Book picks similar to
Dream Baby by Bruce McAllister


fiction
science-fiction
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Eternal Life


Dara Horn - 2018
    Her recent troubles—widowhood, a failing business, an unemployed middle-aged son—are only the latest in a litany spanning dozens of countries, scores of marriages, and hundreds of children. In the 2,000 years since she made a spiritual bargain to save the life of her first son back in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, she’s tried everything to free herself, and only one other person in the world understands: a man she once loved passionately, who has been stalking her through the centuries, convinced they belong together forever.But as the twenty-first century begins and her children and grandchildren—consumed with immortality in their own ways, from the frontiers of digital currency to genetic engineering—develop new technologies that could change her fate and theirs, Rachel knows she must find a way out.Gripping, hilarious, and profoundly moving, Eternal Life celebrates the bonds between generations, the power of faith, the purpose of death, and the reasons for being alive.

Bitter Seeds


Ian Tregillis - 2010
    The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in betweenRaybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him.When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities--a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present--Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be.Alan Furst meets Alan Moore in the opening of an epic of supernatural alternate history, the tale of a twentieth century like ours and also profoundly different.

A Trail of Fire


Diana Gabaldon - 2012
    In The Space Between Jamie Fraser's step-daughter Joan is on her way to an abbey in Paris to become a nun - but when she meets the Comte St Germain, a wealthy French aristocrat rumoured to to deal in the occult - she discovers her destiny lies on a quite different path.In The Custom of the Army Lord John Grey is summoned as a witness in a court martial in the wilds of Acadia, only to find himself playing a crucial role in the Battle of Quebec. In A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows a WW2 Spitfire pilot called Jerry MacKenzie crashes near a stone circle and wakes up in the eighteenth century. Can the strange man he meets - who impossibly seems to know him - help him return to his wife and baby son before a terrible fate overtakes them?

Max and the Gatekeeper


James Todd Cochrane - 2007
    This conflict will affect life everywhere, but not everyone is aware it exists. When twelve-year old Max Rigdon is sent to stay with his grandfather for the summer, he unwillingly enters the fight. The day Max steps off the bus he is marked with an evil curse and immediately becomes the target of evil men and creatures with designs on ruling the universe. Not only does this curse cause Max physical pain but it allows his enemies to track and find him. He soon learns that the reason for this unwanted attention is because his grandfather is the keeper of a gateway; a powerful machine that makes travel to hundreds of strange unknown worlds possible. The enemy will do anything to gain possession of this power in their quest to control all worlds. With the help of his friend Cindy and others, Max must quickly learn the necessary skills to survive if he is to avoid the deadly trap that has been planned for him and his grandfather. A trap that has been decades in the making with Max as the missing piece. If successful it will change life as we know it.

Rosetta


Barbara Ewing - 2007
    She thinks she is named after the Princess Rosetta of the fairytales, who married the King of the Peacocks and lived happily ever after. But when she finds that it is a mysterious small port town in Egypt that gave her her name, her interest in hieroglyphics is born. Years later, when Rose is an older, wiser and sadder woman, it is her love of language that saves her life. The French Revolution; the rise of the power of the English church; the battles for Egypt between the British and the French; the discovery of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone in that same small port town - and above all the machinations of a rich, amoral, social-climbing member of the new' aristocracy and the extraordinary characters that surround him - all whirlpool together to carry Rose into France and a shared moment with Napoleon Bonaparte, and into the dark, unknown world of North Africa in her search to understand the meaning of words, and to find a child of her own.

Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization


Tim Lebbon - 2017
    Pictures and Legendary Pictures. When a scientific expedition to an uncharted island awakens titanic forces of nature, a mission of discovery becomes an explosive war between monster and man. Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John Goodman and John C. Reilly star in a thrilling and original new adventure that reveals the untold story of how Kong became King.

The Ant And The Pigeon


Leo Tolstoy - 1978
    

Cat's Cradle


Maurice Baring - 1925
    With subtle twists and turns in a fascinating portrait of society, Maurice Baring conveys the moral that love is too strong to be overcome by mere mortals.

