Auralis: The Bridge (Book 1) by R.A. Wagener is a praiseworthy, speculative, sci-fi technothriller. We meet Asher Newman, a mid-level systems integration engineer at Luminate Technologies. When Asher’s team was assigned to run final-stage testing on a new hi-tech chip, Asher discovered that the architecture...

The Creeping Darkness of Janaidar by Robert D. Holland begins in a hidden underground city called The Sleeping City, where an ancient dragon named YuLong wakes up the instant YunFei, the ruler he has been mentally linked to for thousands of years, dies. He expects...

In Peter Van Oossanen’s The Extraterrestrial, when an infant is left in a basket on the porch of a remote California farm, John and Mary Stanton raise him as their own son, naming him Sam and giving him an ordinary life in the Salinas Valley....

Children of Eternity by Macaulay Christian kicks off in a galaxy that’s still dealing with the aftermath of a mysterious signal that reached every planet at once. The signal came with instructions to build a device no one fully understands, but everyone feels compelled to...

Mona “Ripper” Ripple and her crew, Karcass Five, take center stage in Jarrett Brandon Early’s Lovestruck Maggot, plunging readers straight into the rugged, alien world of Kalderra. The planet itself is unforgettable: glowing subarashi trees rise from volcanic calderas, a huge violet moon looms overhead,...

In Don Stuart’s Descartes' Shadow, born during the Cascadia disaster, Ellie Frye Carver grows up on Vashon Island with unanswered questions about her mother’s death and the father she never knew. Her closest confidante is Patrice, an advanced artificial intelligence who first enters her life...

In Steve C. Posner's Questioner, attorney Martin Bavarius takes on the defense of Mark Ryder after the shooting of fellow lawyer John Mudge. The case turns on a disturbing claim: Ryder believes the killing began inside QuestGame, a hyper-immersive virtual reality simulator. As Bavarius works...

“Everything’s the same as it’s always been, Kurt. It’s only our perception of the world that’s changed.” In the novel Without A Face by Lonnie Busch, that sentence would be a significant understatement. The curtain rises in Rescue, a small town somewhere in the American...

“And when you've been immersed in the warmth of a passionate soul for longer than you can remember. The world turns an unbearable cold the moment they are gone.” The world is a strange place in He Who Lived on the Lethe, a novel by...

Twenty-four-year-old Nina Brandt, a paralegal in Salt Lake City, Utah, is dissatisfied with her ordinary life. While her job paid the bills, she didn’t particularly love it. If only she were better at mathematics and didn’t wear glasses, she wouldn’t have abandoned her childhood dream...