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The February Round-up of Scifi Books

Today I want to start with an appeal. Normally, I would avoid this kind of thing, but this is such a good cause and it is a friend of mine raising money for it.
St Margaret's Hospice is committed to providing specialist palliative care, advice, support and respite to patients and their families living in Somerset and parts of neighbouring counties. Their care is available for those who have a terminal or life-limiting illness, for example cancer, motor neurone disease and chronic lung disease, and all care is free of charge.
My friend Ali is running the London marathon this year to raise money for the Hospice after they looked after her mother in her final days. If you could see your way to supporting this, you can donate at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/themarathonsisters.
Of course, I understand if you don't ahve nything to spare, or you support other charities. Perhaps you could share the link on Facebook?

Thank you for reading through that appeal, and sorry if it brought up any unpleasant memories. I know I struggled with thoughts of my own father, but that made me more determined to share.


1960s London. Kathy is a seductive singer. But she’s also human. Light knows his passion for her is reckless but he’s enchanted. Yet such a romance is forbidden. When the two worlds collide, it could mean the end. For both species.
When Light discovers his ruthless family’s horrifying experiments, he questions whether he should be slaying or saving the humans he’s always feared. What dark revelations will Light reveal at the heart of the experiments? Will he be able to stop them in time? The consequences of failure are unimaginable. Unless Light plays the part of hero, he risks losing everything. Including the two women he loves.


Strong-willed Kelsey Reed must escape tonight or tomorrow her government will take her kidney and give it to someone else.
She’ll need the help of her true love, Luke, to make this dangerous escape. This dystopian future Kelsey lives in was forged by survivors of pandemics that wiped out 80 percent of the world's population. Here, life is valued above all else. The mentally ill are sterilized, abortions are illegal and those who refuse to donate an organ when told are sentenced to death.
Determined not to give up her kidney or die, Kelsey and Luke enlists the help of a dodgy doctor to escape. The trio must disable the electronic tracking chip in Kelsey's arm for her to flee undetected. If they fail, Kelsey could be stripped of Luke, her kidney and everything else she holds dear.


Jo Mason believes that creativity, spontaneity, and faith exist as definable words, but not actionable items. Negative consequences always follow the rare positive outcomes. It seems her destiny is surviving a chaotic world she can't control. Hearing her own voice where she shouldn’t have leaves her wondering about her place in time.
Jeff has always been a part of her life, offering encouragements, wise words when she needed them, and many other things she can never completely thank him for. She knows he replaced her cousin who died saving his life. When she questions why he didn't get to stay with his family, Jeff replies that without fixing the timeline everything she knows would be different.
When Jeff’s twin brother Randy falls into her lap, both literally and figuratively, Jo hopes he can give her a better answer. There is only one slight problem… He doesn’t remember anything about himself or his life and what he does, doesn’t help.
Together, the three of them learn that life isn’t about who or what you know, but who and what you care for.


Despite his reputation as a brilliant and dedicated space engineer, John Rees is certain he is not the man everyone thinks he is. Haunted by the death of his father and one fatal decision that questions his morality, he doubts he will have a chance to redeem himself for a past he cannot escape.
But when 100 colonists go missing on an alien planet, John sees his chance to prove once and for all that one decision doesn’t create a monster. John and the crew of the Atlas struggle to survive the near-total malfunction of their power and navigation systems, evidence that a strange alien race intercepted the colonists, and even a near-impossible jump through hundreds of meters of solid rock.
Can John and the crew make use of limited resources and save the lives of their companions? Or will the challenges prove once and for all that John will never be able to find the peace that he seeks?


The core worlds of settled space enjoy a tenuous peace, unaware and ill prepared for the threat building beyond the furthest reaches of Humanity. The star kingdom of Albion stands as a shining light of justice and mercy in a harsh galaxy, and they will be the first to suffer the Daegon's fury.
Defying his low born status, and despite his self-doubt, Commodore Thomas Gage has risen through the ranks by sheer grit and determination, defending Albion from brutal pirate clans.
And when the onslaught comes, Gage and his fleet may be Albion's last hope for freedom.


Esther Lysander, the driven, professional Marine ever conscious of the heavy weight of her father’s legacy, is selected to become an officer. She has high goals for her career—very high goals—and she believes the best method to achieve success is to be a complete hard-ass, keeping emotions at bay. This outlook has resulted in some notable achievements, but at the cost of friends and her relationship with her twin brother Noah, a price she is willing to pay.
First as an infantry platoon commander, then as a Recon Marine, Esther develops as a tactical commander, all the time putting her career first and foremost. As she grows into her billets, however, she begins to realize there is more to being a leader of Marines than simply the mission at hand. A true leader cannot consider her subordinates as mere chess pieces in her rise to the top, and a true Marine has to put the needs of the Corps and Federation above her own.


Ajax answers the call of duty and becomes an Einherjar space marine, charged with defending humanity against hideous alien monsters in furious combat across the galaxy.
The Garm, as they came to be called, emerged from the deepest parts of uncharted space, devouring all that lay before them, a great swarm that scoured entire star systems of all organic life. This space borne hive, this extinction fleet, made no attempts to communicate and offered no mercy.
Humanity has always been a deadly organism, and we would not so easily be made the prey. Unified against a common enemy, we fought back, meeting the swarm with soldiers upon every front.
We were resplendent in our fury, and yet, despite the terrible slaughter we visited upon the enemy, world after world still fell beneath ravenous tooth and wicked claw. For every beast slain in the field, another was swiftly hatched to take its place and humanity was faced with a grim war of attrition.
After a decade of bitter galactic conflict, it was all humanity could to do slow the advance of the swarm and with each passing year we came closer to extinction.
The grinding cost of war mounted. The realization set in that without a radical shift in tactics and technology the forces of humanity would run out of soldiers before it ran out of bullets.
In desperate response to the real threat of total annihilation, humanity created the Einherjar. Fearless new warriors with frightening new weapons who were sent to fight the wolves at the gate.


