Sci fi is a type of speculative fiction that looks ahead and asks “what’s next?” You can also check out these subcategories (a-g):
alien invasion | alien races | alternate/parallel reality / alternative history | atompunk | biopunk | candlepunk | christian | cli-fi | clockpunk | colonization | comedy | cyberpunk | cyberspace | decopunk | detective | dieselpunk | dying earth | dystopian & post-apocalyptic | first contact | frontier | furry | galactic empire | gothpunk | greenpunk
Note: these books are currently sorted by release date, with newest first.
Word Count: 74000
Summary: 1881: The electric lights of Paris have been extinguished. The Naturalist revolution is over. Adelaide was on the losing side. Once the Royal Scientist Doctor for the now-dead cyborg monarchs of France, she's now a fugitive, hiding from the new king's Police Sécrète. Pregnant and alone, she seeks refuge in a Parisian hospital but things have changed there too. What was once a cathedral of Science is now a bastion of ignorance and superstition. The battlefield veterans whose Augmented prosthetics she once created are shunned by the new regime and come to the hospital for her help. But her nemesis, the father of her child, has returned to France and threatens to reveal her illegal activities to the authorities. Can Adelaide repair her Augmented patients without losing her freedom ... or her life? The Vitruvian Mask continues the story of Adelaide Coumain, the Roboticist of Versailles, that began in The Archimedean Heart.
Word Count: 138,300
Summary: Four silver foxes from Earth discover that true love and second chances are not just for the young. Fly with Me - Let the good times roll! That’s Ava Martin’s retirement plan at least, until gray aliens abduct her from the middle of the Nevada desert. In her hair rollers no less! Talk about a rude awakening for this UFO skeptic. Above the Storm - It all started with a dare. Robyn Martin Donahue’s bestie says the Silverstar Agency can hook her up with an off worlder who will love and respect her, not try to rule her. As if. Wing and a Prayer - Happily ever after didn’t work out. If Meryl Faulkner learned anything from her divorce, it’s that she’s not defined by any man. Especially not that annoying, self-serving…sexy winged alien who’s divebombed into her orderly life. Trial by Fire - True love only happens once in a lifetime, right? Silverstar agent Nixy Vogel should be furious at the (smoking hot) alien trying to put the agency out of business. Instead, her shuttered heart burns for him. Welcome to the Silverstar Mates series, featuring intergalactic love matches for those over fifty. Please note: This is a boxed set of books 1-4 of the Silverstar Mates series. Before you purchase this boxed set, please check your ereader to make sure you don’t already own these titles individually.
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Summary: Welcome to Hub! Just a few simple rules apply: 1. Never Steal from Dragons 2. See Rule #1 3. Never Work for Dragons In Hub, a city of treachery and deceit, Gelsey, a pixie, is one of the best thieves around. When a smash and grab assignment turns into a job interview with a powerful dragon, Gelsey finds herself a part of a crew including five more of the best criminals Hub has to offer. Her crew includes Silai, a con artist with a deadly secret. Kelthar, a mage who’s bent on self-destruction. Aikila, a smuggler set on avenging her father's murder. Nyx, a hacker coming off a busted run, and Lorcan, a mercenary whose child is being held hostage. The dragon pulls all their strings, forcing them to accept an impossible job: break into a fortress nobody in all of Hub’s long history has ever cracked. And if they fail, they’ll end up dead one way or another. A wild mix of fairy tale and Cyberpunk that hits all the marks of classic crime capers. Reads like Elmore Leonard and Neil Stephenson playing D&D in a pixie-infested bar and having the time of their lives way past last call. Kat Richardson, Bestselling author of the Greywalker novels Dugan weaves an excellent heist story by blending the fantasy, cyberpunk, and even noir genres. The world building is top notch, including the lore which uses familiar creatures, but in new ways. This is the book for you if you enjoy cyberpunk, urban fantasy, heist stories, or any combination thereof! Bishop O'Connell Author of American Faerie Tale series and Two-Gun Witch
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Summary: Before Ardulum, there was the Mercy’s Pledge. One year after saving the Neek homeworld and redefining the people’s religion, the crew of the Scarlet Lucidity returns to the Charted Systems for a much-needed break. For Nicholas and Yorden, the Systems will always be home, but for Emn and Atalant, too many memories compound with Emn’s strange new illness to provide much relaxation. Tales from Ardulum continues the journey of Atalant, Emn, Yorden, Nicholas, and Salice as they try to define their place in a galaxy that no longer needs them while battling the artifacts of Ardulan colonization. Other stories include Yorden’s acquisition of the Mercy’s Pledge (and his grudge against the galaxy), Atalant’s exile from her homeworld, Ekimet and Savath’s romance, and many others.