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein


Peter Ackroyd - 2008
    This haunting and atmospheric novel opens with a heated discussion, as Shelley challenges the conventionally religious Frankenstein to consider his atheistic notions of creation and life. Afterward, these concepts become an obsession for the young scientist. As Victor begins conducting anatomical experiments to reanimate the dead, he at first uses corpses supplied by the coroner. But these specimens prove imperfect for Victor's purposes. Moving his makeshift laboratory to a deserted pottery factory in Limehouse, he makes contact with the Doomsday men—the resurrectionists—whose grisly methods put Frankenstein in great danger as he works feverishly to bring life to the terrifying creature that will bear his name for eternity. Filled with literary lights of the day such as Bysshe Shelley, Godwin, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley herself, and penned in period-perfect prose, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein is sure to become a classic of the twenty-first century.

The Man of Legends


Kenneth C. Johnson - 2017
    The bet pays off, resulting in a story that will be popular with book clubs and fun to discuss.” —Associated Press New York City, New Year’s weekend, 2001. Jillian Guthrie, a troubled young journalist, stumbles onto a tantalizing mystery: the same man, unaged, stands alongside Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Gandhi in three different photographs spanning eighty-five years of history.In another part of town, Will—an enigmatic thirty-three-year-old of immense charm, wit, and intelligence—looks forward to the new year with hope and trepidation. Haunted by his secret past and shadowed by a dangerous stranger, he finds himself the object of an intense manhunt spearheaded by an ambitious Vatican emissary and an elderly former UN envoy named Hanna.During the next forty-eight hours, a catastrophic event unites Will, Jillian, and Hanna—and puts them in the crosshairs of a centuries-old international conspiracy. Together, the three must unravel an ancient curse that stretches back two millennia and beyond, and face a primal evil that threatens their lives and thousands more.Award-winning science-fiction mastermind Kenneth Johnson blends epic adventure, romance, and evocative drama into an intense supernatural thriller rooted in one of the great untold legends of human history.

The Standoff


Chuck Hogan - 1995
    Their tense, nine-day standoff builds into a deadly war of nerves between two unforgettably charismatic and strong-minded protagonists.

Doors


Ezra Hannon - 1975
    A crib burglar, he robs apartments—never hotels, never offices, never liquor stores, never jewelers. Strictly apartments, and strictly during the day. He’s paranoid, ready to cut and run as soon as a job turns sour—he’s already been to prison once, and he doesn’t plan on getting caught again—but he’s about to get the offer of a lifetime, the big make he’s always been looking for. How can he say no? This could set him up for life—but it could also send him back to Sing Sing for good. The stake revolves around Daisy, a one-legged hooker who spends Thursday afternoons at the home of a Westchester millionaire. It would be simple if Alex wasn’t increasingly distracted by Jessica, his square neighbor who has no idea he’s a burglar and seems to like him. Between these two very different women lies the biggest opportunity of Alex’s life. Will he get his hands on it before the alarms start to sound?

The Last Days of New Paris


China Miéville - 2016
    In the chaos of wartime Marseille, American engineer - and occult disciple - Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever.It's 1950. A lone surrealist fighter, Thibaut, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts - and by the forces of hell. To escape the city, he must join forces with Sam, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins, and make common cause with a powerful, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse.But Sam is being hunted. And new secrets will emerge that will test all their loyalties - to each other, to Paris old and new, and to reality itself.

Promise Me Tomorrow


Nora Roberts - 1984
    And Byron's searing kiss stirred wild longings in her no other man had roused. her future as an architect was in his hands. But he would trap her in a desperate passion- one never fulfilled by love. She fled to a glamorous assignment in Paris- to the embrace of an elegant Frenchman whose sensuous caress hid a dangerous ambition. Then destiny brought Byron into her life again, tempting her with new dreams, drawing her into the flames of the one unforgettable love that promised to consume her- body, heart and soul.

The Sword of Attila: A Novel of the Last Years of Rome


Michael Curtis Ford - 2005
    Now, from across a broad plain of waving grass, a new enemy had poured out of the East--to be led by a man whose goal was not just victory in battle, but the end of an empire...In his novels of ancient warfare, Michael Curtis Ford captures the roar, clamor and horror of battle as well as the intimate moments of human choice upon which history turns. In his extraordinary new work, he brings to life the buckling Roman empire in 400 A.D., a jagged, sprawling realm of foreign fighters, unstable rulers, and battle lines stretched too far. At this pivotal moment, General Flavius Aetius is forced into a battle he does not want but cannot afford to lose. Once Flavius lived among the wild Huns, rode their stout warhorses and became like a son to their king. Now, he faces a man who once saved his life, a man he fears, loves and admires... a man named Attila--the most dangerous enemy Rome has ever known....