Team Tar Vol On is back for the fourth annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC4). For those who have followed the competition in the past, we don’t have many big changes, but fewer judging teams means our first rounds will be a little bit bigger and our second rounds will be a little bit smaller.
Practically, that means that our team has been given 32 books and a little over five months to whittle that 32 down to a mere two. We’re all volunteers, and none of us have the capacity to read 32 extra books in the next five months. So we’ll be splitting this round into two stages: the Scouting phase and the Quarterfinals.
In the Scouting phase, we’ve split up our 32 books among seven judges, such that all books have at least two readers. We’ll spend the next several weeks reading through our own personal book allocations and making recommendations as to whether these books should advance to the quarterfinals. If the judges determine not to advance a book to the next stage, we’ll publish a brief explanation as to why. Each book that is advanced to the Quarterfinals will be read by every single team member, with scores averaged among the seven of us in order to select our two semifinalists.
In the short term, we have a whole lot of reading to do, so don’t expect many team updates until late November or December. I promise, we’ll be working behind the scenes, and some judges may be publishing reviews in their own reviewing spaces. When we have team decisions we can share, we’ll share them.
Until then, check out the books we’ll be reading, and who will be reading them!
A Swift and Sudden Exit by Nico Vincenty
Blurb: An immortal, doomed to die. A time traveler, desperate to save her.
When Zera travels back in time to 2040, she aims to investigate the geomagnetic storm that scorched the earth. Instead, she finds the beautiful Katherine, who speaks of past storms and asks with her dying breath, “Is this the first time we meet?”
From WWII-era New York to early 2000s New Orleans and everywhere in between, Zera chases both storms and Katherine, thinking her immortality is the key to fixing the future. But as the immortal goes from a reluctant ally with a deadly hunter to a romantic complication, Zera wonders if the past is really set in stone, or if she can still save the world—and Katherine.
Initial Readers: Azrah and Josh
Above Dark Waters by Eric Kay
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Blurb: Artificial therapy so great, you’ll never log off! (And won’t notice the ads). A near-future sci-fi about brain privacy in the age of unfettered surveillance capitalism. What will companies do when they can read your actual mind? How far will they go to get your click? How much engagement?
This is how cyberpunk starts. Ed’s in a bind. He’s tried everything to keep the North Pacific Seastead afloat financially. Losses mount, except for the datacenter cooled by the Pacific. But the seastead needs an infusion of cash to keep it solvent. He needs it quickly, and the only one who can do it is his well-to-do partner, Keight.
Keight Stanford is doing great. Life’s good on her residential condominium complex offshore of San Francisco. Her secretive mental-health startup, WellSpring, has passed all hurdles with the Department of Veterans Affairs to treat PTSD using a brain-machine interface. Adding to that success, she just received an infusion of funds from the Department of Defense. Though she does not need the money, she needs the computing power for an artificial therapist, and has entertained Ed’s offer.
But all is not as it seems with Keight’s startup. A rogue programmer stumbles upon ways to boost his output to unnatural levels. Is this artificially intelligent co-coder an extension of his mind, or is he merely a tool of its growing intelligence? Meanwhile the CEO is secretly selling the data to ad companies to finance a free tier. Because who could argue against free therapy? Now, Ed must decide if Keight really is going to save the world, or doom it to a boring dystopia of personalized addictive ads.