Word Count: 70000
Summary: What secrets lie beneath the streets of Paris? When a malfunctioning automaton runs full force into their locomotive on the new Paris-Orléans railway, Jacqueline Duval and her bohemian twin sister Angélique Laforge become embroiled in a mystery deeply rooted in their tragic past. A polytech and famed engineering prodigy, Jacqueline is fascinated by the metal man, even more so when she discovers that it is powered not by steam, but by the supernatural. Her investigation puts the sisters on a path both dangerous and mysterious as they must foil a plot to employ the dead to power a mechanical army aimed at international conquest. Aid comes from unexpected sources as the twins rush to avert this engineered war, but will they be in time?
Word Count: 12000
Summary: If The Little Mermaid were set in the twenty-second century... In the aftermath of climate change, humans have abandoned the flooded coasts. Underwater, people of another kind struggle to rehabilitate the polluted seas. After one rescues a human engineer, she realizes he might hold the key. If she can learn how to interact with the world like a human, if she can understand them, if she can become enough like them, maybe they will help. Maybe he will help. But to reach him, she may need to sacrifice who she is...
Word Count: 45000
Summary: These three tales tell the story of Tharassas before the Tharassas Cycle, including the origin of the hencha queens, the ce’faine, and the colonization of the Highlands, essential companions for the four novels that make up the cycle: The Fallen Angel Charlie Fah, Cha’Fah to most of the world, has never fit in with the other citizens of Gully Town, thanks to his darker skin that sets him apart. But one day, an Angel arrives on a supply run from Earth, and what happens next sets Charlie on a new path that will turn his life upside down. The Last Run Sera is the last runner from Earth, bringing badly needed supplies to the Tharassas Colony across a twenty-five year gulf between the planets. Jas works on a hencha farm to make ends meet, harvesting berries from the semi-sentient plants. Neither one that knows their lives—and worlds—are about to change forever. The Emp Test Jey awakens to find himself in the care of a handsome stranger—a cheff from one of the mountain tribes. Afraid for his life, Jey has no choice but to let the man take care of him and his broken leg. Avain is on his Aud'ling—the coming-of-age test that requires him to spend a couple months away from his own people. The two of them will have to come to an understanding if they're going to help one another. The Last Run and The Emp Test have been published before in previous stand-alone editions, but The Fallen Angel is a new story written exclusively for this collection.
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Summary: There’s a kettle of rotten fish on the fire … and the stink’s about to get worse. – Jeskan proverb Once in a generation, the matriarchs of Jeska choose a new king to manage the government and command the Guard — protecting Jeskans from crime, invaders, and insurgency. Corren's been training for that job since he was six, but this is an unsettled time: rumors of strange incursions, grumbling discontent, and increasing brigandry. Corren’s own problems are multiplying. His father, a skeptical shaman, has gone missing, His polyamorous foster-brother keeps interfering with his personal and professional business. And the king needs him to track down the conspirators behind a simmering insurrection. When a strange woman turns up wearing a shaman’s cape, speaking a weird language, and hiding knowledge that doesn’t belong in this world, all his plans will have to change.
Word Count: 12,000
Summary: On the 3rd Orbital Anniversary, a mining ship vanished, never to be heard from again. Twelve years later, Special Agent Evelyn Carlisle finds herself on the cusp of discovering what happened to it – if she can get the crew of the Galilean Moons Forensic Cleaning Company to talk. A tale from the Jovian Empire.
Word Count: 93700
Summary: Raven's a thief who just swallowed a dragon. A small one, sure, but now his arms are growing scales, the local wildlife is acting up, and his snarky AI familiar is no help whatsoever. Raven's best friend Aik is a guardsman carrying a torch for the thief. A pickpocket and a guard? Never going to happen. And Aik’s ex-fiancé Silya, an initiate priestess in a magical crisis, hates Raven with the heat of a thousand suns. This unlikely team must work together to face strange beasts, alien artifacts, and a world-altering threat. If they don’t figure out what to do soon, it might just be the end of everything. Things are about to get messy.
