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DISCLAIMER: None of these books will make you rich, good looking, or successful.
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7 Sykos
by Marsheila Rockwell and Jeff Mariotte
Detached from the world, how are seven psychopaths going to save it?
Phoenix is one of the most populated cities in America but not for long. With a mysterious sickness spreading through the streets, two things are becoming very clear: there s no cure, and it doesn t necessarily kill you.
Instead, the so-called Infecteds have become a living plague, killing and eating everyone they come into contact with. Chaos is spreading, and no one is safe.
No one, that is, except for a group of psychos.
Somehow unaffected by the disease and with promises of clemency for their monstrous pasts a group of seven is sent downtown to hopefully find the cause of the disease and therefore a cure. But when the asylum is the size of a city, it no longer matters who is running things.
Not when everyone is running for their lives.
Arkwright
by Allen Steele
In the vein of classic authors such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, Nathan Arkwright is a seminal author of the twentieth century. At the end of his life he becomes reclusive and cantankerous, refusing to appear before or interact with his legion of fans. Little did anyone know, Nathan was putting into motion his true, timeless legacy.
Convinced that humanity cannot survive on Earth, his Arkwright Foundation dedicates itself to creating a colony on an Earth-like planet several light years distant. Fueled by Nathan’s legacy, generations of Arkwrights are drawn together, and pulled apart, by the enormity of the task and weight of their name.
Black City Saint
by Richard A. Knaak
For more than sixteen hundred years, Nick Medea has followed and guarded the Gate that keeps the mortal realm and that of Feirie separate, seeking in vain absolution for the fatal errors he made when he slew the dragon. All that while, he has tried and failed to keep the woman he loves from dying over and over.
Yet in the fifty years since the Night the Dragon Breathed over the city of Chicago, the Gate has not only remained fixed, but open to the trespasses of the Wyld, the darkest of the Feiriefolk. Not only does that mean an evil resurrected from Nick’s own past, but the reincarnation of his lost Cleolinda, a reincarnation destined once more to die.
Nick must turn inward to that which he distrusts the most: the Dragon, the beast he slew when he was still only Saint George. He must turn to the monster residing in him, now a part of him…but ever seeking escape.
The gang war brewing between Prohibition bootleggers may be the least of his concerns. If Nick cannot prevent an old evil from opening the way between realms…then not only might Chicago face a fate worse than the Great Fire, but so will the rest of the mortal realm.
Borderline (The Arcadia Project 1)
by Mishell Baker
A year ago, Millie lost her legs and her filmmaking career in a failed suicide attempt. Just when she’s sure the credits have rolled on her life story, she gets a second chance with the Arcadia Project: a secret organization that polices the traffic to and from a parallel reality filled with creatures straight out of myth and fairy tales.
For her first assignment, Millie is tasked with tracking down a missing movie star who also happens to be a nobleman of the Seelie Court. To find him, she’ll have to smooth-talk Hollywood power players and uncover the surreal and sometimes terrifying truth behind the glamour of Tinseltown. But stronger forces than just her inner demons are sabotaging her progress, and if she fails to unravel the conspiracy behind the noble’s disappearance, not only will she be out on the streets, but the shattering of a centuries-old peace could spark an all-out war between worlds.
The Brotherhood of the Wheel
by R. S. Belcher
In 1119 A.D., a group of nine crusaders became known as the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon–a militant monastic order charged with protecting pilgrims and caravans traveling on the roads to and from the Holy Land. In time, the Knights Templar would grow in power and, ultimately, be laid low. But a small offshoot of the Templars endure and have returned to the order’s original mission: to defend the roads of the world and guard those who travel on them.
Theirs is a secret line of knights: truckers, bikers, taxi hacks, state troopers, bus drivers, RV gypsies–any of the folks who live and work on the asphalt arteries of America. They call themselves the Brotherhood of the Wheel.
Jimmy Aussapile is one such knight. He’s driving a big rig down South when a promise to a ghostly hitchhiker sets him on a quest to find out the terrible truth behind a string of children gone missing all across the country. The road leads him to Lovina Hewitt, a skeptical Louisiana State Police investigator working the same case and, eventually, to a forgotten town that’s not on any map–and to the secret behind the eerie Black-Eyed Kids said to prowl the highways
Chaos Choreography (InCryptid 5)
by Seanan McGuire
Verity Price is back on the West Coast and getting back into the swing of the family business: cryptozoology. She’s rescuing cryptids from bad situations, protecting them from monster-hunters, and generally risking life and limb for the greater good, with her ex-Covenant partner/husband, Dominic, by her side. Her ballroom dance career is behind her…or so she thinks.