Initial Readers: Barb and Jay
Above the Sun by Dennis Black
Blurb: Strains is a research project, to find 1 solution to 2 problems: 1) Save th’Earth from humanity. 2) Save humanity from humanity. Not as easy as it sounds. We can solve the 1st one by destroying humanity – working on it. We can solve the 2nd one by destroying th’Earth. Actually, no, that won’t work, yet it’s been our consistent approach thus·far. Also, that’s 2 solutions, and we need to solve both with just 1, so as to avoid th’added burden of deconfliction, which would any·way fail. Not easy, yet the solution is simple, even obvious, to an outsider. No·one can believe it, because no·one will even consider it. So the 1st step is to trick us all into thinking th’unthinkable. No problem, we do that all the time. Just present it as fiction. After all, so much fiction already gets presented as research results, and turn·about is fair·play, so . . . Actually, better make it sci·fi. Just as well – saves having to apologize for all th’unorthodoxies. Non·standard fiction vs accepted reality . . . Faites vos jeux. ________________________________________________________________________________ Strain 1 – Above the Sun the story of StarShip Prosperity A strain is a sub·species. When a group is cut in 2, and the pieces are kept apart for long enough, in reunion each will discover th’other to be a separate strain. – If you change who you are, even to survive, then it’s not you that survives, it’s some·one else. – Right. It’s called evolution – a popular alternative to extinction. ________________________________________________________________________________ Strain 2 – An Imperfect Storm the story of Habitat Xenophage sequel to Above the Sun To strain is to apply tension or compression. At the breaking·point of a material, the strains upon it come to an end. At the breaking·point of a society, they first begin in earnest. We hope to be forgotten by posterity. Either they’ll be no·thing at·all like us, or they’ll be no·thing at·all, period. ________________________________________________________________________________ Strain 3 – The Guardian Dæmons the story of Habitat Gibraltar conclusion to An Imperfect Storm To strain is to sift, to filter. Natural·selection creates some·thing new by straining a small group from a large one. Likewise unnatural·selection. History is broken. Repeating it would be such a luxury, if only that were still an option. ________________________________________________________________________________ Strain 0 – The Ball Hab the story of LaboratoryShip AltaScotia prequel to Above the Sun A strain is a section of music. No sound travels thru void. Every sound within void contributes to strains of soothing defiance – every sound and every soul. Each silence is an alarm. – Since we’re slowly becoming alien, how do we know when we’re not human anymore? – When humanity has gone extinct, and we have not. ________________________________________________________________________________
Initial Readers: Barb and Jay
ASH by Grace Walker
Blurb: The mission was supposed to be simple: go to Xeiryn, complete the objective, and leave—before it’s too late. Of course, that’s where everything fell apart. Kade, an underworld operative, fights for survival on Xeiryn—a planet on the edge of the galaxy where crime syndicates control the only antidote to the deadly atmosphere. With no other choice as a human, he is caught serving the syndicates under his protector, a woman called Ash. However, when her secret against the syndicates is revealed, their world is torn apart. After a devastating separation, Kade is forced into a struggle for survival in a new galaxy. Working with a crew of mercenaries, he has only one goal: Find his way back to Ash. When a powerful client offers the crew a secretive mission to Xeiryn, Kade can’t resist the opportunity that could lead him back to Ash. But the mission quickly becomes the least of his worries when Kade and his sharpshooter comrade Xiara suspect their assignment isn’t at all what it seems. Now, torn between his past and his future, Kade has to face the bitter reality of what it will take to find Ash and if she is truly everything he once believed.
Initial Readers: Barb and Josh
Cage of Bone by David Dvorkin
Blurb: Suddenly, a murderer’s memories force their way into Max Iverson’s mind. Max is horrified and bewildered. Surely this isn’t real! Max is a private person by nature, isolated from his fellow humans. Now he is forced to know what the worst of them are thinking, and his nights are filled with nightmares. Even worse, he is drawn into helping the authorities punish the criminals whose thoughts he now knows. He is unaware of the danger this will expose him to. There is a cabal of criminals behind much of the major crime in the city. He didn’t know of their existence, but they become aware of his, and now they are determined to eliminate him. Max must change from frightened quarry to pitiless hunter. His hunt leads him to the cabal and also to life–changing discoveries about his own history.