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Summary: In this stunning work of speculative urban fiction, Redfern Jon Barrett breaks down the binary between utopia and dystopia—presenting an ambitopian vision of the world’s first gay state. A glittering gay metropolis of 24 million people, Berlin is a bustling world of pride parades, polyamorous trysts, and even an official gay language. Its distant radio broadcasts are a lifeline for teenagers William and Gareth, who flee toward sanctuary. But is there a place for them in the deeply divided city? Meanwhile, young mother Cissie loves Berlin’s towering high rises and chaotic multiculturalism, yet she’s never left her heterosexual district—not until she and her family are trapped in a queer riot. With her husband Howard plunging into religious paranoia, she discovers a walled-off slum of perpetual twilight, home to the city’s forbidden trans residents. Challenging assumptions of sex and gender, Proud Pink Sky questions how much of ourselves we need to sacrifice in order to find identity and community.
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Summary: Octavia E. Butler said, “There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” New Suns 2 brings you fresh visions of the strange, the unexpected, the shocking—breakthrough stories, stories shining with emerging truths, stories that pierce stale preconceptions with their beauty and bravery. Like the first New Suns anthology (winner of the World Fantasy, Locus, IGNYTE, and British Fantasy awards), this book liberates writers of many races to tell us tales no one has ever told. Many things come in twos: dualities, binaries, halves, and alternates. Twos are found throughout New Suns 2, in eighteen science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories revealing daring futures, hidden pasts, and present-day worlds filled with unmapped wonders. Including stories by Daniel H. Wilson, K. Tempest Bradford, Darcie Little Badger, Geetanjali Vandemark, John Chu, Nghi Vo, Tananarive Due, Alex Jennings, Karin Lowachee, Saad Hossain, Hiromi Goto, Minsoo Kang, Tlotlo Tsamaase, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Malka Older, Kathleen Alcalá, Christopher Caldwell and Jaymee Goh with a foreword by Walter Mosley and an afterword by Dr. Grace Dillon.
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Summary: The planet wakes. Atalant is torn between two worlds. In uncharted space—head of a sentient planet—the new Eld of Ardulum now leads the religion she once rejected. Emn is by her side but the Mmnnuggl war brewing in the Charted Systems—threatening her homeworld of Neek—cannot be ignored. Atalant must return to the planet that exiled her in order to lead the resistance. She must return home a god, a hypocrite, a liar in gold robes, and decide whether to thrust her unwilling people into the truth of Ardulum, or play the role she has been handed and never see her family, or her world, again.
Word Count: 130000
Summary: Over a million years in the future, a desperate stowaway lies concealed in a space freighter’s cargo hold. Tam Amergan is bound for the prison world Corustloth, where his partner Brogan has been abducted. Ever since the Senate took over the planetary system decades earlier, gay men like Tam and Brogan—degens, as they are labeled under Senate rule—have been forced to live in secrecy. But Brogan is Tam’s life-line, bound to his soul in a ritual performed by a secret sisterhood of women with ancient, unknown designs. Tam has no choice but to follow Brogan wherever he goes. What Brogan sees, Tam sees; what Tam feels, Brogan feels. Neither can live without the other. Thousands of lightyears away, an ancient brotherhood of mentalists works at uncovering the mystery of humanity’s long-forgotten origins. Their leader, Father, enlists the help of Bennett, who is able to connect with the mind of a space freighter stowaway on the other side of the galaxy. Is Bennett the key to humanity’s origins? Could Tam’s quest to find Brogan have a wider purpose? Both a soaring love story and sweeping sci-fi epic, Life-Line: Origins is a thrilling gay romance and science fiction novel. Ambitious, gripping, and full of heart, it is a must-read for anyone hungry for adventure and intrigue.
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Summary: A young woman in 1884 doesn’t have many options … But Susannah did not expect to be tutoring an alien snail child while aboard a ship sailing in space … Who will get the real education? Orphaned and penniless in Hong Kong in 1884 — what’s a young gentlewoman to do? Impulsive, adventurous, and self-confident, Susannah accepts an offer to become the governess to a young foreigner on a ship. She does not expect the ship to be in space, or the foreign child to be an alien who looks like a giant snail. Nevertheless, she throws herself into the job of bringing Victorian decorum to the natives. But when she is accused of spying and put on trial in an alien court, Susannah has to challenge the law of the aliens to save herself — and her young and slimy student.