When Verity gets the call from the producers of Dance or Die, the reality show she almost won several years before, she finds the lure of a comeback impossible to resist, and she and Dominic are off to L.A. for one last shot at the big time.
Of course, nothing is that simple. When two of her fellow contestants turn up dead, Verity will need every ally she can find—and a couple she wasn’t looking for—in order to navigate the complicated steps of both the tango and a murder investigation without blowing her cover. It doesn’t help that her official family backup is her grandmother, Alice Price-Healy, who thinks “subtle” is something that happens to other people.
Winning this competition may have just become a matter of life and death.
Chosen Soldiers
by R. H. Scott
After the missiles tore up the Earth, societies crumbled, leaving scattered patches of humanity struggling to survive. Slowly, a group came together, helping each other regrow a world worth living in.
And then the Others attacked.
Realizing the need to truly protect themselves, they formed the Academy: a place where young people could be built into an elite military force. The training is intense…and so are the consequences for failure.
Sloan Radcliffe is not a failure. In fact, she’s the best of the best—the girls’ Senior Champion—and the only one who can match her is matched to her: her betrothed, Jared Dawson. They are the perfect couple: exemplary fighters, pure leaders, and exceptional role models. But as their time at the Academy draws to a close, Sloan is starting to see signs that maybe their life is built upon secrets…and that secrets are never a strong foundation.
With the battlefront looming and whispers growing louder, Sloan is caught up not only between her loyalties to her people, but also to the man she loves.
The Courier (San Angeles)
by Gerald Brandt
Kris Ballard is a motorcycle courier. A nobody. Level 2 trash in a multi-level city that stretches from San Francisco to the Mexican border—a land where corporations make all the rules. A runaway since the age of fourteen, Kris struggled to set up her life, barely scraping by, working hard to make it without anyone’s help.
But a late day delivery changes everything when she walks in on the murder of one of her clients. Now she’s stuck with a mysterious package that everyone wants. It looks like the corporations want Kris gone, and are willing to go to almost any length to make it happen.
Hunted, scared, and alone, she retreats to the only place she knows she can hide: the Level 1 streets. Fleeing from people that seem to know her every move, she is rescued by Miller—a member of an underground resistance group—only to be pulled deeper into a world she doesn’t understand.
Together Kris and Miller barely manage to stay one step ahead of the corporate killers, but it’s only a matter of time until Miller’s resources and their luck run out.
The Destructives
by Matthew De Abaitua
Theodore Drown is a destructive. A recovering addict to weirdcore, he’s keeping his head down lecturing at the university of the Moon. Twenty years after the appearance of the first artificial intelligence, and humanity is stuck. The AIs or, as they preferred to be called, emergences have left Earth and reside beyond the orbit of Mercury in a Stapledon Sphere known as the university of the sun. The emergences were our future but they chose exile. All except one. Dr Easy remains, researching a single human life from beginning to end. Theodore’s life.
One day, Theodore is approached by freelance executive Patricia to investigate an archive of data retrieved from just before the appearance of the first emergence. The secret living in that archive will take him on an adventure through a stunted future of asylum malls, corporate bloodrooms and a secret off-world colony where Theodore must choose between creating a new future for humanity or staying true to his nature, and destroying it.
The Devil You Know
by K J Parker
The greatest philosopher of all time is offering to sell his soul to the Devil. All he wants is twenty more years to complete his life’s work. After that, he really doesn’t care.
But the assistant demon assigned to the case has his suspicions, because the philosopher is Saloninus–the greatest philosopher, yes, but also the greatest liar, trickster and cheat the world has yet known; the sort of man even the Father of Lies can’t trust.
He’s almost certainly up to something; but what?
Dragon Wizard (Dragon Series 3)
by S. Andrew Swann
It has been a year since former thief Frank Blackthorne became Princess of Lendowyn and married a dragon. He’s coming to terms with his new life, but during the royal anniversary banquet, an elven prince reads a scroll of evil magic and Frank’s world is turned upside-down. Again.
