps who get off on terrorizing the vulnerable. Unlicensed, and unrestricted, he plays dirty…But this case is unusual. Why so many men? Why this one girl? Does Nicki have something to hide? Or do her parents?Trawling the darkest depths of southern Florida, Lancaster faces a growing tide of secrets and deception. And the deeper he digs, the more he realizes that finding the truth won’t be easy. Because there’s more to this case than meets the eye.