Book picks similar to
City of the Sun by Sarah Bryant
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Little Brother
Cory Doctorow - 2008
Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.When the DHS finally releases them, his injured best friend Darryl does not come out. The city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: "M1k3y" will take down the DHS himself.
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury - 1953
Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.
A Short Stay in Hell
Steven L. Peck - 2011
Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life.In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.
The Quantum Price: Ethan Price Book One
Malcolm Murdock - 2019
They used him to kill.
Now they’ve lost control.
When a man wakes up face-down in the middle of a garbage dump, he naturally has a few questions.Why is he in a hand-tailored suit with a bullet hole in his back? Why are there homicidal robots trying to kill him? Why can’t he remember his own name?
And how did he get so good at killing?
But the more he learns, the less he likes—and the more he starts to think this will end very, very badly. With a faceless organization hunting him, bloody flashbacks haunting him, and an intriguing new companion helping him, the clock is ticking on whether he can escape his past before it devours him.Will he recover his memories before it’s too late, or be forced to become a pawn for the forces hunting him down?Perfect for fans of The Bourne Identity and James Prescott, The Quantum Price is the thrilling first book in the brand-new Ethan Price series. If you like your technothrillers with a side of cyberpunk, scroll up and grab your copy today!
Roadside Picnic
Arkady Strugatsky - 1972
His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he’ll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems.First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years.
Stormcrow
N.C. Reed - 2016
Captain Meredith Simmons and her pilot husband Lincoln were formerly officers for the Commonwealth but each of them have now traded their commissions for civilian life and now make a living running cargo on their space freighter Celia. Trade is brisk between the planets and there is good money to be made running cargo to and from the Sphere and the Interior World planets, but there is even more to be made running out to the more remote...and more dangerous...Frontier World planets of the Rim. Captain Simmons has managed to put together a decent crew that has stuck together for the past three years. Her crew chief, Carolyn Faulks, was a former Commonwealth Marine Gunnery Sargeant, and is fanatically loyal to the Captain, if a bit of a bully now and then to everyone else. The "almost doctor" medic on board, who also moonlights as the ship's cook, is Tony Gannini, an outgoing Italian that never seems to have a care in the world. Rounding out the crew is the quiet, introverted engineer, Sean Galen. Everything is business as usual until a customer makes the unusual request for the Celia to take a young girl home with them as a passenger back to her people on the outer rim. As time passes the crew begins to notice that there is more than meets the eye to their young passenger. But then again on the Celia, even after spending three years together, the crew begins to realize that almost none of them are what they seem to be.
Imaginations
Tara Brown - 2013
Not just any boy, but one she is certain she has met before.Only that's not possible.Gwyn lives in the last city of men, where memories are made through repetition and yesterday is forgotten with the reset. The world has peace, what's left of it anyway. Peace that has been gained through sacrifice.But as behavioural school ends and Gwyn is sent out into the work force, she discovers that not everyone resets. Not everything is as it seems. The peace they live in is as fake as the masks they wear in the clubs. She starts to see that the walls surrounding the city, to keep the monsters out, might actually be keeping them in.And maybe the boy she thought she knew, isn't what he appeared to be at all.Don't miss this exciting new Post-Apocalyptic Romance from the author of the bestselling series The Born Trilogy!
Amberlough
Lara Elena Donnelly - 2017
The radical One State Party—nicknamed the Ospies—is gaining popular support to unite Gedda's four municipal governments under an ironclad, socially conservative vision.Not everyone agrees with the Ospies' philosophy, including master spy Cyril DePaul and his lover Aristide Makricosta, smuggler and emcee at the popular Bumble Bee Cabaret. When Cyril's cover is blown on a mission, however, he must become a turncoat in exchange for his life. Returning to Amberlough under the Ospies' watchful eye, Cyril enters a complex game of deception. One of his concerns is safeguarding Aristide, who refuses to let anyone—the crooked city police or the homophobic Ospies—dictate his life.Enter streetwise Cordelia Lehane, top dancer at the Bee and Aristide’s runner, who could be the key to Cyril’s plans—if she can be trusted. As the twinkling lights of nightclub marquees yield to the rising flames of a fascist revolution, these three will struggle to survive using whatever means—and people—necessary. Including each other.
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Angela Carter - 1972
But Albertina, a beautiful woman made of glass, seems only to appear to him in his dreams. Meeting on his adventures a host of cannibals, centaurs and acrobats, Desiderio must battle against unreality and the warping of time and space to be with her, as the Doctor reduces Desiderio's city to a chaotic state of emergency - one ridden with madness, crime and sexual excess.A satirical tale of magic and sex, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is a dazzling quest for truth, love and identity.
