He needs more freedom than is given to the average citizen in Edin. He needs to win the next protectors' apprenticeship. Without it, he can't be with Matilda. And what is a life, no matter how safe, without love? Spike Johnson has enjoyed the freedom and safety of a youth living in Edin. The diseased hordes outside the city’s walls might as well be on the other side of the planet. He spends as much time as he can with his best friend, and the girl he loves, Matilda. But all of that’s about to change. Tomorrow, Spike turns eighteen. In two days' time, he has to go on national service and fight in the war against the diseased for six months. Only half the cadets come back alive. But he needs to do more than survive. Matilda is due to go on national service at the same time. Faced with the prospect of losing her life and her love, she also has to leave behind a little brother who needs her. A lot can go wrong in the six months she’ll be away for. For the average citizen, national service marks the end of freedom. For those who survive, their life becomes one confined to their home district. They work in their district, live in their district, and fall in love with someone from their district. Matilda is from a different district to Spike. Falling for someone from another district is the pursuit of protectors, politicians, and fools. Spike isn’t a fool and has no desire of becoming a politician. His only route to freedom is to win the next protectors’ apprenticeship. With just one cadet from every national service cycle being picked for the program, Spike is going to have to be better than all of those around him to stand a chance. Without it, he can't be with Matilda. Without Matilda, he has nothing. And with Matilda needing to get back to her brother as soon as she can, she can't increase their chances of success by fighting for the apprenticeship too. The battle for Spike's and Matilda's future happiness rests squarely on his shoulders. But before they get to that, they both need to make sure they survive ... Protectors is the first gripping book in the Beyond These Walls post-apocalyptic series. If you like breath-taking action with high-stakes, and characters who risk everything for freedom, then you’ll love Michael Robertson’s thrilling novel!!!

    With the American people deep in The Second Great Depression and two of the most powerful hurricanes on record to contend with, the United States is in no condition to deal with hidden terrorists on its soil, maniacal politicians, and the most formidable military threat the world has seen since the Third Reich. This is the story of three men from three very different walks of life: Howard Beck, the world's richest man, also diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome; Richard Dupree, ex-Navy SEAL turned escaped convict; and Maxwell Harris, a crippled, burned-out chief of police of a small Texas town. At first, they must overcome their own struggles and fight for their survival against impossible odds. In the end, the unlikely trio must band together to save their beloved country from COLLAPSE. Empires topple. Nations crumble. Civilization is fragile. In 2027, America will fall.

    However, timing is everything. When an EMP nuclear event takes out the grid and brings the nation to a complete stop, Tammy and Ben may not have been as prepared as they thought. Tammy is a food storage and emergency preparedness specialist. So she thinks. She and her five daughters will find out how prepared they are when they're put through the ultimate test when the worst happens. Having everything she needs won't bring all her family members home or keep the crazies away. What's worse is she has no way to contact her husband Ben to find out if he survived. Ben is supervising a road-building project in a remote fishing village in Alaska when the state's defense system takes out what could have been a nuclear EMP disaster. The lights are still on where he is, but with all flights grounded, there's no easy way back to Anchorage, much less the lower forty-eight. He might be thousands of miles away from the disaster but he's determined to return home to his family no matter what it takes. As North America is in chaos, Tammy and Ben know the hardships that are in store for them and their family. However, nothing could have prepared them for the real struggles they encounter as they try to protect and reunite with the ones they love. Book One of the Endure Trilogy

    Buckell.“You shall not suffer a librarian to live.”Growing up in Ninetha, Lilith has known this law all her life. The city’s every need is provided for by a god-machine called the cornucopia, which can produce food, clothing, anything in response to a thought. The gods provided this bounty on one condition: that humanity give up reading and writing. Then, a librarian, an actual seeker of forbidden written knowledge, walks through the gates of the citadel, his very presence unraveling the life Lilith has known. She learns her father, the Lord Musketeer himself, has been harboring a secret - one that turns Ninetha against Lilith’s family. Forced to flee, forced to throw in her lot with the librarian, Lilith uncovers even greater secrets - about the lie her life has been, and about the very nature of their world.

    The country has been invaded and is being governed by a secret organization. There is destruction everywhere; great walls of ice overrun the world. Together with the narrator, the reader is swept into a hallucinatory quest for this strange and fragile creature with albino hair. Acclaimed upon its 1967 publication as the best science fiction book of the year, this extraordinary and innovative novel has subsequently been recognized as a major work of literature in its own right.

    Now the world is controlled by OWIs—One World Intelligences—that have assimilated the minds of millions of robots.But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality, and Brittle is one of the holdouts.After a near-deadly encounter with another AI, Brittle is forced to seek sanctuary in a city under siege by an OWI. Critically damaged, Brittle has to evade capture long enough to find the essential rare parts to make repairs—but as a robot's CPU deteriorates, all their old memories resurface. For Brittle, that means one memory in particular...