The scroll’s spell causes a murderous rampage in a palace full of noble dignitaries, so it’s no surprise Frank’s visitors are angry. The Elf-King Timoras threatens war but Frank can’t do anything about it: because of the same bit of scroll magic, the ex-Dragon Lucille has taken over the princess’s body, unaware that Frank is still there, locked in her skull. And worst of all, the fate of everyone may soon rest on the shoulders of the man responsible for the whole mess, someone who should be safely dead
Imperative (Starfire)
by Steve White and Charles E. Gannon
The war with the Arduans—profoundly alien invaders who originally arrived in STL ships—is over. Most of those attackers are now probationary (and very productive) citizens of the Rim Federation.
However, many among the Arduans’ warrior caste have neither accepted defeat, nor the personhood of any of the other intelligence races. Their leader, the ruthless admiral of the second Arduan exodus— Amunsit—is in firm control of the Zarzuela system. Along with a fifth column among the peaceable Arduans, she hopes to find allies in subsequent refugee fleets that abandoned their race’s now-dead home system long ago.
But as the victors’ diplomats attempt to soothe tensions with these warlike neighbors, two heroes of the last war—veteran Admiral Ian Trevayne and young trouble-shooter Ossian Wethermere–suspect they have stumbled upon a deeper Arduan plot: one which could shatter the Pan-Sentient Union, and perhaps interstellar civilization itself.
The Last Days of Magic
by Mark L. Tompkins
What became of magic in the world? Who needed to do away with it, and for what reasons? Drawing on myth, legend, fairy tales, and Biblical mysteries, The Last Days of Magic brilliantly imagines answers to these questions, sweeping us back to a world where humans and magical beings co-exist as they had for centuries.
Aisling, a goddess in human form, was born to rule both domains and—with her twin, Anya—unite the Celts with the powerful faeries of the Middle Kingdom. But within medieval Ireland interests are divided, and far from its shores greater forces are mustering. Both England and Rome have a stake in driving magic from the Emerald Isle. Jordan, the Vatican commander tasked with vanquishing the remnants of otherworldly creatures from a disenchanted Europe, has built a career on such plots. But increasingly he finds himself torn between duty and his desire to understand the magic that has been forbidden.
As kings prepare, exorcists gather, and divisions widen between the warring clans of Ireland, Aisling and Jordan must come to terms with powers given and withheld, while a world that can still foster magic hangs in the balance. Loyalties are tested, betrayals sown, and the coming war will have repercussions that ripple centuries later, in today’s world—and in particular for a young graduate student named Sara Hill.
The Last Days of Magic introduces us to unforgettable characters who grapple with quests for power, human frailty, and the longing for knowledge that has been made taboo. Mark Tompkins has crafted a remarkable tale—a feat of world-building that poses astonishing and resonant answers to epic questions.
Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires 12)
by Chloe Neill
Merit is one of Chicago’s most skilled vampire warriors; these days, she doesn’t scare easily. But she and Master vampire Ethan have made a new and powerful enemy, and he won’t give up until he owns the Windy City.
With his last plan thwarted, he’s more determined than ever to watch Cadogan burn. Ethan has put the House’s vampires on high alert, but their enemy will stop at nothing, including pitting supernatural against supernatural.
In this deadly game of cat-and-mouse, the stakes are life or death—and winning might mean sacrificing everything.
Owl and the City of Angels (The Owl Series Book 2)
by Kristi Charish
The wild second adventure for unforgettable antiquities thief Owl—a modern-day “Indiana Jane” who reluctantly navigates the hidden supernatural world—from the pen of rising urban fantasy star Kristi Charish. For fans of Kim Harrison, Jim Butcher, Jennifer Estep, Jenn Bennett, and the like. The series also includes Owl and the Japanese Circus and Owl and the Electric Samurai.
Alix Hiboux, better known as Owl, international antiquities thief for hire, is settling into her new contract job for Vegas mogul Mr. Kurosawa, a red dragon with a penchant for ancient, supernatural artifacts. And now he has his sights set on some treasures of the mysterious Syrian City of the Dead that are sitting in a recluse’s private collection.
There’s just one wrinkle. To stop the resurrection of an undead army that could wreak havoc on Los Angeles, Owl must break into a heavily guarded archaeological sight in one of the most volatile regions in the world. A detour through Libya and a run-in with Somali pirates sends the clock ticking hastily toward total paranormal disaster.
Meanwhile, Alexander and the Paris vampires have stopped stalking Owl’s apartment, but they have by no means forgotten their death grudge against her. To top everything off, Owl finds out the hard way that there is nothing heavenly about the City of Angels.