Initial Readers: Barb and Jay
Company Assassin by Claudia Blood
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Blurb: Time is coming apart at the seams, and a tech-savvy teenage orphan is the only one who can save the past and the future… Turning eighteen in the orphanage on Kalecca means starvation for those who aren’t hired into a Family, so no one is celebrating Duff Roman’s big day. Outside the Family compounds lies the jungle. And in the jungle lies death. And Relics—the only real currency on Planet Kalecca. The orphans are Duff’s family, and he’s sacrificed everything to keep the orphanage running, even his chance to move on. But without him to bring in extra money, the orphans will starve under the Company’s control. Duff’s only chance to save them is to find a spot on an independent crew and hopefully find a Relic to sell. When a seemingly chance encounter with Z, leader of the most feared independent crew, offers Duff his opportunity to score a Relic, it also gives Z a chance to relieve the guilt he feels over his past. But a Company assassin has plans to lay waste to Duff’s future and destroy the people he cares about the most…
Initial Readers: Erin and Josh
CY-LNK by Kai Surr
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Blurb: In 2140 the strange had become the norm. Human life has been transformed by the cy-lnk cognitive implant that connects the physical brain to the ‘Online Environment’. On board the first manned trip to colonize Proxima Centauri B, all is not well. Chief Engineer Gus Salatin and Science Officer Dr Lilian Garcia are among the few who refused to have ‘the operation’. They believe the company is using cy-lnk to control the crew’s thoughts. As the ship passes through the Keiper Belt on its way out of our solar system, chaos erupts. A mysterious planet suddenly appears, the crew begin hallucinating, and a terrifying secret about their destination is revealed. Brace for a oddly believable, darkly humorous, and hopeful read.
Initial Readers: Barb and Josh
Dawn of the Seekers by Alex O’Connor
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Blurb: War rages between the Kaltari Empire and the United Celestial Alliance! Nova Team, a UCA special forces team, finds themselves on the front lines chasing a dangerous enemy leader. With rumors emerging of future battles, an unlikely ally is on the verge of discovery. As Nova Team courts the boundary of friend or foe, they must attempt a mission that could see the end of the war as a deadly new weapon emerges.
Initial Readers: Azrah and Champ
Deceit by Sean Allen
Blurb: A galaxy on the edge of crumbling. A human who shouldn’t exist. One last chance to save the stars.
Colonel Jerrel Abalias is furious with himself. After his best soldier dies at the hands of an assassin, he fears his failure may have cost the Dissension its last hope of winning the ages-long war. But one of his troops recognizes the killer’s ship, and the hard-bitten warrior is determined to hunt it to the ends of the galaxy.
Dezmara Strykar is too cunning for her own good. After waking from cryosleep to find her race all but extinct and her memories completely wiped, the expert pilot is desperate for a sign she’s not the only human left alive. But to fund her near-hopeless search, she turns to smuggling and gains the kind of notoriety that draws dangerous attention.
Setting a trap to bring the murderer to justice, Abalias races against time to salvage his people’s crumbling hope. And accused of a crime she didn’t commit, Dezmara finds herself pursued by an entire army bent on her destruction.
Can the gutsy survivor escape an ever-tightening noose, or will the Dissension hang her for a betrayal she knows nothing about?
Deceit is the pulse-pounding first book in The D-Evolution space opera fantasy series. If you like electrifying characters, sprawling universes, and gritty thrill rides, then you’ll love Sean Allen’s chase through the cosmos.
Initial Readers: Champ and Dave
Dierock 88 by S. A. Ernster
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Blurb: In the sprawling tapestry of the Aurorion Galaxy, Atlas Viridian dreams of escaping the junk-strewn life of the Salvage Belt. However, his aspirations crumble when his father is arrested under suspicion of being the elusive terrorist, “Typhon.” Accused of aiding and abetting, Atlas is thrust into the relentless grip of Horizon Corporation, condemned to toil for resources beneath the surface of a distant moon.
Trapped in the Dome of Dierock 88, Atlas’ destiny becomes entwined with the clandestine machinations of “Vanguard,” a shadowy Black Operations group. Their motives remain elusive—Atlas is the key, but to what?
Learning to live with a ragtag group of very different people, he’ll navigate the treacherous depths and discover that Horizon’s facade of happiness conceals a darker Deadly creatures, remnants of the ancient alien Kosmonautai, haunt the caverns below. Every descent brings not only deadly adversaries but inexplicable mental turmoil.
BENEATH THE SURFACE, SECRETS AWAIT.
In the crucible of survival, he’ll grapple with the tragic lives around him and the harsh truths of the galaxy he inhabits. Dierock 88 becomes a dangerous journey of self-discovery, challenging a young man to unearth the mystery of his own existence, and decide what matters most in an unfair, and cruel society. Will Atlas survive the descent and emerge from the darkness? Or will the battle within himself be his downfall?
TORN ALLEGIANCE. FRACTURED TRUST.
BE REBORN.
