Book picks similar to
A Single Blade of Grass - Science Fiction Short Story by Amy Cross


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Cosmic Destinies (Course of the Worlds Book 3)


J.A. Hawkings - 2015
    A crew that desperately wants to find its way home, revolutionary physics, space battles with a powerful superweapon, and a showdown between two civilizations which definitively intertwines the destinies of multiple universes.Course of the Worlds:Book 1 - The Last SpaceshipBook 2 - New WorldBook 3 - Cosmic Destinies

The Methuselah Treatment


T.C. Powell - 2015
    Not everyone can. Who decides? Desperate to save his daughter from a mysterious sickness, Daniel applies for the Methuselah Treatment. If she gets it, his daughter won’t just recover, she’ll live forever. But the drug is tightly controlled, and only the special, the talented, and the truly deserving ever receive it. There is nothing special about Daniel’s destitute ten- year-old girl—or is there?

The Mystic Saga


Scott McElhaney - 2012
    Here you’ll find Indentured, Legacy, and Violation in a single affordable edition. Indentured introduces you to the crew of the USS Pioneer – the world’s first superluminal spacecraft. It eventually leaves you with a question as to what happened to the majority of the crew of that ship when it became stranded in the Beta Hydri system.Legacy brings you the tale of those descendants of the original Pioneer colony in the Beta Hydri System, introducing for the first time, the Mystics. When Legacy is invaded by a fleet of spacecraft, the primitive colony, nine-hundred years in the making, reacts in the only way it knows how. When it comes to the Mystics, this reaction could be quite deadly.Violation finishes up the overall “introduction” to the true Mystic Saga, bringing you the tale of about a dozen USSC assassins sent to a 1940’s Earth. Their sole purpose is to slip in, kill their list of targets, and slip out as quietly as possible. Unfortunately, a disgruntled soldier and a vengeful Mystic raise a significant amount of ruckus along the way.

Mercenary Warden


Miles Rozak - 2020
    Betrayal will make him a legend. Eleven years after the invasion, the galaxy lives in an uneasy peace and Chandler Vail has been changed by war. A killing machine with no battlefield, now he works for a PMC in Special Operations. But when he’s sent to extract a runaway, and the kid dies at the hands of mysterious hitmen, he tracks the killers to a utopian mega-ship built for the galaxy’s wealthy. What he discovers onboard is nothing short of terrifying. Passengers and crew alike show up dead in gruesome, unexplained ways. Outside access to its hatches are sealed, and all contact with the flight deck’s been lost. The ship is flying to a heading unknown… And every person onboard wants him dead. Descending into a fight for survival, soon he discovers an enemy onboard with shocking ties to his past… And a stranglehold on the galaxy. Mercenary Warden is the first scifi thriller in the Shadow Empire series. If you like the gritty combat of The Last Reaper, the camaraderie of Galaxy's Edge, or the fun of The Mandalorian, you won’t be able to stop reading this new action-packed scifi adventure.

Trajectory Book 1


Robert M. Campbell - 2015
    Back on the planet, a group of students discover a mysterious object in space in an impossible orbit. The crew of the Lighthouse space station are shocked by a devastating accident that throws their routine into chaos as they strive to get their ships safely home. Cut off from Earth, the sub-surface Martian Colony of New Providence suddenly finds itself in peril from something hostile and unknown. Is it alien? Is it an AI from Old Earth? After five generations enduring the harsh conditions on Mars, will the 50,000 citizens of New Providence survive this new and terrifying threat?

The Silo Saga Omnibus: Wool, Shift, Dust, and Sil0 Stories


Hugh Howey - 2020
    For the first time ever, The Silo Saga boxed set brings together all of the work in Hugh Howey's ground-breaking, best-selling, acclaimed series, including the individual novels Wool, Shift, and Dust, as well as original essays by the author, and a bonus chapbook of short fiction, Sil 0 Stories .

Solar Storm: Book 2: Season 1: Episodes IV - V


Marcus Richardson - 2018
    Exhausted, wounded, and alone, Jay must find the will to push through and rescue his child. Kate, back in control of her own destiny, faces a taste of the reality FEMA has delivered to the major cities of America in the aftermath of the coronal mass ejection. She must pass through the fire to return home, but only if she's ready to sacrifice everything. Leah and the other students left behind become firsthand witnesses to the desperation of man and what violence that can bring. They are forced to dig deep and defend themselves, or risk becoming a footnote in a new, darker history of mankind. In a world where electricity is a thing of the past, can there be any hope for the future? After all, it's not a matter of if a CME will strike the earth, but when.