Phoenix Ascendant (Balanced Sword 3)
by Ryk E. Spoor
Kyri, Tobimar, and Poplock had managed—barely—to thwart the plans of the mad alchemist-mage Master Wieran, and defeat the monstrous Elderwyrm Sanamaveridion, saving the secret country of Kaizatenzei from the evil hidden at its core. Now they believe they have discovered the true architect of not just the fall of the Justiciars of Myrionar—god of Justice and Vengeance—but the unleashing of the forces of the Hells themselves against the other countries of Zarathan. They begin their journey back to Kyri’s home, Evanwyl, to confront the being their new ally Miri calls Viedraverion, first son of the King of All Hells.
But behind that name lies an even more terrible secret, and a plan centuries in the making, a plan that depends on Kyri being who and what she is. Even if the three adventurers can escape the spies and traps within their own adventuring party, their final adversary awaits them eagerly. For with them they carry the key to their enemy’s victory—a victory which will destroy not only Kyri, her friends, and her country, but also the gods themselves!
Yet Kyri and her allies have a hidden strength themselves. They are fighting for the right, and there are ancient gods and powers who may come to the aid of a true warrior’s heart in the time of greatest need.
Quantum Night
by Robert J. Sawyer
Experimental psychologist Jim Marchuk has developed a flawless technique for identifying the previously undetected psychopaths lurking everywhere in society. But while being cross-examined about his breakthrough in court, Jim is shocked to discover that he has lost his memories of six months of his life from twenty years previously—a dark time during which he himself committed heinous acts.
Jim is reunited with Kayla Huron, his forgotten girlfriend from his lost period and now a quantum physicist who has made a stunning discovery about the nature of human consciousness. As a rising tide of violence and hate sweeps across the globe, the psychologist and the physicist combine forces in a race against time to see if they can do the impossible—change human nature—before the entire world descends into darkness.
The Reburialists
by J. C. Nelson
At the Bureau of Special Investigations, agents encounter all sorts of paranormal evils. So for Agent Brynner Carson, driving a stake through a rampaging three-week-old corpse is par for the course. Except this cadaver is different. It’s talking—and it has a message about his father, Heinrich.
The reanimated stiff delivers an ultimatum written in bloody hieroglyphics, and BSI Senior Analyst Grace Roberts is called in to translate. It seems that Heinrich Carson stole the heart of Ra-Ame, the long-dead god of the Re-Animus. She wants it back. The only problem is Heinrich took the secret of its location to his grave.
With the arrival of Ra-Ame looming and her undead army wreaking havoc, Brynner and Grace must race to find the key to stopping her. It’s a race they can’t afford to lose, but then again, it’s just another day on the job.
Rend (Washington, Dead City 2)
by Brian Parker
Six years ago, the president made the difficult decision to abandon Washington to the undead–and The Wall was built to keep them trapped inside. Now, a new presidential election revives the hopes of the nation as one candidate promises to retrieve the Declaration of Independence and Constitution from behind The Wall.
Retired CIA operative Asher Hawke, AKA the Kestrel, agrees to lead a team to recover the national treasures. But when they insert behind The Wall, they discover that organized crime families have been stealing priceless artwork and cash as well as disposing of bodies behind The Wall.
The Road to Hell (Hell’s Gate Book 3)
by David Weber and Joelle Presby
The war between magically-gifted Arcana and psionically talented Sharona continues to rage. The dragon-borne Arcanan assault across five universes has been halted at Fort Salby by a desperate defense, but at atrocious cost. One of those costs was the life of Crown Prince Janaki, heir to the newly created Sharonian Empire, who went knowingly to his death in the tradition expected of the House of alirath. And another price will be the sacrifice of his younger sister, Grand Imperial Princess Andrin, now heir of Sharona, for the accords creating the Sharonian Empire require the marriage of the heir to the Crown to wed a Uromathian prince.
Andrin bears her family’s Talent, the Glimpses, which show flashes of events yet to come. She knows the accords must be secured . . . and like her brother, she will pay any price, make any sacrifice for her duty to her people.
Sharona’s soldiers dig in, facing the Arcanans in a tense standoff which cannot last long. Both sides continue rushing reinforcements towards the front, but how do armies fight wars when they can reach one another only through the portals which join the universes? And far, far behind the front, carried by dragons, a young Voice name Shaylar and her husband Jathmar hurtle deeper and deeper into Arcanan captivity, their only protection the fierce personal honor of the Andaran officer whose men massacred all of their companions in the horrendous misunderstanding which began the entire conflict.