Initial Readers: Azrah and Barb
Fieres by Jendra Berri
Blurb: Everyone always said Grace was weird. An albino abandoned at birth, anti-social, and selectively intelligent, she’s never had a friend. Now at 23, she lives alone and quietly runs a dojo in Toronto. But beneath her stony exterior, somehow she’s always known that something— or someone— was coming for her.
The night she meets the quirky Tomiko, everything changes and an unseen force draws them to three more women. Together, the five uncover shared memories of a beautiful and mysterious world called Fieres.
While unlocking the magical secrets of their past, they encounter a terrifying enemy that threatens both Fieres and Earth. As they prepare for the fight of their lives, Grace must face the hard truth of who— and what— she really is.
Initial Readers: Champ and Jay
GENEFIRE by James Flanagan
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Blurb: Sometimes it feels as though the world will end if you don’t finish your PhD. For Larry Milton, it’s true. Larry has discovered a dire warning from the future about Earth’s destruction — written in the DNA of a young girl. With the destruction of the planet at stake, and no one believing him, he goes to extraordinary lengths to help the messenger from the future save the world… and try to finish his PhD at the same time. GENEFIRE: near-future SciFi novel crossing space and time. In a future where genetic engineering is becoming the norm, even the simplest mistakes could be devastating.
Initial Readers: Azrah and Dave
KARA by Peter Beard
Blurb: For over ten years Kara was a Hunter—the highly trained individuals with the ability and resources to find people, no-matter where they tried to hide. But after killing her best friend in a tragic accident, her world collapsed in on itself, and Kara spiralled.
Recovering, and keen for a distraction to keep her mind from wandering, Kara turned her attention to something that had intrigued her for as long as she could remember—to the mysterious symbol on her wrist. Determined to learn more, she began a hunt of a different kind—a hunt for answers. But three years of searching yielded little information, and she began losing hope of ever discovering the truth.
But then, unexpectedly, she receives an anonymous message—a message pointing her to a highly secretive prison on the outskirts of the Kuiper Belt. What she finds changes everything, and leads her down a path that puts her, and the people around her, in danger.
Can she learn the origins around the strange marking, all whilst unravelling a sinister plot that threatens to send a peaceful world back into chaos?
Initial Readers: Jay and Dave
Molten Flux by Jonathan Weiss
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Blurb: As the freshest conscript aboard the walking fortress of Revance, Ryza forges a name for himself in battle. The enemy are the smelters, bandits that trade in reanimated corpses. But for Ryza, the bloodshed represents a path of redemption for an upbringing he’s just escaped.
His prowess with a rifle draws the interest of the Locusts, a clandestine faction within Revance’s ranks. It turns out that not all aboard the fortress seek to stamp out the plague of molten flux, the mysterious liquid metal that fills the bodies of the dead and makes them walk again.
Some seek to profit.
The reanimated corpses —known as autominds— are used to control enormous contraptions of magnetically enchanted metal, forming the backbone of The Droughtland’s factories. The only thing stopping the smelters from expanding their illicit industry is Revance.
The Locusts make Ryza an offer. Either help overthrow Revance to do the smelter’s bidding or reveal his father’s legacy as the very thing Ryza now fights against.
The former is unthinkable. The latter means death.
Ryza resolves to infiltrate them and expose the mutiny, plunging him back into the murky underworld of the smelters, testing his convictions, and even leading him to the ancient origins of molten flux itself.
Initial Readers: Azrah and Barb
Navvy Dreams by H. M. H. Murray
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Blurb: TAKE A JOB. FALL IN LOVE. TRY NOT TO BLOW UP SUNS!
My name’s Polla Ottrava. I’m a registered smuggler and hotshot hyperspace pilot with a navigational symbiote (“navvy”) implanted in my arm. Its name is Second. With dear Second, I’m the best pilot I know (probably). Without, I’m just a farmgirl from a backwater planet who’s moved back in with her folks. Between the lover I abandoned and the crime boss I cheated, I had no choice.
In my twenty-eight years I’ve made a lot of bad calls, but that’s relative, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve never blown up a binary star with space magic. I’ve never harnessed a fleet of alien ships and used ’em to terrorize perfectly respectable arms dealers, either. I’ve also never unleashed a shapeshifting biophage, nor ended even one civilization.
