Book picks similar to
Q & A by Keith R.A. DeCandido


star-trek
science-fiction
sci-fi
fiction

Death in Winter


Michael Jan Friedman - 2005
    Though, for one reason or another, Picard never acted on his feelings, he found a measure of contentment as Beverly's close friend, colleague, and daily breakfast partner. But when Doctor Crusher leaves her position on the Enterprise to become the chief medical officer of Starfleet, the brightest light in Picard's life is taken from him. And he has hardly resigned himself to his loss when he learns that Beverly has been declared missing in action on a distant planet -- and presumed dead. Kevratas is a bleak, frozen world on the far side of the Romulan Neutral Zone where the Federation has become the plague-ravaged natives' only real hope of survival and freedom. Starfleet has no recourse but to send in another team to try to save the Kevrata -- and Picard is the natural choice. Critical to the success of his mission are two colleagues who served under him when he commanded the Starship Stargazer -- Pug Joseph, a man with a past to live down, and Doctor Carter Greyhorse, who has served time for attempted murder -- as well as a Romulan who left his people years earlier and never expected to return. Together, they follow the trail of Beverly Crusher to Kevratas, determined to succeed where the doctor failed. On the Romulan homeworld, meanwhile, the political vacuum created by the demise of Praetor Shinzon has been filled by his staunchest supporter, Senator Tal'aura. But there are those who oppose her, including Commander Donatra and the warbird fleets under her command, because of the way Tal'aura has mishandled rebellions on the Empire's subject worlds. And one rebellion in particular; the movement for self-determination on frigid Kevratas. So begins a desperate struggle -- not only for the freedom of the long-oppressed Kevrata but also for the soul of the Romulan Empire. Before it's over, destinies will be forged and shattered, the Empire will be shaken to its ancient foundations, and Jean-Luc Picard's life will be changed...forever.

Before Dishonor


Peter David - 2007
    The entire race thinks with one mind and strives toward one purpose: to add our biological distinctiveness to their own and wipe out individuality, to make every living thing Borg.In over two centuries, the Federation has never encountered a greater threat. Twice Starfleet assembled and threw countless starships to stand against them. The Borg were stopped, the price paid in blood. Humanity breathed a sigh of relief, assuming it was safe. And with the destruction of the transwarp conduits, the Federation believed that the killing blow had finally been struck against the Borg.Driven to the point of extinction, the Borg continue to fight for their very existence, for their culture. They will not be denied. They must not be stopped. The old rules and assumptions regarding how the Collective should act have been dismissed. Now the Borg kill first, assimilate later.When the Enterprise manages to thwart them once again, the Borg turn inward. The dark places that even the drones never realized existed are turned outward against the enemy they have never been able to defeat. What is revealed is the thing that no one believed the Borg could do.

Losing the Peace


William Leisner - 2009
    She has survived. But her homeworld, Deneva, one of the planets targeted in the massive Borg invasion, has not. The entire surface has been wiped clean of everything, killing anyone who did not evacuate and rendering the planet uninhabitable. Choudhury is left to wonder whether her family was one of the displaced. Or are they all gone forever?The Enterprise is just one ship, and Jasminder Choudhury is just one officer, yet her story is being repeated over and over across the galaxy. Hundreds of thousands of displaced persons haunt the space ways, seeking comfort, looking for someplace safe, somewhere, anyway to find solace. Captain Jean-Luc Picard is ordered to do everything he can to rescue and if need be to recover the lost souls from the Borg invasion.For the first time in generations, citizens of the Federation know want, uncertainty, and fear. Bloodied yet unbowed, the Federation now stands on the edge of a precipice. The captain of the Enterprise finds himself in the unenviable position of wondering whether it is true that those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace.

Children of the Storm


Kirsten Beyer - 2011
    Non-corporeal and traveling through space in vessels apparently propelled by thought alone, the Children of the Storm at one time managed to destroy thousands of Borg ships without firing a single conventional weapon. Now in its current mission to the Delta Quadrant, Captain Chakotay and Fleet Commander Afsarah Eden must unravel why three Federation starships — the U.S.S. Quirinal, Planck, and Demeter — have suddenly been targeted without provocation and with extreme prejudice by the powerful Children of the Storm... with thousands of Starfleet lives at stake from an enemy that the Federation can only begin to comprehend...