Nothing will stand in the way of Tiger Lily's dream of escaping the subterranean slums of Terra and visiting the stars. She enters the fierce competition for a place in the scout team on the next spaceship to the remote planet of Delta, where an earlier colony disappeared. Before the ship departs, the arrival of a mysterious message from Delta suggests that the descendants of the first colonists may have survived.
A risky mission to seek the lost colony exposes the team to unexpected dangers, and they encounter a grim warrior in the isolated valley. Has Tiger Lily met her match in the tortured man? Where is he leading them? And who are the real rulers of this strange world?


Cast adrift from old ties, Rei and the crew prepare to start a new chapter.
They were never designed to be heroes.
Hurricane. Ember. Aurora. Danger. State-sponsored superhumans known as Augments. Weapons created to end a war.
With the war over, their creators couldn't surrender the power and sought to hide it in the shadows. They forged ahead with covert operations and proxy wars despite growing condemnation. But one by one, Augments begin to ignore their handlers or disappear altogether. The quiver emptied.


A space fleet with seven thousand artificial human marines hurtles through space at near-light-speed to an interstellar war...
Doctor Charlotte West, the neuro-technologist responsible for the soldiers’ artificial brains, travels in the support fleet. Two months before the arrival at the war site, the marines start fighting each other and disobeying commands.
When they are brought in for tests, Charlotte finds that someone has made a disastrous mistake that endangers the entire space fleet.


Carrie is a low-achieving daydreamer. After providing a good home for her butt-ugly dog and psychotic cat, her biggest challenge in life is to avoid being fired, again.
But a strange green mist sucks her beneath her kitchen sink, and an unusual clerical error leads to an offer she foolishly doesn’t refuse.
The Transgalactic Council hire her to settle a conflict between the mechanical placktoids and the mysterious oootoon. Carrie must overcome her personal weaknesses and, for the first time in her life, succeed in her job, to uncover a threat to the entire galaxy.


She thought she was nothing. Until she became everything.
Susan Forrester's life was on a downward spiral. She had zero friends, a too small apartment, and a soul draining job. But, when she hears the sound of a horn, and the world falls into chaos around her, Susan must make a desperate attempt to survive. Armed with only her wits and an unfamiliar voice that has taken up residence in her mind, Susan tries to flee the city's destruction all while keeping her sanity in tact.
But she can't leave alone. A small, orphaned boy with eyes the color of four leaf clovers needs her help too. And what's worse, strange men in dark suites are pursing them both.
Can she survive the destruction of the city and save the boy? Or will she be captured, and doomed to a fate worse than death?


Fallon’s back, and ready to settle things with Blackout once and for all. If she and her team can’t take control, the PAC will splinter and massive intergalactic war will decimate the populace.
Can one little rebellion save an empire? Avian Unit—and their friends—are sure as hell going to try.


On the outer rim of the galaxy, in a century old battle, a heinous adversary is carrying out a religious calling to exterminate all other sentient species.
At 105 years of age, Millie Helgren knows her days are numbered when she enters a government-operated nursing home. Only instead of withering away from old age, Millie becomes entangled in a conspiracy to covertly supply Earth’s senior citizens to an imperial military in a distant part of the galaxy.
At first it’s a mystery why would a group of advanced species be interested in elderly humans with dietary restrictions and physical ailments. But what if they happened to possess the medical tech to give someone like Millie a new lease on life as an imperial soldier?
Through intense training Millie discovers a level of strength and tenacity she thought was long lost. Soon she is thrust into a rank and file that she knows nothing about, aboard an imperial warship, reporting to a tough captain who has little respect for humans. To make matters worse, the imperial military is outnumbered, outgunned, and facing certain defeat.
As Millie endures the hardships of a grim future, will her training, restored youth, sharp wit, and determination to defend Earth be enough to survive?


When the world falls apart, when civilization collapses, when life as we know it ends, our greatest terrors becomes real. Perhaps it's nuclear war with its poisonous radiation, hideous plagues or chemical contamination, rogue artificial intelligences controlling killer robots, or zombies that turn our friends and neighbors into inhuman monsters. What can the common man or woman do in the face of apocalyptic fears?


Ebola, one of the most feared of the hemorrhagic diseases, begins spreading across the borders of countries in West Africa. Soon after, the disease mutates into the "Z" or Zombie Virus. Journalist Hunter Morgan uncovers a disturbing connection between Chen-Zamora Pharmaceuticals and this mutation. Further investigation reveals a web of sinister intrigue connecting the pharmaceutical company to a treatment and research camp in West Africa, U.S. government officials, the CDC and the World Health Organization. Racing against time to find a cure, Hunter and several scientists go underground in order to hide from powerful forces trying to silence them forever.








This post first appeared on Alasdair Shaw - Science Fiction, Physics And Archa, please read the originial post: here

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The February Round-up of Scifi Books

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