The woman who did all that was Ledas-stinking-Starfire. Ledas: the rebel Kamen-lord, spoiled Terran princeling, and failed revolutionary. A year ago, someone killed her. Now her widower’s ravaging planets. I guess for revenge. Who cares? This isn’t her stinking story…
It’s MINE.
I’m Polla Ottrava. I’ve taken a job I wasn’t allowed to refuse. My employers are war criminals who swear they’re saving the galaxy. They say I’m the only one who can fly their bloodship. They say we’re heroes. They say they’ll pay me. They say a lot of crap. Only some of it’s true…
Initial Readers: Erin and Josh
New Eyes by Tobias Cabral
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Blurb: Just six months ago the rogue android, BopLpops’ grisly killing spree came to an end.
Gaspar Núñez’s conscience can find no relief for his part in unknowingly helping the horribly-abused ‘Synth’ wreak his terrible vengeance…even though it cost him his eyes.
But now a desperate, dangerous path has opened up for him to seek atonement, one that will carry him all the way to Mars.
Jenna Graham never saw the Darkness in BopLpops until that terrible summer night, half a year ago.
She’d worshiped him every time he performed for his adoring fans, the monster within him wholly hidden from her eyes.
Now chance has brought her an opportunity to confront the trauma that’s haunted her all this time.
Meanwhile, operatives of a shadowy anti-technological religious group have vowed to thwart their plans at any cost.
NEW EYES continues the story of the critically-acclaimed Cyberpunk detective novella, MECHANICAL ERROR.
A thrilling, thoughtful science fiction adventure, it crosses the space between worlds while exploring what it means to be human.
Initial Readers: Champ and Josh
Norylska Groans by Michael R. Fletcher and Clayton Snyder
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Blurb: Norylska Groans… with the weight of her crimes. In a city where winter reigns amid the fires of industry and war, soot and snow conspire to conceal centuries of death and deception.
Norylska Groans… and the weight of a leaden sky threatens to crush her people. Katyusha Leonova, desperate to restore her family name, takes a job with Norylska’s brutal police force. To support his family, Genndy Antonov finds bloody work with a local crime syndicate.
Norylska Groans… with the weight of her dead. As bodies fall, the two discover a foul truth hidden beneath layers of deception and violence: Come the thaw, what was buried will be revealed.
Initial Readers: Barb and Jay
Rebellious Nature by Rho Diehl
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Blurb: Konstance awakens from cryosleep with the distinct feeling that he has forgotten something important. Soon afterward, Vylik, his captain, informs him (as well as the rest of the crew on board the Rebellious Nature) about their new mission, one unlike any they have previously undertaken. To make things even more puzzling, only she is in possession of its most important details. All the crew knows is that they will be transporting a unique “Unfit” named Seirene across space to a distant location. Tensions on board the ship are already starting to rise, however, as Lubov (the ship’s ordnance specialist) has been acting strangely ever since waking from cryosleep. Will the crew of the Rebellious Nature successfully complete their mission? Or will they fail and face possibly dire consequences?
Initial Readers: Azrah and Erin
Spark and Tether by Lilian Zenzi
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Blurb: Working odd jobs across the Outer Ring gets a little lonely sometimes—not everyone loves having a synchronist with supraliminal perception around. But all Sacheri wants, he tells himself, is to wander the stars.
Then he takes a salvage run to an abandoned moon where he meets the wry, reserved, strictly-by-the-rules archivist Jin. Mesmerized by their confidence and charm, Sacheri can’t resist showing off his abilities–and instead of the damaged ai he was tracking, he stumbles onto a signal left by a synchronist who went missing decades earlier. Sacheri knows from previous experience that pursuing the truth—never mind justice—could destroy everything he loves. He would defy his employers, the institution responsible for the myconeural networks that make him a synchronist, and the leadership of several worlds. And it would complicate his new, passionate, and impossibly sweet relationship with Jin. They might be the best thing that’s ever happened to him, but they work for the very entities that ended Sacheri’s last investigation.