I, Q


John de Lancie - 1999
    Now de Lancie and Peter David, the bestselling author of such acclaimed novels as Q-in-Law and Q-Squared, have joined forces to send Q on an unforgettable cosmic odyssey, told from the mischievous trickster's own unique point of view. The Maelstrom, a metaphysical whirlpool of apocalyptic proportions, is pulling all of reality into its maw, devouring the totality of time and space while bringing together people and places from throughout the universe. The Q Continuum pronounces that the end of everything has come, but Q refuses to meekly accept the end of all he has known. Defying the judgment of the Continuum, he sets out to derail doomsday—at whatever the cost. Q has been everywhere and done everything, but now he's in for a cosmic thrill ride beyond even his own astonishingly unlimited imagination. Old friends and adversaries wait in unexpected places, transcendent hazards abound, and the multiverse's most unlikely savior encounters wonders and dangers enough to render Q himself speechless. Almost. Can even Q, reluctantly assisted by Jean Luc Picard, prevent the Universe as We Know It from literally going down the drain? I, Q is a wild and witty voyage through the secret soul of creation—as only Q can tell it!

Takedown


John Jackson Miller - 2015
    Enterprise!When renegade Federation starships begin wreaking destruction across the Alpha Quadrant, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise are shocked to discover that the mastermind behind this sudden threat is none other than Picard’s protégé and friend: Admiral William T. Riker. The newly minted admiral is on board the U.S.S. Aventine as part of a special assignment, even as the mystery deepens behind his involvement in the growing crisis. But the Aventine is helmed by Captain Ezri Dax—someone who is no stranger to breaking Starfleet regulations—and her starship is by far the faster vessel…and Riker cannot yield even to his former mentor. It’s a battle of tactical geniuses and a race against time as Picard struggles to find answers before the quadrant’s great powers violently retaliate against the Federation… ™, ®, & © 2015 CBS Studios, Inc. STAR TREK and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Genesis Wave: Book 1 of 3


John Vornholt - 2000
    After the cataclysmic death of the Genesis Planet, Starfleet wisely decided to destroy all data and records on Project Genesis, hoping to bury its deadly secret forever. Now, nearly a century later, all that remains of Genesis is the knowledge stored in the mind of an elderly, almost forgotten scientist named Dr Carol Marcus. But Dr Marcus has gone missing, and a mysterious wave of energy is sweeping across the Alpha Quadrant at terrfying speed, wiping out the populations of entire planets, rearranging matter on a molecular level to create bizarre new landscapes and lifeforms. The USS Enterprise, commanded by Captain Jean-Luc Picard, is the first Starfleet vessel to discover the threat, but they are not the only ones in danger. Trillions of souls and hundreds of inhabited planets lie in the path of the mutagenic wave, which is expanding outwards as it traverses the cosmos, and Earth itself faces total obliteration!

Dark Mirror


Diane Duane - 1993
    Humanity’s greatest dreams have become reality. Along with dozens of other sentient races, the people of Earth have formed the United Federation of Planets—a galactic civilization that governs much of the known universe for the good of all. Over the past two centuries, mankind has tamed its basest instincts, and reached the stars…But suppose it hadn’t happened that way at all? Suppose instead humanity’s darkest impulses, its most savage, animalistic desires had triumphed? Suppose that the empire mankind made out in the stars was one ruled by terror, where only those willing to brutalize their own kind and their neighbors could survive?One hundred years ago, four crewmembers of the U.S.S. Enterprise crossed the dimensional barrier and found just such an empire. A mirror image of their own universe, populated by nightmare duplicates of their shipmates. Barely able to escape with their lives, they returned thankful that the accident that brought them there could not be duplicated. Or so they thought.But now the scientists of that empire have found a doorway into our universe. Thier plan: to destroy from within, to replace one of our starships with one of theirs. Their victims: the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D.

The Crimson Shadow


Una McCormack - 2013
    For generations, dissenting voices were silenced by either fear or an early grave. When their wartime ally, the Dominion, suddenly turned on them, seeking to transform Cardassia into a tomb for every last member of their race, their old adversary—the United Federation of Planets— put an end to the carnage, and even now works to help rebuild Cardassia Prime. To celebrate this alliance, the Castellan of the Cardassian Union is to welcome the Federation president to Cardassia Prime. As a symbol of this deepening friendship, the U.S.S. Enterprise-E is tasked to carry the Cardassian ambassador to the Federation back home. For his part, Ambassador Elim Garak is working with Captain Jean-Luc Picard to oversee the diplomatic reception that will commemorate the last of Starfleet’s personnel finally leaving the homeworld. However, there are malevolent forces at work, who even now strive to “restore Cardassia to its proper place and glory,” and are willing to do anything to achieve their goal....

