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A derelict warship, ancient but still alive. A small team of humans fighting for all humanity.
Built for a time when the races were just finding their way to the stars, finding that they could dominate others. The galactic conquests created the arms race and the ancients, the Progenitors had to protect their own. They built a ship to drive the others away.
It worked. And it didn’t. The Progenitors abandoned the galaxy to the newcomers, leaving relics behind as monuments to their failure.
Humanity spread to the stars and ran headlong into the established races. A new war begins, and no one conducts war better than humanity except for the Blaze Collective.
The two go head-to-head while humanity frantically searches for something to give them an advantage. Ancient technology. The derelicts scattered across the galaxy. Gutted and useless.
Except for one, hidden in plain sight, close to Earth. Major Declan Payne takes his team aboard to find that the ship is no derelict, and it needs him as much as humanity needs it.
A Sip Before Dying (Wine & Dine Mysteries Book 1) (affiliate link)
The Oak Valley Vineyard has been in Emmy Oak’s family for generations. So when the small Sonoma winery is suddenly in financial trouble and in danger of being gobbled up by the corporate giants, Emmy moves home to try to save her legacy with her modern culinary know-how. First step—she throws a party showcasing her latest vintage and signature tasty treats to a group of wine country’s most elite enthusiasts. Only when one of her VIP guests sips a glass of poisoned wine and dies in her cellar, Emmy’s name is on everyone’s lips for all the wrong reasons.
The victim was the young, boy-toy husband of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful female CEOs… and his playboy ways and suspicious spending habits have almost no one mourning his death. Enter Detective Christopher Grant, recent SFPD transplant, who is assigned to the case and immediately homes in on Oak Valley. But Emmy is determined to clear her winery’s name—even if Grant’s dark eyes, sexy smile, and mysterious past threaten to distract her.
Invasion (Heartland Aliens Book 1) (affiliate link)
THEY INVADED.
THEY CONQUERED.
THEY UNDERESTIMATED.
The War of the Worlds gets turbocharged in this nonstop action-packed thriller about a group of survivors thrust into extraordinary circumstances.
When aliens arrive on Earth, the tiny town of Little Creek isn’t any more prepared than the rest of the planet.
Without warning or provocation, the otherworldly creatures begin to lay waste to everything.
In the chaos that follows, an unlikely group bands together:
A beauty queen with something to prove…
A shopkeeper with something to hide…
A shellshocked teenager set on revenge…
And a world-weary veteran desperate to save them all.
As time runs out, this ragtag crew must find a way to fight back against the alien forces massing around them.
The Elephant Keeper’s Daughter (affiliate link)
Ceylon, 1803. In the royal city of Kandy, a daughter is born to the king’s elephant keeper—an esteemed position in the court reserved only for males. To ensure the line of succession, Phera’s parents raise her as a boy.
As she bonds with her elephant companion, Siddhi, Phera grows into a confident, fiercely independent woman torn between the expectations of her family and her desire to live life on her own terms. Only when British colonists invade is she allowed to live her true identity, but when the conquerors commit unspeakable violence against her people, Phera must add survival to the list of freedoms for which she’s willing to fight.
Possessed by thoughts of revenge yet drawn into an unexpected romance with a kindly British physician, the elephant keeper’s daughter faces a choice: Love or hatred? Forgiveness or retribution?
The American (A Ryan Kealey Thriller Book 1) (affiliate link)
Ryan puts together the pieces of a terrifying puzzle. With the fate of the country resting on his shoulders, he finds himself caught in a desperate game of cat-and-mouse with the most cunning opponent he’s ever faced, a man who won’t be denied the ultimate act of evil and who is all the more deadly for being one of our own.
Tales of the City: A Novel (affiliate link)
An Ordinary Life (affiliate link)
Christmas Eve, 2019. Ninety-four-year-old Molly lies in her hospital bed. A stroke and a fall may have broken her body—but her mind is alive with memories.
London, 1940s. Molly is a bright young woman, determined to help the war effort and keep her head up despite it all. Life becomes brighter when she meets and falls in love with a man who makes her forget everything with one dance. But then war forces her to make an unforgettable sacrifice, and when she’s brought to her knees by a daring undercover mission with the French Resistance, only her sister knows the secret weighing heavily on Molly’s heart.
Now, lying in her hospital bed, Molly can’t escape the memories of what she lost all those years ago. But she is not as alone as she thinks.
Will she be able to find peace—and finally understand that what seemed to be an ordinary life was anything but?
Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam Trilogy, Book 1) (affiliate link)
Robert Ludlum’s The Treadstone Resurrection (affiliate link)
Treadstone made Jason Bourne an unstoppable force, but he’s not the only one.
Operation Treadstone has nearly ruined Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be an all but invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Which is why he was determined to get out. Working as a carpenter in rural Washington state, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at his job site.
Adam must regain the skills that Treadstone taught him–lightning reflexes and a cold conscience–in order to discover who the would-be killers are and why they have come after him now. Are his pursuers enemies from a long-ago mission? Rival intelligence agents? Or, perhaps, forces inside Treadstone? His search will unearth secrets in the highest levels of government and pull him back into the shadowy world he worked so hard to forget.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2