He knows better than to risk it. But he’s never been able to turn away from someone in need, and there’s a voice in the void calling for aid…
Initial Readers: Azrah and Josh
The Anubis War by David R. Packer
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Blurb: At the end of human space, a warrior faces his final battle. Coming out of retirement once more, Vasco Alcazar al Madina del Goya joins another multi-year unification mission on the far flung edges of human expansion. The planet Rumi will join the New Ottoman Empire, whether it wants to or not. To ensure this, the Empire has sent its largest, most powerful battleship, the Tatar-class Alexi, armed with kinetic energy and bioweapons. The native Sumi, regressed from their spacefaring days don’t stand a chance. Or at least, that’s what everyone thinks. All Vasco wants is one last chance to prove himself to be the warrior he always knew he could be, one last shot at glory. The Anubis War and his fate, awaits.
Initial Readers: Champ and Dave
The Arachne Portal by Joan Marie Verba
Blurb: Women scientists having fun saving the world…unless someone kills them first and steals their tech. Their goal is to make the world a better place. One billionaires’s obsession may turn their altruism into destruction. Jay Ecklund is desperate to belong somewhere. Rejected by his family and former employer, he really needs this job as a receptionist at an up-and-coming tech corporation. He’s astonished when he discovers the all-woman staff is secretly developing a portal capable of instantaneous transport to anywhere on Earth. Thrilled to be part of a company designing innovations to help others, Jay is excited when the machine is at last operational. But he worries about it falling into the wrong hands when an ambitious billionaire hell-bent on accumulating power makes a bid to get it…at any cost. Will the portal be used as a rescue device as intended, or will a relentless manipulator warp it to a more sinister purpose? The Arachne Portal is an electrifying standalone science fiction novel. If you like fast-paced adventures, phenomenal science, and thought-provoking themes, then you’ll love Joan Marie Verba’s compelling story.
Initial Readers: Champ and Dave
The Correct Order by Trish Taylor
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Blurb: With women in control, life is better, but not for everyone.
After the defeat of a repressive regime, women under the Correct Order enjoy safer and better lives. The AI entity BELLA dispenses harsh penalties to those breaking the rules. Men found guilty of crimes against women are sent to the Resort, where they undergo demasculation—a surgical penalty.
Seventeen-year-old Emily, daughter of a high-ranking Order leader, is about to embark on her dream career as a surgeon. But doubts creep in as BELLA’s judgments hit close to home. As Emily learns the truth about the Resort, she questions her career choice and everything she believed about the Correct Order.
Initial Readers: Champ and Erin
The Faithless and the Damned by Sev Romero
Blurb: When the world is on fire, justice eventually comes for all. As temperatures and water lines rise, a revolution led by the young and desperate dispenses bloody vengeance against what remains of the establishment. The Daughters of Adrestia send anxious teen Ava to execute a notorious climate criminal—but the job does not go to plan and Ava is forced to flee. Elsewhere in the decaying city, grieving widower Victor agrees to deliver a mysterious young boy to a shadowy sect, however, the boy escapes, placing Victor in danger. Ava crosses paths with the runaway boy and he joins her on the run. Victor pursues them, but discovers more ominous threats have also joined the hunt. A deadly game of cat and mouse ensues across the back roads and towns that litter the smouldering Australian landscape. To survive, Ava must fight to find her resolve, while Victor must confront his convictions. And as the chase intensifies to its feverish conclusion, both must decide whose side they are on before the world burns down around them. The Faithless and the Damned is a gripping, provocative dystopian thriller by the award-winning Australian speculative fiction author Sev Romero.
Initial Readers: Barb and Erin
The Thief by G. S. Jennsen
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Blurb: A stand-alone adventure set in the Amaranthe universe
The Hesgyr are thieves. “Scavengers,” to hear their victims tell it; “repurposers” by their own reckoning.
As Chief of Intelligence for Non-Anaden Affairs, Eren Savitas’ job is to protect the Advocacy from all manner of alien threats: sabotage, assassination, insurgency and, way down the list, theft. So when he spots a Hesgyr running off with valuable technology, he follows the alien home—and discovers a civilization unlike any he’s ever encountered.