Word Count: 63000
Summary: Paris 1880, the City of Electric Light Clockwork nobles of the Court promenade through the halls of Versailles, while Watcher spheres and cyborg police menace citizens of France in the streets. The Royal Scientist Doctor works frantically on an automaton designed to replace the failing sovereigns, but will it be ready in time to save the monarchy? In the cafes of Montmartre, Henri paints the common people chafing under the reign of the Augmented monarchs and dreams of a France free of machines. John yearns to capture the essence of beauty in his paintings with the luminous Marie-Ange his muse-and handmaid to the ancient Queen of France. With his brother Henri entangled in revolution, he must choose between the artificial beauty of Court and the movement to restore France. How much humanity can be lost before you are no longer human?
Word Count: 54000
Summary: Alan Beringer’s day takes an unexpected turn when he’s kidnapped by alien space pirates. In all fairness, pyrean space pirates claiming they're "privateers” has become the norm since humans became an interstellar species. Pirates aren’t the problem. The problem is Alan's job is to curtail space piracy. The problem is Alan may be more pyrean than he lets on. The problem is the alien space pirate captain, Sven Jiordson, has a growing infatuation with Alan. The problem is Alan kind of enjoys being kidnapped. But who has time for romance when there's a new, unknown threat to interstellar space travel? Kidnapping aside, Alan needs to do what he does best: use his brilliant detective skills to notice everything…except Sven flirting with him. As the pyreans say — romance is more fun when somebody’s alive to enjoy it! Threads of Fate is the first book in the Triple Strike series, and it includes seven illustrations plus additional bonus content and comics.
Word Count: 85000
Summary: Jameson Havercamp, a psych from a conservative religious colony, has come to Oberon—unique among the Common Worlds—in search of a rare substance called pith. He’s guided through the wilds on his quest by Xander Kinnison, a handsome, cocky wing man with a troubled past. Neither knows that Oberon is facing imminent destruction. Even as the world starts to fall apart around them, they have no idea what’s coming—or the bond that will develop between them as they race to avert a cataclysm. Together, they will journey to uncover the secrets of this strange and singular world, even as it takes them beyond the bounds of reality itself to discover what truly binds them together.
Word Count: 125000
Summary: Is Leif really lucky? Stranded in orbit, viewing a destroyed civilization on Earth through the screens of a starship almost out of fuel and food, he doesn’t feel that way. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. As the starship Dauntless returns from a successful mission to the planet called Heaven, Earth holds no attractions for Exoplanetary Scout Leif Grettison. He wants only to complete the mission and leave for another star, along with ace pilot Yang Yong. In fact, he would be happy spending the rest of his life flying the starways with her. But they and the rest of the ship’s skeleton crew awaken from hibernation to find Earth’s solar system dark and silent—no signals, no responses to their transmissions. When they make orbit, the magnitude of the disaster becomes clear: An apocalyptic war has killed billions and destroyed every last source of power and tech that 22nd-Century humans relied on to survive. Getting down to Earth is only the beginning of Leif’s problems. Those few who survived the apocalypse are still divided, fighting over what’s left. The disastrous re-entry to Earth leaves him with no resources or allies. He lands in the middle of a makeshift family that needs him more than he’s comfortable with and hears stories—even nursery rhymes—that speak of a lucky starman. For once, he’s the only person with tech—but if he’s caught using it, they might kill him. Can a man back from the stars end the warfare on Earth, or will he make it worse? Can he save a family that might become his? Is he everyone’s lucky starman?
Word Count: 72,000
Summary: Cybercommand has a field agent newly licensed to kill. And his name is Yuwono. Eric Yuwono. Eric travels to the remote paradise of Hosh, where someone is peddling stolen resurrection technology not ready for general use. Posing as a smuggler and with the aid of a sexy AI named Effie, he'll penetrate the organization and discover a connection back to Juno, the shadowy operation undermining the Compact. To bring them down, he'll need the help of the Children of Amargosa and their mentor, Suicide. But if he's not careful, his newfound amortality might be cut short.
