Book picks similar to
The Future Was Now by J.R. Harber


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science-fiction
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Kiss the Earth


Neal Sehgal
    KISS THE EARTH is a collection of poetry, prose, and photography that explores the bliss of falling in love, perseverance through adversity, finding peace within one’s self, and reverence for all that this life has for us to experience.

Lying to Children


Alex ShahlaAlex Shahla - 2017
    In this collection of sometimes outrageous, sometimes sad, often heartwarming interconnected vignettes, author Alex Shahla enters the fray with a delightful confessional celebration of family life told in stories from a dad’s unique perspective. Centered around the untruths parents regularly tell their kids in an effort to protect (or silence) them—from “Daddy Loves his Job” to “There’s a Jolly Fat Man who Brings You Presents (Assembly Required)” —Lying to Children is an unforgettable familial history filled with laughter, tears, and life lessons, and brimming over with a somewhat-less-than-perfect suburban dad’s unwavering love.

Hohenstaufen: Mark of the Beast


Daniel R. Hopkins - 2018
    Instead of going to heaven or hell, he wakes up on the other side of the world—almost eight hundred years back in time. It’s 1277 in the Holy Land. The Crusaders are making their last stand. The unclaimed throne of Jerusalem is their only hope. But things get complicated when a girl only Arjen can see or hear puts him on that throne. Arjen’s mission to discover who he is and why he’s here quickly becomes one of survival as his reign sets him down the path of war with a mad conqueror. Caught in a love triangle between a gold-hearted nun and a demoness from hell, Arjen must choose between his destiny and his soul—even when he’s already lost both.

H-17 The Morningstar Abduction


Jake Vickers - 2017
    The class of child genius Gabby Morningstar is interrupted by the news that her parents have been murdered. The detective assigned to the homicide then abducts her. Before Gabby can piece together her situation, she's sold to a mysterious group of individuals lurking off of an unmarked highway exit. Gabby's feral runaway sister, Nikki, will stop at nothing to find her.

Sonora and the Eye of the Titans


T.S. Hall - 2011
    With the help of her bumbling warlock guardian Sasquatch and her three best friends, Allora must find the answers to a complex riddle that will reveal the location of a powerful artifact used during the time of the Titan Wars.

Grand Portage


Scott Seeger - 2019
    He enjoys his expensive toys, lush mansion, and life of comfort, but something is missing. A chance meeting with fellow billionaires sparks his imagination and he sets forth on a new venture. He will buy a nuclear aircraft carrier, sail it through the Great Lakes, drag it across Northern Minnesota to an Indian reservation, and hook it up to the power grid. With this bold publicity stunt, he hopes to reinvigorate the nuclear energy debate in this country. Intrepid visionaries see into the future and trudge forward. They are the builders of societies and the makers of progress. But sometimes they get sidetracked and lull into comfort. Along the way Tyler encounters an echelon of obstacles from angry energy companies to zealous environmentalists, and even his own nuclear physicist peers. The government wants to shut him down, his own wife thinks he’s crazy, and he’s running out of money. But Tyler also learns that people love getting behind a man with a vision. In this adventure we learn of leadership, ingenuity in the face of overwhelming odds, and what it is to take people with you. Who will you take with when your inspiration comes?

War Bunny (War Bunny Chronicles, #1)


Christopher St. John - 2021
    She asks pointed questions of the warren elders, and gets exiled for it. Without a warren, she's enormously vulnerable, but she reaches out to others in desperate straits. Soon, she's locked in a ferocious battle for survival—and maybe even freedom.Part naturalistic adventure, part modern-day fable, War Bunny is a fast-paced story about friendship, honor, standing up for yourself, and coming of age.This is the first book in a series. Now available on Audible!--- Summerday, (War Bunny Chronicles, #2), will be published soon.

Bell Hammers


Lancelot Schaubert - 2020
    Remmy's life of constant schemes and pranks and a lifelong feud with classmate Jim Johnstone and the local oil drilling company proves consequential. This is a hoot."- Publisher's Weekly🏆 finalist for Glimmer Train's Fiction Open.PRANKS. OIL. PROTEST. JOKES BETWEEN NEWLYWEDS.AND ONE HILARIOUS SIEGE OF A MAJOR CORPORATION.Remmy grows up with Beth in Bellhammer, Illinois as oil and coal companies rob the land of everything that made it paradise. Under his Grandad, he learns how to properly prank his neighbors, friends, and foes. Beth tries to fix Remmy by taking him to church. Under his Daddy, Remmy starts the Bell Hammer Construction Company, which depends on contracts from Texarco Oil. And Beth argues with him about how to build a better business. Together, Remmy and Beth start to build a great neighborhood of "merry men" carpenters: a paradise of s’mores, porch furniture, newborn babies, and summer trips to Branson where their boys pop the tops off of the neighborhood’s two hundred soda bottles. Their witty banter builds a kind of castle among a growing nostalgia.Then one of Jim Johnstone’s faulty Texarco oil derricks falls down on their house and poisons their neighborhood's well.Poisoned wells escalate to torched dog houses. Torched dog houses escalate to stolen carpentry tools and cancelled contracts. Cancelled contracts escalate to eminent domain. Sick of the attacks from Texaco Oil on his neighborhood, Remmy assembles his merry men:"We need the world's greatest prank. One grand glorious jest that'll bloody the nose of that tyrant. Besides, pranks and jokes don't got no consequences, right?"