Yes, the Hesgyr are thieves. But they are also being hunted. Systematically exterminated by an insidious enemy they can’t see, touch or find. Eren finds himself drawn ever deeper into the Hesgyr’s fascinating yet labyrinthine world as he races against time to solve the mystery of the deadly attacks. What he discovers is a complex web of loyalties and betrayals, of grudges and grievances millennia old—and beneath it all, a secret that may hold the key to the survival of more than one civilization.
THE THIEF is a humorous, pulse-pounding sci-fi adventure about alien culture clashes, the flaws and foibles that transcend species, and the satisfaction that comes from breaking all the rules to save the day.
Initial Readers: Azrah and Jay
Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen
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Blurb: At the frozen edge of the solar system lies a hidden treasure which could spell their fortune or their destruction—but only if they survive each other first.
Marcus Warnoc has a little problem. His asteroid mining ship—his inheritance, his livelihood, and his home—has been hijacked by a pint-sized corporate heiress with enough blackmail material to sink him for good, a secret mission she won’t tell him about, and enough courage to get them both killed. She may have him dead to rights, but if he doesn’t turn the tables on this spoiled Martian snob, he’ll be dead, period. He’s not giving up without a fight.
He has a plan.
Miranda Foxgrove has the opportunity of a lifetime almost within her grasp if she can reach it. Her stolen spacecraft came with a stubborn, resourceful captain who refuses to cooperate—but he’s one of the few men alive who can snatch an unimaginable treasure from beneath the muzzles of countless railguns. And if this foulmouthed Belter thug doesn’t want to cooperate, she’ll find a way to force him. She’s come too far to give up now.
She has a plan.
They’re about to find out that a plan is a list of things that won’t happen.
Initial Readers: Dave and Erin
Time of the Cat by Tansy Rayner Roberts
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Blurb: It’s time to take history seriously.
The cats and humans of Chronos College know that time travel is the best job in the world, and nothing bad can ever happen to them in the past… except that one time they lost a traveller. And that other time they lost a cat.
Now they have a chance to make up for past mistakes by rescuing a long lost legend. If only they could convince Professor Boswell, the grumpiest marmalade tabby of all time, to join their mission to the Swinging Sixties, and save one of their own. (Plus pick up a missing piece or two of lost media along the way.)
Join Ruthven, Boswell, Monterey and Lovelace on the most chaotic time travel adventure of their lives. Featuring special appearances by Cleopatra, Anne Boleyn, famous actress Fleur Shropshire, and the even more famous house where they filmed TV show Cramberleigh between 1964-1986.
Time of the Cat is a cozy sci-fi romp through the centuries, featuring academic endnotes, epic friendships, and far more cat hair than is strictly necessary. If you’d rather use time travel to steal the pens of famous writers of history than stop to fill in the proper paperwork, then this is the novel for you.
Initial Readers: Champ and Erin
Time’s Ellipse by Frasier Armitage
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Blurb: No solution saves everyone. Only one keeps us human.
The hope of a dying Earth rests on a crew of astronauts. Their mission: find a new home. But when they touch down on a distant planet, a time-bending anomaly traps them in a situation that no one could’ve predicted, causing them to question the nature of humanity, the snare of destiny, and the shape of time itself.
Time’s Ellipse spans generations, orbiting the lives of the scientists and astronauts involved in this historic mission as they discover that escaping the planet is simpler than evading its legacy.
Initial Readers: Azrah and Jay
Turn Left at the Mooncrow Skeleton by Linda Raedisch
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Blurb: “Welcome to Planet 5372, a uniquely dystopian world where the unlikely heroes include a handful of shambolic university students and their taciturn landlord. Raedisch’s layered writing and photographic attention to detail make this slice-of-life archaeological adventure entirely believable.” —Clarissa Simmens, author of Parallel Universe Cafe and Other Poems
For the past two hundred years, the colonists marooned on Planet 5372 have been confined to a volcanic basin the size of New Jersey. Outside the Basin lie the uninhabitable (some say haunted) ruins known as the Outer Cities. Bored with campus life at the colony’s only university, twenty-year-old Numi rents a room from Kelda, an uneducated, thirty-something carpenter whose movements are closely monitored by the “shingles” or neighborhood deputies. Numi doesn’t mind running interference between the reserved Kelda and his rambunctious tenants, but the two can never be more than friends. Numi’s an up-and-coming academic, and Kelda’s a Tyrrhenian, a descendant of the manual laborers who cleared the toxic vegetation from the Basin.