Pete, Popeye and Olive (Privateer Tales Shorts Book 2)


Jamie McFarlane - 2016
    When an opportunity to join the Mechanized Infantry presents itself, Pete is first in line. He knows that he's going to get shot at one way or another, but the idea of sitting in a warm and more importantly, dry mechanized suit appeals to him almost beyond reason. While still training in the jungle, Pete's squad is called out to intervene in a skirmish in a nearby village. Of course, the Marines haven't seen fit to certify his squad with ordnance. The fact that they'll be up against a platoon of squishies doesn't convince him that's it's any better of an idea and things turn quickly to crap when they discover the squishies are protected by grav-tanks. Pete, Popeye and Olive is a fast paced, short-story with plenty of action.

The Empire of Bones Saga Volume 1


Terry Mixon - 2017
     EMPIRE OF BONES After a terrible war almost extinguished humanity, the New Terran Empire rises from its own ashes. Sent on an exploratory mission to the dead worlds of the Old Empire, Commander Jared Mertz sets off into the unknown. Only the Old Empire isn’t quite dead after all. Evil lurks in the dark. With everything he holds dear at stake, Jared must fight like never before. Victory means life. Defeat means death. Or worse. VEIL OF SHADOWS Princess Kelsey Bandar made a terrible, life-altering mistake. Her enemies gave her unspeakable agony in return. She must forge the iron will to control the weapon her body has become. If she fails, the monsters who tortured her come for humanity. And horrors worse than she knows wait in the darkness. COMMAND DECISIONS Commander Jared Mertz thought the glories of the Old Terran Empire once more within his people’s grasp. One bold strike to make them his. But no plan survives contact with the enemy. With the odds stacked against him, the battle to save humanity starts now. FIST OF GOD With tens of thousands of lives on the line, Princess Kelsey Bandar must harness the power of Imperial technology to stop terrorists with a nuke. Her friends call her plan suicidal. If they only knew how dangerous it really was.

Victory Conditions, Part 2


Elizabeth Moon - 2011
    Now Commander Vatta is backlocked and loaded and ready to win the fight against the marauding forces of ruthless space pirate Gammis Turek. For Ky, its not just about liberating the star systems subjugated by Turek and defending the rest of the galaxys freedom. Theres also a score to be settled and payback to be meted out for the obliteration of the Vatta Transport dynasty . . . and the slaughter of Kys family. But the enemy have their own escalation efforts under wayincluding the placement of covert agents among the allies with whom Ky and the surviving Vattas are collaborating in the war effort. And when a spy ring linked to a wealthy businessman is exposed, a cracked pirate code reveals a galaxywide conspiracy fueling the proliferation of Tureks warship fleet. Matching the invaders swelling firepower will mean marshaling an armada of battle-ready ships for Ky to lead into combat. But a violent skirmish leaves Ky reelingand presumed dead by her enemies. Now, as Turek readies an all-out attack on the Nexus systema key conquest that could seal the rest of the galaxys doomKy must rally to the challenge, draw upon every last reserve of her strategic skills, and reach deep if she is to tear from the ashes of tragedy her most decisive victory.

Master Walk


Sharon Lee - 2003
    He faces pirates, politics, police, and plots. All he has to do is survive. . .In Master Walk, award-winning science fiction authors Sharon Lee and Steve Miller bring a new YA universe to life. Introducing The Advocacy, a rough-and-tumble civilization that has a mix of sentient races and a lot to learn."Sharon Lee and Steve Miller are so good, it's scary." -- S. L. Viehl, author of the StarDoc series"Nobody else in the field combines space opera and comedy of manners with the same deftness and brio as these two." -- Debra Doyle, co-author of the Mageworlds novels". . .classic space adventure. . .is full of action. . . The world building is outstanding. . ." -- Booklist

The Scout


Eric Tozzi - 2012
    It's heading for Earth at twelve thousand miles per hour...and it will land virtually undetected. For Jack McAllister, a young writer who has finally launched a career for himself, it begins tragically: his estranged father, a former NASA engineer, dies suddenly at his home in Merriweather, Indiana, leaving Jack's Alzheimer's-stricken mother a widow. But in the wake of personal heartbreak, he's confronted by an even more astonishing event--the covert landing of an alien machine in the forest just a few miles outside of town. Now Jack must unmask the true purpose of the otherworldly device that has begun a detailed environmental survey of the woods. Aided by the town's young and resilient female deputy sheriff, he soon discovers that the alien scout is only one small part of a much larger operation, and the countdown to a terrifying global catastrophe is about to take place. Drawing deeply from his father’s scientific influence, all while attempting to avoid the snares of a sexy, seductive and scheming local TV reporter, Jack uncovers—and ultimately finds himself an unwilling component of—an alien plan set to terminate life on Earth as we know it.