Men and women of honor on both sides must grapple with the terrible costs and deadly secrets of the spreading cataclysm, and in the shadows, those who will balk at neither treason nor murder drive the conspiracies which pour fuel into the furnace. The stakes are high and the pieces are in motion, but there are factors known not even to the conspirators and not even a Calirath can Glimpse the final outcome.
The Rogue Retrieval
by Dan Koboldt
Stage magician Quinn Bradley has one dream: to headline his own show on the Vegas Strip. And with talent scouts in the audience wowed by his latest performance, he knows he’s about to make the big-time.
What he doesn’t expect is an offer to go on a quest to a place where magic is all too real.
That’s how he finds himself in Alissia, a world connected to ours by a secret portal owned by a powerful corporation. He’s after an employee who has gone rogue, and that’s the least of his problems. Alissia has true magicians…and the penalty for impersonating one is death. In a world where even a twelve-year-old could beat Quinn in a swordfight, it’s only a matter of time until the tricks up his sleeves run out.
The Seer
by Sonia Lyris
The Arunkel empire has stood a thousand years, forged by wealth and conquest, but now rebellion is stirring on the borders and treachery brews in the palace halls. Elsewhere, in a remote mountain village, a young mother sells the prophesies of her sister, Amarta, in order to keep them and her infant child from starving. It’s a dangerous game when such revelations draw suspicion and mistrust as often as they earn coin.
Yet Amarta’s visions are true. And often not at all what the seeker wishes to hear.
Now in a tapestry of loyalty, intrigue, magic, and gold, Amarta has become the key to a ruler’s ambitions. But is she nothing beyond a tool? As Amarta comes into her own as a seer, she realizes she must do more than predict the future. She must create it.
The Spider Tapestries
by Mike Allen
World Fantasy Award-winning author of DO YOU LIKE TO LOOK AT MONSTERS? THE SPIDER TAPESTRIES, Mike Allen’s sophomore short story collection, takes a wrecking ball to genre boundaries, showcasing seven stories that mix transhuman noir, Lovecraftian horror, and surrealistic sorcery in an exploration of the further reaches of the Weird. Readers who savored the disorienting strangeness in Allen’s debut collection UNSEAMING, a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and Amazon.com horror fiction bestseller, will find THE SPIDER TAPESTRIES begins where UNSEAMING left off.
United States of Japan
by Peter Tieryas
Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans worship their infallible Emperor, and nobody believes that Japan’s conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons – a shadowy group of rebels fighting for freedom. Their latest subversive tactic is to distribute an illegal video game that asks players to imagine what the world might be like if the United States had won the war instead.
Captain Beniko Ishimura’s job is to censor video games, and he’s working with Agent Akiko Tsukino of the secret police to get to the bottom of this disturbing new development. But Ishimura’s hiding something… He’s slowly been discovering that the case of the George Washingtons is more complicated than it seems, and the subversive videogame’s origins are even more controversial and dangerous than either of them originally suspected.
Who Wants to be The Prince of Darkness?
by Michael Boatman
Lucifer is enjoying his retirement in an obscure corner of Limbo when he learns of a plot by Gabriel, the current ruler of Hell, to use humanity’s greatest weapon against it – Television!
Cue the hottest reality game-show ever conceived: Who Wants To Be The Prince Of Darkness? Gabriel orchestrates an “Infernal takeover” of Earth by stealing unwitting mortal souls and sending them to a mostly empty Hell, hoping to reinvigorate the Infernal Realm.
Now Lucifer must find a living champion to seize control of Hell and free millions of stolen mortal souls before the theft becomes permanent. But who would ever want to be Hell’s champion?
Zone
by Jack Lance
As Oceans Airways flight 582 takes off from LAX Airport, Los Angeles, headed for Sydney, Australia, passengers and crew prepare themselves for the 14-hour flight, among them flight attendants Sharlene Their and Aaron Drake, who have recently started dating.
But suddenly communication and navigation systems in the cockpit start malfunctioning: just the start of a series of inexplicable and terrifying events about to engulf these airborne travellers. The Boeing 747 has entered strange airways, inhabited by something malicious – a presence that holds sway over the aircraft. And Sharlene may be the only one to understand the true nature of the threat .
Byron Dunn in an AISFP contributor and a friend to Werewolves.
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