The Apocalypse Seven


Gene Doucette - 2021
    Not with a bang, but a whatever.The whateverpocalypse. That’s what Touré, a twenty-something Cambridge coder, calls it after waking up one morning to find himself seemingly the only person left in the city. Once he finds Robbie and Carol, two equally disoriented Harvard freshmen, he realizes he isn’t alone, but the name sticks: Whateverpocalypse. But it doesn’t explain where everyone went. It doesn’t explain how the city became overgrown with vegetation in the space of a night. Or how wild animals with no fear of humans came to roam the streets.Add freakish weather to the mix, swings of temperature that spawn tornadoes one minute and snowstorms the next, and it seems things can’t get much weirder. Yet even as a handful of new survivors appear—Paul, a preacher as quick with a gun as a Bible verse; Win, a young professional with a horse; Bethany, a thirteen-year-old juvenile delinquent; and Ananda, an MIT astrophysics adjunct—life in Cambridge, Massachusetts gets stranger and stranger.The self-styled Apocalypse Seven are tired of questions with no answers. Tired of being hunted by things seen and unseen. Now, armed with curiosity, desperation, a shotgun, and a bow, they become the hunters. And that’s when things truly get weird.

The Dark Awakening


D.L. Blade - 2018
    An ancient witch. And a vampire who desires her blood. Mercy knows what true pain is—she’s lived with it since her high school graduation when someone drove a knife into her chest. She’s taken comfort in knowing they're locked away, but now, months later, a new threat lurks in the shadows—a stalker—and he’s watching her every move.As she nears her eighteenth birthday, a series of strange events lead Mercy to discover a long-held dark secret that shakes her conscience and stirs a magic inside her. Her body heals at an unnatural speed, and a power ignites at her fingertips. She has no idea what’s happening until a mysterious stranger, Caleb, comes into town, and reveals to Mercy a past life she can’t remember—she’s an ancient witch, vampires are real, and she is destined to destroy them.As Caleb teaches Mercy how to harness her magic, a plan unfolds within Salem’s most powerful vampire clan–and their leader, Maurice—is coming for her.Mercy must fight to survive and release the dark power she was born with. Because to slay a monster, she must become a monster.◆ A top 10 finalist for young adult books at the Author Academy Awards, 2019 & 2020, and Amazon bestselling author. Immortals of East Greenwich Series-The Dark Awakening-The Dark Underworld-The Dark DeliveranceREADER REVIEWS★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “Character development is fantastic."★ ★ ★ ★ ★ "I didn't see THAT coming!"★ ★ ★ ★ ★ "This book had me in another world without realizing I'd left my own."★ ★ ★ ★ ★ "A definite page turner!"AUTHOR NOTESSecond edition. Complete rewrite, added prologue & 100k more words. (The story, plot and characters are the same) The Chosen Coven series has been renamed Immortals of East Greenwich series.

Forget Tomorrow


Pintip Dunn - 2015
    A world-class swimmer. A renowned scientist.Or in Callie’s case, a criminal.In her vision, she sees herself murdering her gifted younger sister. Before she can process what it means, Callie is arrested and placed in Limbo―a prison for those destined to break the law. With the help of her childhood crush, Logan, a boy she hasn’t spoken to in five years, she escapes the hellish prison.But on the run from her future, as well as the government, Callie sets in motion a chain of events that she hopes will change her fate. If not, she must figure out how to protect her sister from the biggest threat of all.Callie herself.

Broken Skies


Theresa Kay - 2014
    A disillusioned alien boy. They were never meant to meet…When Jax Mitchell’s twin is kidnapped by Earth's alien settlers, the E'rikon, she'll do anything to get him back—even form an alliance with a teenage E'rikon left behind by the same ship that took her brother.Jax agrees to act as a guide, and in return, the alien agrees to sneak her past the human-proof barrier surrounding the E'rikon city. Too bad it's not that simple. Jax soon finds that she's drawn to the alien boy with bright green hair and jewel-like scales on his back—and he's equally affected by her, the courageous redhead with haunted eyes. But she doesn't know the alien's true motives, and he has no idea that she is much more than she seems.With the aliens and the humans at odds, the connection forming between the two teens has consequences. What started off as a rescue mission sets in motion a chain of events that threatens not only the remaining humans and the growing alien society, but Earth itself.

We Hear Voices


Evie Green - 2020
    Rachel knows this. So when her young son, Billy, miraculously recovers from a horrible flu that has proven fatal for many, she thinks nothing of Delfy, his new invisible friend. After all, her family is healthy and that's all that matters.But soon Delfy is telling Billy what to do, and the boy is acting up and lashing out in ways he never has before. As Delfy's influence is growing stranger and more sinister by the day, and rising tensions threaten to tear Rachel's family apart, she clings to one purpose: to protect her children at any cost--even from themselves.We Hear Voices is a mischievously gripping near-future horror novel that tests the fragility of family and the terrifying gray area between fear and love.

Spiritual Intercourse


Maximus Freeman - 2019
    Jump back into the passenger seat as you and Freeman navigate through a kaleidoscope of new trials, tribulations and joys of life. Buckle up!

Elsewhere


Dean Koontz - 2020
    It’s a quiet life, until a local eccentric known as Spooky Ed shows up on their doorstep.Ed entrusts Jeffy with hiding a strange and dangerous object—something he calls “the key to everything”—and tells Jeffy that he must never use the device. But after a visit from a group of ominous men, Jeffy and Amity find themselves accidentally activating the key and discovering an extraordinary truth. The device allows them to jump between parallel planes at once familiar and bizarre, wondrous and terrifying. And Jeffy and Amity can’t help but wonder, could Michelle be just a click away?Jeffy and Amity aren’t the only ones interested in the device. A man with a dark purpose is in pursuit, determined to use its grand potential for profound evil. Unless Amity and Jeffy can outwit him, the place they call home may never be safe again.