M. King

An orphan’s life is harsh - and often short - in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But young Locke Lamora dodges death and slavery, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist. As leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentleman Bastards, Locke is soon infamous, fooling even the underworld’s most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone still more ambitious and deadly. Faced with a bloody coup that threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game.

In a future wracked by environmental catastrophe and social instability, physicist John Renfrew devises a longshot plan to use tachyons - strange, time-traveling particles - to send a warning to the past. In 1962, Gordon Bernstein, a California researcher, gets Renfrew's message as a strange pattern of interference in an experiment he's conducting.

Reidon Ward's first semester at the Galens Institute hasn't been without reward. In just over half a year he's gone from the weakest cadet at school to one of the strongest in his class, and there's no one left who would argue that his Device, Shido, isn't the most terrifying CAD they've ever laid eyes on. Still, Rei knows that his climb has barely begun, like he knows that the true fight is only just starting. After all… The Sectionals tournament has arrived. Rei, along with Aria, Viv, Catcher, and a couple unexpected squadmates, are about to face the first real battle of their careers.

Dalinar Kholin challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions with the future of Roshar on the line. The Knights Radiant have only ten days to prepare—and the sudden ascension of the crafty and ruthless Taravangian to take Odium’s place has thrown everything into disarray. Desperate fighting continues simultaneously worldwide—Adolin in Azir, Sigzil and Venli at the Shattered Plains, and Jasnah in Thaylenah. The former assassin, Szeth, must cleanse his homeland of Shinovar from the dark influence of the Unmade.

A deftly crafted dystopian science fiction action/adventure novel by an author with a genuine flair for originality and a compelling, entertaining, and narrative-driven approach to storytelling, "Of Courage and Sacrifice" by Matt Hartle is especially and unreservedly recommended for community library Science Fiction & Fantasy collections. It should be noted for the personal reading lists of dedicated SciFi fans that "Of Courage and Sacrifice" is also readily available in a digital book format and print. --Midwest Book Review The world is a deeply troubled place—years of crippling ...

Xenon Hybrid, the Red Planet’s ceremonial head-of-state, has not been seen for many years after withdrawing to an isolated enclave in the far north where he steadily built up a following of citizens seeking out an alternative lifestyle. They bother no one, and no one bothers them. But when an Earth-bound ship explodes on the launchpad in Jezero City, and the DNA from two bodies recovered at the site are found to be an exact match, Dr. Jann Malbec is convinced that they are the product of a covert cloning program.

When a colonist dies in tragic circumstances, just a few sols before a major terraforming experiment, Dr. Jann Malbec begins to suspect that all is not what it seems. Her fears begin to grow when every attempt she makes to investigate the death is thwarted by the ruling council on Mars. In desperation, she resorts to secretly recruiting a recently arrived colonist, Mia Sorelli, an ex-cop with a troubled past, to quietly look into the incident. But Mia has some very good reasons why she left her old life on Earth behind.

In the not-too-distant future, a 21-member crew launches from Earth. Their mission: to establish a temporary colony on Mars. Little do they know that colony will become permanent–and the last stand of the human race. Because, without warning, every single person left on Earth simply...vanishes. Now, a thousand years later, the resources needed to sustain life are running out, and the very existence of the Mars colony is threatened. Humankind has only one option–to return to its home planet.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."

Verity Jane, gifted app whisperer, takes a job as the beta tester for a new product: a digital assistant, accessed through a pair of ordinary-looking glasses. "Eunice", the disarmingly human AI in the glasses, manifests a face, a fragmentary past, and a canny grasp of combat strategy. Realizing that her cryptic new employers don’t yet know how powerful and valuable Eunice is, Verity instinctively decides that it’s best they don’t.