Science Thriller

Murdered parents and a crippled spaceship. That’s what pirates left for thirteen-year-old Meriel Hope and the orphans from the Light Speed Merchant Princess. But according to the authorities, pirates didn’t exist, which defined Meriel as crazy. They buried the investigation and Meriel’s past with it. Ten years later, Meriel has struggled to build a life for herself as a Cargo Chief on the Tiger working a circuit between Procyon A and Wolf 359. She’s kicked the mandatory drugs that controlled the nightmares and flashbacks and trained to Marine-3. And with five other marines on board,...

With enemies closing in on every side, the survivors of Fall Creek find themselves facing impossible odds. Do they flee for their lives? Or, do they defend their town and risk losing it all? Some things are worth fighting for, even dying for. This may be their last stand. When the country goes dark, ordinary people find themselves facing the end of the world as they know it.

Welcome to Jewell, North Carolina, a small strip of land on the Crystal Coast with no stop signs or traffic lights, but it's got a whole lot of magic. Ruby Mae Jewell helps run the family business of selling antiques and refurbished goods. But with old objects, you never know when one of them possesses more than just dust and cobwebs. When Rue hits up a flea market, she gets more than she bargained for. Finding a potentially dangerous magical object, she has to get it off the market and out of mortal hands.

Today’s UV Index: Lethal Deep inside the sun, magnetic lines of force are growing…building in ways not experienced for a millennium. When a pair of increasingly severe solar storms disables internet, communications, and GPS for millions around the globe, helioseismologist Greyson Finn fears the imminent arrival of a cataclysmic super flare, a magnetic explosion of the sun with the potential to obliterate life on earth. In a desperate bid to help the world prepare, Finn and his fellow scientists rush to address the critical question: will the solar weather subside, or is the worst yet to...

Police Chief Delaney Reed is good at keeping secrets for the beach town of Ordinary Oregon - just ask the vacationing gods or supernatural creatures who live there. But with the first annual Cake and Skate fundraiser coming up, the only secret Delaney really wants to know is how to stop the unseasonable rain storms. When all the god powers are stolen, a vampire is murdered, and her childhood crush turns out to be keeping deadly secrets of his own, rainy days are the least of her worries.

For my forty-fifth birthday, I planned to treat myself to a spa day with my bestie. But instead, my late husband's insurance broker drops by to let me know that not only am I still widowed but my husband's insurance policies are being paid to his other wife-and his other family. The next thing I know, I'm being romanced by an Indiana Jones wannabe who arrives like a dervish to sweep me off my feet. One thing leads to another, but before anything happens, Indy goes missing, the place is trashed, and I've got myself a glowing snake tattoo that seems to be talking to me about magic.

In this book, we are going to explore the specific challenges of writing genre flash fiction and short fiction, where you only have 500 to 1,000 words to tell a story. To do this well, you need to master three specific skills of genre writing. You need to understand the reader's expectations of the genre—the voice, the story arc, and the satisfying outcomes. More often than not, you will need to use familiar locations or settings; after all, you don't have many words to create a whole new world. The real skill lies in the twist—after drawing the reader in with familiar genre storylines ...

Necromancer is such an ugly word, but it's a title Eric Carter is stuck with. He sees ghosts, talks to the dead. He's turned it into a lucrative career, putting troublesome spirits to rest, sometimes taking on even more dangerous things. For a fee, of course. When he left LA 15 years ago, he thought he'd never go back. Too many bad memories. Too many people trying to kill him.

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth - from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds - collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot.

Something evil is at work in Hyde River, an isolated mining town in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Under the cover of darkness, a predator strikes without warning—taking life in the most chilling and savage fashion. The community of Hyde River watches in terror as residents suddenly vanish. Yet, the more locals are pressed for information, the more they close ranks, sworn to secrecy by their forefathers’ hidden sins. Only when Hyde River’s secrets are exposed is the true extent of the danger fully revealed.