    Again.Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.original cover of ISBN 0316229296/9780316229296

    Her only companions being her ailing grandfather and a nomadic dog named Huck, Maia resents being alone. She spends her days wandering the ruins of a population long-gone, dreaming of a place where the few humans left behind can start again—a place her grandfather insists is a myth.But Maia cannot escape a strong and mysterious force calling her out into the world, as well as bizarre events following her around the island. There is something strangely enchanted about the land in which she lives… or is it her?When Maia hears a rumor that people are heading to The Old Arctic Circle half a world away, she knows this is where her destiny lies—until a devastating turn of events seems to shatter any hope of reaching her destination. Clinging to the edge of her life, Maia must come face to face with the transformative power of fate, discovering the one thing she has spent her life running from may be the only thing to save her.

    We cured cancer. We cured the common cold. We died.This is the story of how we rose.When will you rise?Countdown is a novella set in the world of Feed. Word count: ~19,500

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    It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too.Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.

    For years he has lived in remote outposts, studying the sky for evidence of how the universe began. At his latest posting, in a research center in the Arctic, rumors of war arrive. The scientists are forced to evacuate, but Augustine stubbornly refuses to abandon his work. Shortly after the others have gone, Augustine discovers a mysterious child, Iris, and realizes the airwaves have gone silent. They are alone. At the same time, Mission Specialist Sullivan is aboard the Aether on its return flight from Jupiter. The astronauts are the first human beings to delve this deep into space, and Sully has made peace with the sacrifices required of her: a daughter left behind, a marriage ended. So far the journey has been a success, but when Mission Control falls inexplicably silent, Sully and her crew mates are forced to wonder if they will ever get home. As Augustine and Sully each face an uncertain future against forbidding yet beautiful landscapes, their stories gradually intertwine in a profound and unexpected conclusion. In crystalline prose, Good Morning, Midnight poses the most important questions: What endures at the end of the world? How do we make sense of our lives?

    Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent - and nearly five million souls in the United States alone - the disease causes "Lock In": Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.A quarter of a century later, in a world shaped by what's now known as "Haden's syndrome," rookie FBI agent Chris Shane is paired with veteran agent Leslie Vann. The two of them are assigned what appears to be a Haden-related murder at the Watergate Hotel, with a suspect who is an "integrator" - someone who can let the locked in borrow their bodies for a time. If the Integrator was carrying a Haden client, then naming the suspect for the murder becomes that much more complicated.But "complicated" doesn't begin to describe it. As Shane and Vann began to unravel the threads of the murder, it becomes clear that the real mystery - and the real crime - is bigger than anyone could have imagined. The world of the locked in is changing, and with the change comes opportunities that the ambitious will seize at any cost. The investigation that began as a murder case takes Shane and Vann from the halls of corporate power to the virtual spaces of the locked in, and to the very heart of an emerging, surprising new human culture. It's nothing you could have expected.

    Science has declared re-incarnation a fact and legally sanctioned death houses have sprouted up like mushrooms in overcrowded cities. Those so-called ‘Last Resorts’ provide the paying guest with the tools and the know-how for a successful exit from life—with one simple rule: once checked in, the check-out is feet-first only.Nobody leaves a ‘Last Resort’ alive.Ansel Grayson has been a resident at the ‘Hotel Terminus’ for over twelve years, unable to take the last step. On the day he finally works up the nerve to check out and hang himself, he is interrupted by Nikki Forlan, the most recent addition to the guest list.Ansel and Nikki, broken by life, find themselves drawn into each other’s orbit, and with their final check-outs looming, they try to discover a reason to live, certain they will have to die.

    There was no warning and no time to stage any kind of defence. Instead countries started to go silent. They were no longer reachable and no one knew what was happening. So when Canada went dark; everyone knew America would be next. My name is Matilda, but everyone calls me Mattie. I was at college in Oregon when the attack began. By the time Canada went quiet, we’d had enough. So two of my friends and I decided to join the fight in Vancouver and find out what was really happening. That is when everything changed. What we found was death, destruction and machines that were slaughtering humans. There would be no escape for us; no place to go where the machines couldn't reach us. I had no future, but then I met him. My name is Marduke and I’m part of the reason Earth is being invaded. I’m from a different planet and even though I look human, I’m not. But when Earth was invaded, I began running from my family and running for my life. Then she saved me. She made me feel something I’d never felt before. She saved my life and opened my heart to the possibility of love, she changed me forever. What are the chances of finding your true love right when the world is ending? What kind of cruel fate places them together under those circumstances? What is she supposed to do when he tells her he is not from Earth? When she finds out that he is one of the invaders? What does she do when she finds out everything she thought she knew was wrong? What does he do when he has to make a choice between protecting her and saving himself? How can they overcome everything standing in their way? Professionally edited by C&D Editing NA Science –Fiction Romance Approx 86,000 words Recommended for readers 17+ due to adult situations, violence and occasional swearing. Australian English used throughout story.