Renegade Magic


Jennifer M. Eaton - 2020
    When a small team of criminal buffoons grabs her instead, she’s honor bound to execute them despite their pleas of innocence.The Star Renegade crew is guilty on many counts, and they must be punished for their crimes. However, they use their smuggling profits to feed the hungry. Dania will face her own execution for not enforcing royal edicts, but how can she execute people breaking the law for all the right reasons?Star Renegades is Guardians of the Galaxy meets Firefly and Robin Hood.Jump on board and start your inter-galactic adventure today!

The Godel Operation


James L. Cambias - 2021
    A wild chase through the billion worlds of the Tenth Millennium in search of a mythical weapon that could save civilization—or doom it! A DROID AND HIS BOY, ON A SEARCH FOR A LEGENDARY WEAPON Daslakh is an AI with a problem. Its favorite human, a young man named Zee, is in love with a woman who never existed — and he will scour the Solar System to find her. But in the Tenth Millennium a billion worlds circle the Sun—everything from terraformed planets to artificial habitats, home to a quadrillion beings. Daslakh's nicely settled life gets more complicated when Zee helps a woman named Adya escape a gang of crooks. This gets the pair caught up in the hunt for the Godel Trigger, a legendary weapon left over from an ancient war between humans and machines—which could spell the end of civilization. In their search, they face a criminal cat and her henchmen, a paranoid supermind with a giant laser, the greatest thief in history, and a woman who might actually be Zee's lost love. It's up to Daslakh to save civilization, keep Zee's love life on the right track—and make sure that nobody discovers the real secret of the Godel Trigger. Praise for Arkad's World: “Far-flung adventure . . . Cambias offers up an entertaining coming-of-age novel filled with action and surprises. His aliens are suitably non-human in mannerisms, attitudes, and objectives, and his worldbuilding suggests a vast universe ready for further exploration. Readers . . . will find this hits the spot.”—Publishers Weekly “. . . a classic quest story, a well-paced series of encounters with different folk along the way, building momentum toward a final confrontation with Arkad's past . . . [with] a delicious twist to the end.”—ALA Booklist “Cambias has achieved a feat of world-building: an expansive, believable setting with fascinating aliens, compelling mysteries, and a rich sense of history.”—Bookpage “Drop a teenage boy into a distant planet chock full of colorful aliens—with troubles all their own. Stir, flavor, apply heat. A tour de force in the field, and great, quick fun.”—Gregory Benford Praise for the work of James L. Cambias: “Beautifully written, with a story that captures the imagination the way SF should.”—Booklist, starred review “An engaging nail-biter that is exciting, fun and a satisfying read.”—The Qwillery '“An impressive debut by a gifted writer.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “An exceptionally thoughtful, searching and intriguing debut.”—Kirkus, starred review “James Cambias will be one of the century's major names in hard science fiction.”—Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award–winning author of Red Planet Blues “Fast-paced, pure quill hard science fiction. . . . Cambias delivers adroit plot pivots that keep the suspense coming.”—Gregory Benford, Nebula Award-winning author of Timescape

Wings of Pegasus


Jay Allan - 2019
     A grim, haunted expanse of space, vast lightyears filled with dead, empty worlds. A dark place, the graveyard of an empire…and a frontier where vast riches can be had by those with the courage—and the luck—to survive. But trade in old tech is not for the timid. Prospectors face rival crews, ancient imperial security systems, and the ever-present shadow of the Union’s dread spy agency, Sector Nine, as they plunge forth in search of artifacts worth vast fortunes. Andi Lafarge and the crew of Pegasus are among the elite of the strange brotherhood that ventures forth, seeking the remnants of humanity’s lost past. She and her people will face the deadliest challenges, fight constant battles, and plunge forth into the darkest corners of the lost region of space. Pegasus has a new mission, one far more important than even Andi had her crew realize, a search for ancient technology that could determine the outcome of the next Confederation-Union war. To get it, they must travel to a vast ocean world…and they must find what they seek before Sector Nine does. They will fight, suffer, endure. But they will never fail. Not while Andi Lafarge still draws breath. The Andromeda Chronicles Andromeda Rising Wings of Pegasus Into to Badlands (Coming) Blood on the Stars Book 1 - Duel in the Dark Book 2 - Call to Arms Book 3 - Ruins of Empire Book 4 - Echoes of Glory Book 5 - Cauldron of Fire Book 6 - Dauntless Book 7 - The White Fleet Book 8 - Black Dawn Book 9 - Invasion Book 10 - Nightfall Book 11 - The Grand Alliance Book 12 - The Colossus Book 13 – The Others Book 14 – The Last Stand (Coming)