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...

Tommy Morrison, the young son of US diplomat James Morrison, has been kidnapped. James has access to military secrets that the kidnappers want, but he can’t risk these getting into the wrong hands, so he approaches Delia Cahill for her ‘special skills.’ Hotshot lawyer by...

Evolution by Ryan LeKodak begins with a pregnant Ndidi, who knows Helene has taken over Manar’s body. She retreats with Pratima, evading checkpoints, surviving cramped travel, and fighting to escape at every turn. CJ journeys through the corrupted cyberspace, the Virtual Realm, tracing Manar’s fragmented...

Set in Charlotte, North Carolina, during the 1990s, this story follows Elle Larson, a nurse practitioner, who rushes to save Charlie Blackwell, an elderly client, from a near-fatal fentanyl overdose. But when she discovers multiple fentanyl patches on Charlie’s body and his caregiver is surprisingly...

Escape of the Grand Duchess by Susan Appleyard follows Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, who is trapped in a marriage to Prince Peter of Oldenburg, who has made his preference for men known. Olga requests a divorce, which both Peter and her brother, Nicholas II, refuse....

A tangled web of deception and intrigue awaits in Escalate, a novel by Ray Chan. At first glance, the book presents three separate stories and reads like an anthology. The first story revolves around two would-be thieves who find themselves in trouble with a crime...