Deviations
Crystal C. Johnson - 2014
They’re trying to limit the amount of people in the world.” I watch him stand and turn for the door. “There’s a lot about your parents that you don’t know and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can start doing something about it.”From the day we’re born, we’re introduced to the marvels of modern medicine. It is amazing how a simple vaccine can prevent polio, hepatitis B, rotavirus—the list is almost endless. But, what if that were no longer the case? What if the government unleashed each virus for the sole purpose of controlling the population? Henly Sawyer finds herself discovering this truth for the first time, and as she does, the world that she thought she knew shatters. She wakes in Aurora, a quarantine miles from home, and is forced into a grueling reality. Henly strives to piece together the truth about her parents and their involvement in the unfolding chaos. With the help of her new friends, Renner and Dex, Henly sets out to understand a world that is now filled with Deviations—an infected group of violent, murderous humans.
On the Beach
Nevil Shute - 1957
Among them is an American submarine captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and children in the United States must be dead. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from somewhere near Seattle, and Captain Towers must lead his submarine crew on a bleak tour of the ruined world in a desperate search for signs of life. On the Beach is a remarkably convincing portrait of how ordinary people might face the most unimaginable nightmare.
The One
John Marrs - 2016
Just a quick mouth swab and soon you’ll be matched with your perfect partner the one you are genetically made for.That’s the promise made by Match Your DNA. A decade ago, the company announced that they had found the gene that pairs each of us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance and love.Now five very different people have received the notification that they’ve been “Matched.” They’re each about to meet their one true love. But “happily ever after” isn’t guaranteed for everyone. Because even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking than others…A word-of-mouth hit in the United Kingdom, The One is a fascinating novel that shows how even the simplest discoveries can have complicated consequences.
The Blizzard
Vladimir Sorokin - 2010
In Sorokin’s scabrous dystopian satire, Day of the Oprichnik, American readers were introduced to his distinctive style, which combines an edgy avant-garde sensibility with a fondness for the absurd and even grotesque—all in the service of bringing out stinging truths about life in modern-day Russia.In The Blizzard, we are immediately immersed in the atmosphere of a 19th century Russia familiar to us from the works of Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. District doctor Garin is desperately trying to reach the village of Dolgoye, where a mysterious epidemic called the “Chernukha” is raging and threatens to spread throughout the country, turning people into zombies. The doctor carries with him a vaccine that will prevent the spread of this terrible disease, but is stymied in his travels by an all-consuming snow storm, an impenetrable blizzard that turns a drive that should last only a few hours into a voyage of days, and finally, a journey into eternity.The Blizzard dramatizes a timeless metaphysical predicament. The characters in this nearly post-apocalyptic world are constantly in motion, and yet somehow trapped and frozen—spending day and night fighting their way through the storm on an expedition filled with extraordinary encounters, dangerous escapades, torturous imaginings, and amorous adventures. In the fantastical realm Sorokin has invented, the reader also loses her bearings, subject to the vicissitudes of time and change, to both the movement of life and its stagnancy. Hypnotic, fascinating, and richly descriptive, The Blizzard is a seminal work from one of the most inventive writers working today.
The Queen of the Tearling
Erika Johansen - 2014
Plain and serious, a girl who loves books and learning, Kelsea bears little resemblance to her mother, the vain and frivolous Queen Elyssa. But though she may be inexperienced and sheltered, Kelsea is not defenseless: Around her neck hangs the Tearling sapphire, a jewel of immense magical power; and accompanying her is the Queen’s Guard, a cadre of brave knights led by the enigmatic and dedicated Lazarus. Kelsea will need them all to survive a cabal of enemies who will use every weapon—from crimson-caped assassins to the darkest blood magic—to prevent her from wearing the crown.Despite her royal blood, Kelsea feels like nothing so much as an insecure girl, a child called upon to lead a people and a kingdom about which she knows almost nothing. But what she discovers in the capital will change everything, confronting her with horrors she never imagined. An act of singular daring will throw Kelsea’s kingdom into tumult, unleashing the vengeance of the tyrannical ruler of neighboring Mortmesne: the Red Queen, a sorceress possessed of the darkest magic. Now Kelsea will begin to discover whom among the servants, aristocracy, and her own guard she can trust.But the quest to save her kingdom and meet her destiny has only just begun—a wondrous journey of self-discovery and a trial by fire that will make her a legend . . . if she can survive.This book will be a beautifully designed package with illustrated endpapers, a map of the Tearling, and a ribbon marker.
True Beauty
Priscilla Wu - 2014
It is the people living in it that are ugly."For centuries it has been tradition for the child of a noble to receive a Noye, a slave, as their coming of age present for their 21st birthday. Although it is only Hana Acacia's 18th birthday, her father has deemed it appropriate to grant her with the one thing she dreads the most, a Noye. Hana has lived her life categorizing everything she has ever encountered into either being beautiful or hideous - but with an exceptional twist; she doesn't judge on appearance, but instead by what each individual holds within. That is why, despite his rough hair, harsh eyes, and faded scars, Sean Ambrosia is the most beautiful thing Hana has ever laid her eyes on.