Another day, another hijacked body. And just 13 hours to solve a murder…Detective Vincent Graves has made a habit of dying. Waking up in someone else’s body isn’t pleasant, especially when it's inside a coffin with tons of dirt pressing down on it. Once he’s out, he learns his soul has 13 hours to find the borrowed body’s killer. With the help of a brilliant FBI agent, Vincent’s quest for clues leads to a looming supernatural presence. And escaping the dark threat may be impossible with his ever-ticking clock… Can Vincent close the case in time?

Shape-shifter Michael Biörn has walked this earth 1000 years. Vampires walking the streets in broad daylight. Students disappearing at an alarming rate. Rumors of a mysterious necromancer. Something is seriously amiss in Michael's neck of the woods. The Elves have chosen to ignore the problem, so it falls to Michael to look into it. Hidden in the heart of the forest is a foe more powerful than anything he's ever faced. And when Michael finds him, the unthinkable happens. Now Michael must race to lift the veil of deception and expose the enemy's true nature.

The invaders had cut the United States virtually in half at the Mississippi, vaporized Washington, D.C., devastated much of Europe, and held large parts of the Soviet Union under their thumb. But humanity would not give up so easily....

Dorina Basarab is a dhampir - half-human, half-vampire. Subject to uncontrollable rages, most dhampirs live very short, very violent lives. So far Dory has managed to maintain her sanity by unleashing her anger on those demons and vampires who deserve killing. Now Dory's vampire father has come back into her life. Her uncle Dracula (yes, the Dracula), infamous even among vampires for his cruelty and murderous ways, has escaped his prison.

Silo 42 has a secret. There are 50 Silos in total. None know the others exist. They live in isolation, under the illusion they are the only humans still alive on Earth, protected by their sophisticated underground micro-universe for centuries, while they wait for the harsh outside conditions and aftermath of the Great War to subside. However, life in Silo 42 is more sustainable than the others. Energy resources have been updated. Creativity, freedom, and transparency have created the conditions for its people to thrive. All positive indicators for Silo health. But that was never the true ...

A rogue Russian nuke sails toward the harbors of Los Angeles in the hull of a ramshackle sailboat. Without destroying a single building, the bomb shatters the latticework of the American dream, toppling one piece of the economy after another. A group of Special Forces veterans and their prepper friends scramble for survival in a worldwide catastrophe so psychologically disruptive they are left questioning everything they ever believed to be true.

On a rescue mission in the heart of the Indonesian jungle, Dr. Draden Freeman and his GhostWalker team need to extract the wounded as quickly as possible - or risk spreading a deadly virus unleashed by a terrorist cell. When Draden gets infected, he forces his team to leave him behind. He won’t risk exposing anyone else. He intends to find the ones responsible and go out in a blaze of glory. Shylah Cosmos’ mission is to track the virus and remain unseen. Her enhanced senses tell her that the gorgeous man eradicating the terrorists one by one is a GhostWalker.

It's been two months since Raven Marigold discovered she was a witch, and she is handling her situation with grace. Well, if you discount the fact that she caught her blouse on fire and made her cat's tail go numb for four hours. The bottom line is that Raven is succeeding in her pursuit of this new mystical life she's been given. Someone must have missed that memo, though. Raven finds herself smack dab in the middle of another murder investigation. Every piece of evidence points to the town treasurer as being the guilty party, but she isn't so sure the case is that cut and dried.

The beast came at night. Murdered the cop in his home. Tore his Rottweilers to pieces. And it's only the latest in a series of gruesome attacks. Overwhelmed, Houston PD is at a loss. But shape-shifter Michael Biörn isn't. Michael discerns the secret nature of the killer; a werewolf's handiwork is unmistakable. Werewolves move in packs, however. And the local pack is 40 members strong. But a young woman's life is at stake. And so, after centuries spent avoiding the wolves, Michael abandons his retreat to confront his ancestral enemies.

When Molly Bigelow discovered that zombies shared New York with humans, she didn't think life could get more shocking. Then she learned that her mother was once one of the greatest zombie killers ever - and she discovered that her dead mother is not technically dead after all (although she isn't alive, either). Molly's efforts to keep these secrets and to help her Omega team track down the identity of the original 13 zombies will take her from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade to New Year's Eve in Times Square.