In Dennis Currie’s Encrypted Patriot: The Ghosts That Protect America, after retiring from the Los Angeles Police Department, homicide investigator Cash Currie opens a private investigation agency in Asian Alley with former law enforcement colleagues, expecting routine surveillance work and background cases. That life changes...

Exile: Book One of The Dark Mirror Trilogy by Sherri Fulmer Moorer is a wonderful science fiction read. The description begins thus: “Dr. Addison Lybrand’s career ends the moment the object she’s tracking vanishes beyond the heliopause.” What follows after the disappearance of the object...

Escape from Perihelion by Diego Tovar takes place in a scorched, climate-ravaged future, with Earth as a wasteland. The situation is worsened by environmental injustice and extractive capitalism. The people are divided into two classes: the privileged “insiders” of the domed Los Angeles and the...

In Thomas S. Brown’s Echoes of Humanity, when the ship, Ascendant, returns decades after it was declared lost, they find that humanity is now governed by a system called Echo-9 that controls without consent. Beneath the Martian surface, Hera learns that people who have disconnected...

In S.D. Rhodes's Extinction Protocol, after Earth is destroyed, engineer Elias Ward lives inside a sealed Mars colony where their survival depends on strict control of air, food, and movement under Director Hart’s Security forces. As authority tightens, Elias gains access to the colony’s infrastructure...

In Thomas S. Brown’s Echelon: The Cycle Stirs, Maria Kessler survives in the Lower East Spill by mapping patrol routes and drone cycles, until Dr. Elias Roth recruits her to Project Synthesis in Geneva, where her mind synchronizes with an artificial lattice called Echo-9. Through...

In Enemy at the Helm by Mark Dickson, coordinated maritime attacks strike major American ports and key global canals, beginning with the destruction of the cruise ship Leviathan off Miami. As the shipping channels are blocked and infrastructure collapses, investigators trace the operation to a...

Elco Parks by Sandro Laudadio is one of the most unusual stories I have read in a while, and it resonates with its themes and atmosphere. The setting is Vancouver in 2008, where a new religion has taken hold in the belief that glacial striations...

Echoes in the Void by Ben Hafer follows Captain Jonathan Reed and the crew of the Perevian on a mission that begins as a routine survey, but shifts once they encounter an energy field near the ruins of the Aetherion. The field reveals structured signals,...

In Echoes of Maya by Kelly Vincent, eight-year-old Maya is Lauren’s stepsister, and together with their neighbor Gabriel, the three are close friends. On Halloween night, Lauren takes Maya trick-or-treating while their parents are at work. With missing children in the news, Lauren tries to...