Unity


S.D. Perry - 2003
    Investigation into the murder revealed the presence of a parasitic conspiracy threatening not only Bajor's future with the Federation, but the very survival of both. At the same time, the fracturing of Bajor's theology has put its people on the threshold of a startling transformation -- and its consequences now rest on the shoulders of Colonel Kira Nerys, who months ago defied the religious authority of her planet by making public an ancient heretical text that challenged the very foundation of the Bajoran faith. Now, after a harrowing and historic voyage of exploration in the Gamma Quadrant, the weary, wounded crew of "Starship Defiant" is at last coming home. But the joy of their return is short-lived as the crew becomes swept up in the crisis aboard the station, with many of them confronting personal issues that force them to make life-altering choices. Among those is a grief-stricken Commander Elias Vaughn, who reaches a crossroads in his life's journey and learns the true purpose for which he was Touched by the Prophets -- as well as the ultimate fate of Captain Benjamin Sisko. And...somewhere on Bajor...a child long awaited is about to be born.

Taking Wing


Michael A. Martin - 2005
    Starfleet is renewing its mission of peaceful exploration, diplomacy, and the expansion of knowledge. Among the starships spearheading that endeavor is the U.S.S. Titan, commanded by Captain William T. Riker and manned by the most biologically varied and culturally diverse crew in Starfleet history.But their mission does not begin according to plan.In the wake of Star Trek ® Nemesis, Praetor Shinzon, slayer of the Romulan Senate, is dead. The power vacuum created by his demise has put the Romulan Star Empire, longtime adversary of the Federation, at the brink of civil war. Competing factions now vie for control of their fragmenting civilization, and if the empire should fall, that entire area of the galaxy may destabilize.To restore order to the region, Titan 's long-anticipated mission of exploration is delayed as Starfleet assigns Riker to set up power-sharing talks among the Romulan factions. But even as the first tentative steps are taken toward building a new Romulus, the remnants of the Tal Shiar, the dreaded Romulan intelligence service, are regrouping behind the scenes for a power play of their own. With no other help available, Riker and the Titan crew become the last hope to prevent the quadrant from falling into chaos.

The Light Fantastic


Jeffrey Lang - 2014
    And then Data was destroyed. Four years later, Data’s creator, Noonien Soong, sacrificed his life and resurrected his android son, who in turn revived the positronic brain of his own artificial daughter, Lal. Having resigned his commission, the former Starfleet officer now works to make his way on an alien world, while also coming to grips with the very human notion of wanting versus having a child. But complicating Data’s new life is an unexpected nemesis from years ago on the U.S.S. Enterprise—the holographic master criminal Professor James Moriarty. Long believed to be imprisoned in a memory solid, Moriarty has created a siphon into the "real" world as a being of light and thought. Moriarity wants the solid form that he was once told he could never have, and seeks to manipulate Data into finding another android body for him to permanently inhabit...even if it means evicting the current owner, and even if that is Data himself. ™, ®, & © 2013 CBS Studios, Inc. STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Persistence of Memory


David Mack - 2012
    A BROKEN PROMISE One desperate father risks all for the son he abandoned forty years ago—but is he ready to pay the price for redemption?A DARING MISSION Against overwhelming odds, and with time running out, Commander Worf has only one chance to avert a disaster. But how high a price will he pay for victory?

Rogue


Andy Mangels - 2001
    Amoral, shrouded in secrecy, answerable to no one, Section 31 is the mysterious covert operations division of Starfleet, a rogue shadow group committed to safeguarding the Federation at any cost. Six months before their ultimate battle against the Borg for the fate of Earth, Captain Jean-Luc Piccard and the crew of the "USS Enterprise"™ face a very different kind of crisis. A world in turmoil becomes the focal point of conspiracies and betrayal as an unexpected reunion brings with it startling revelations. Old friends become bitter enemies and one young officer reaches a crossroad when he's forced to choose between the greater good of the Federation and the ideals for which it stands.NO LAW. NO CONSCIENCE. NO STOPPING THEM.

Encounter at Farpoint


David Gerrold - 1987
    Enterprise is en route to Cygnus IV, home of the technologically illiterate Bandi and their mysteriously advanced Farpoint Station. After adding to its crew complement from Deneb IV they are harassed and prosecuted by an omnipotent being named Q, who claims that humanity has not progressed beyond barbarism. Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise must defend themselves by solving the mystery of Farpoint Station in a manner satisfactory to their newest judge and nemesis.