As Halloween approaches, Numi is still summoning the courage to confront Kelda with her suspicion that he’s mixed up in the black market trade in “magical paraphernalia,” mysterious carved objects left behind by the planet’s indigenous, supposedly extinct inhabitants. Time runs out on Mischief Night when Kelda disappears, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
Numi faces a decision. She can report her suspicions to the shingles, or she can follow her landlord to the one place she thought she could never go: the Outer Cities.
Initial Readers: Erin and Jay
Twilight Divide by Melanie Bokstad Horev
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Blurb: In a world where hope has been scorched by fire and forgotten gods, Nour fights to survive.
She’s a warrior, a sister, and a survivor in the brutal wasteland of Aridex. But when she discovers a long-hidden truth about her family, her life becomes a race against time.
A prophecy, whispered through time, binds her to a destiny she never wanted. She must choose: protect her brother, the only family she has left, or embrace a fate that could save or destroy them all.
The Day Blazers, a ruthless force with blades thirsty for blood, hunt her across the desert. And from the ruins of the old world, monstrous night creatures rise, their hunger as ancient as the wasteland itself.
Can Nour find the strength to stand against the darkness and save her people, or will the desert bury their dreams beneath the sand and grit they were born in?
Initial Readers: Champ and Josh
Umbra by Amber Toro
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Blurb: Earth That Was has faded into myth. After millenia spent wandering, humans are no longer nomads. Twelve tribes stand allied under the United Tribal Axis; but there is a signal in the darkness that threatens to destroy everything.
All Skyla wanted after leaving the Navy was to be left alone. Just her ship, the stars, and a new adventure. But when a strange virus disables her ship, she is thrown into the middle of a conflict she doesn’t understand, forcing her to take on responsibilities she swore she never would again.
Hinata always followed the rules, honor above all else. He always won, until he didn’t. Sentenced to exile for his failures, he is determined to prove himself, until a mysterious woman arrives on his station and chaos threatens to break already fragile alliances.
Freyja was always angry, an outcast, playing the part of admiral and black ops operative. But she is tired of being a pawn in the Empress’ games and when she’s stranded on the wrong side of enemy lines after a vengeful battle, she’s forced to ally with her adversaries to clear her name.
A Rogue. A Commander. And an Admiral. Brought together by circumstance, held together by duty. Can they find a way to work together to save humanity?
Initial Readers: Azrah and Erin
What Swims On Uncharted World 550 by R. B. Lovitt
Blurb: Meet Dr. Elora Stephenson, a biologist joining a team on a small outpost on an alien world. As soon as she arrives, strange occurrences and unexplained deaths throw the outpost into chaos. Who can be trusted? Who is hiding who they are? Elora must navigate the treacherous web of suspicions and sabotage, racing against time to unmask the culprit before the outpost is completely wiped out.
The fate of the team on uncharted world 550 rests in Elora’s hands in this thrilling tale of mystery and deception.
Initial Readers: Champ and Josh
Wilderness Five by C. R. Walton
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Blurb: Extinction is only the beginning . . . Accelerated evolution ‘Manifold’ technology has changed everything – dead worlds and asteroids bloom with strange new life. People flocked to colonise the new wilderness only barely to survive obliteration by a Manifold experiment gone wrong.
Like so many others, Bryn watched his people burn that day. Unlike the rest, Bryn finds himself hailed as the lone hero who saved his species. Only he knows better. Bryn’s grim new life of solitude in the depths of the wilderness is shattered when the past comes calling. His presence is requested on the ringworld Wilderness Five. There, at the edge of inhabited space, the oldest and richest man in the System has expended every drop of his money and influence to launch the most daring Manifold experiment ever attempted. Bryn’s moment has come. Plunged back into a world of faceless corporations, hell-bent scientists, and terrifying engineered species, he must learn to finally live up to his reputation. Otherwise, nature will take its course with humanity once and for all.
On Wilderness Five, the fate of the species comes down to one question: whom to trust and whom to kill?
Initial Readers: Erin and Josh