David wakes up in a high-security prison on the forsaken Martian moon Deimos with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Not the most promising start. A chance encounter with Aztec — a deadly purple-haired cyborg with opinions about incarceration — propels him into a daring jailbreak and onto a mysterious warship crewed by the most notorious outfit in the galaxy. 🚀
The Space Punks operate in a solar system still scarred by a war fought a century ago, when AI turned on humanity and nearly won. The Pentad — a ruthless coalition of megacorporations — has kept order ever since, which mostly means keeping everyone else in line. The Space Punks are the exception that the Pentad very much wants eliminated. ⚡
As David fights to recover his memory alongside mechs, cyborgs, robots, and super-soldiers, he starts noticing that everyone on board has their own secret agenda — human and cyborg alike. The crew that rescued him might be exactly what they appear to be, or something considerably more complicated. 🤖
And lurking in the shadows behind the Pentad’s enforcers is a threat everyone assumed was defeated — an enemy to all of humanity, biding its time, ready to strike again. Anna Mocikat builds her space opera with genuine propulsive energy and a cast of misfits worth following anywhere they’re crazy enough to go. 💥
What makes this explosive: Anna Mocikat’s cyberpunk space opera follows amnesiac David escaping a Martian moon prison alongside deadly cyborg Aztec and joining the Space Punks—the galaxy’s most notorious crew defying the Pentad’s ruthless megacorporation control—while recovering fragments of his past, navigating crewmates with hidden agendas, and confronting a seemingly defeated enemy to all humanity preparing to strike again from the shadows.
Black Sky station drifts silent in the debris field — a tomb of advanced technology and buried secrets that nobody has successfully breached. When salvager Selene Cross breaches its hull to escape her mounting debts, she triggers something that has been waiting a very long time for someone to arrive. 🛸
The station’s AI speaks in riddles rather than answers. Deadly protocols activate without warning or explanation. From a sealed chamber emerges a soldier carrying memories of a war that history has deliberately forgotten. And from outside, pirates are already closing in. 🔫
What makes Black Sky uniquely dangerous isn’t just its defenses — it’s that the station seems to make choices. Corridors shift between sanctuary and trap depending on criteria Selene can’t fully decode. The failing reactor counts down while the AI tests them with every heartbeat. And slowly, terrifyingly, it becomes clear that Black Sky doesn’t merely defend itself. It selects. ⚙️
The abandoned station offers the possibility of a home, but every system that comes back online reveals new dangers, and every alliance forged inside those shifting corridors demands a sacrifice nobody was fully prepared to make. A.T. Michaels and Michael Anderle build their sci-fi thriller with atmospheric dread and tight pacing that makes the claustrophobic setting feel genuinely alive. 🌌
What makes this riveting: A.T. Michaels and Michael Anderle’s sci-fi thriller follows salvager Selene Cross breaching the silent Black Sky station to escape her debts, triggering an AI that speaks in riddles, deadly protocols that activate without warning, and a sealed soldier carrying memories of a forgotten war—while pirates close in from outside and the station itself proves to be something far stranger than abandoned: a failing, choosing intelligence that tests everyone inside it.
Jake Shepherd doesn’t win any points for social graces. He doesn’t care. What the ruggedly handsome cowboy PI and former FBI agent with a Yale law degree actually cares about is justice — and he’s exceptionally good at delivering it. He can read a suspect like a menu, shoot with frightening precision, and leverage a unique relationship with his former FBI supervisor in ways that consistently bend the rules without quite breaking them. 🤠
When the estranged twin of a U.S. senator’s wife calls Atlanta attorney Scarlett Kavanaugh, and the senator himself turns up dead, Jake finds himself with a case that has political dynamite written all over it. Scarlett — a Harvard Law graduate with quick wit, sharp intelligence, and enough self-confidence to match Jake point for point — isn’t content to sit on the sidelines of the investigation. 🔍
This is the particular pleasure of watching two formidable people who are used to being the smartest person in the room suddenly have to deal with someone equally matched. The sparks between Jake and Scarlett have the quality of a very well-struck flint — frequent, bright, and likely to catch something on fire. 💥
Judith Erwin’s series opener establishes Jake Shepherd as a PI hero worth following — flawed enough to be interesting, capable enough to be satisfying, and surrounded by a case with enough political complexity to keep the pages moving. 📰
What makes this compelling: Judith Erwin’s PI mystery introduces Jake Shepherd—rugged cowboy, former FBI agent, Yale law graduate with zero social graces and exceptional instincts—when Atlanta attorney Scarlett Kavanaugh pulls him into investigating the murder of a U.S. senator, the estranged twin of whose wife she represents, sparking a partnership between two equally formidable people neither of whom is accustomed to meeting their match.
Kissing the Sky
Summer of 1969. While her peers embrace free love and rock and roll, Suzannah is home from college, trapped inside her conservative Southern household where her domineering father has condemned rock music, driven away her best friend, and mapped out a future she didn’t ask for. She’s counting the days until fall semester rescues her. 🎸
Then her free-spirited best friend Livy resurfaces with an invitation that changes everything—three days of peace and music in upstate New York. Woodstock. Fed up with her father’s rules and sick with worry about her brother’s fate in Vietnam, Suzannah agrees to the road trip without her parents’ knowledge, slipping out of her carefully controlled life toward something she can’t fully imagine. ✌️
What she finds there is electrifying bedlam that jolts her out of everything she thought she was. She falls hard for Leon, a boy she meets at the festival, the intoxicating bud of first love already concealing a thorn of heartache she doesn’t see coming. And Livy’s wild behavior builds toward a startling revelation that reframes everything Suzannah thought she understood about her friendship and herself. 🌻
Lies uncover betrayal. The road home looks nothing like the road out. But somewhere in the music and the chaos and the heartbreak, a talented singer who’d been waiting for permission to use her voice discovers she’s been waiting for the wrong thing all along. The 1960s made a lot of people into who they needed to be—Suzannah is one of them. 🕊️
What makes this nostalgic: Lisa Patton’s friendship fiction follows sheltered Southern college student Suzannah sneaking away from her domineering father to attend Woodstock in the summer of 1969—where she falls for a boy whose love conceals heartache, discovers Livy’s startling betrayal, and finds the electrifying bedlam of three days of peace and music transforming a girl waiting for permission into a woman finally ready to lift her own voice.
Oliver Lewis just wanted a simple life—running the family ranch on New Sonora with his sister, playing gigs with his band, keeping the aging fleet of intelligent agriculture bots operational for as long as possible. When the transfer gate finally opens restoring communication with Earth, he expects things to get easier. He is very wrong. 🌾
Earth’s government had promised the colonists they’d be left in peace. The promise has expired. Colossal corporation Apex Industries arrives to commence an “eviction action”—and being Apex, they’ve found a way to monetize the process. Why spend money deploying AI soldiers when you can charge bored Earthers for the privilege of remotely piloting custom war machines from the comfort of their homes? Why wage war when you can sell it as a game? 🎮
The game is called Operation Bounce House. Oliver and the other colonists find themselves fighting for their lives against machines piloted by paying gamers who treat their homes, their land, and their lives as entertainment. The enemy isn’t an army with something to lose—it’s a subscription service with premium tiers. 🤖
With an old book from his grandfather and a bucket of rusty parts, Oliver is determined to defend New Sonora against an enemy that won’t even feel it if they lose. Matt Dinniman’s satirical premise hits harder for being completely plausible—the weaponization of gaming culture against people who just want to be left alone. 💪
What makes this thrilling: Matt Dinniman’s sci-fi thriller follows New Sonora colonist Oliver Lewis whose simple ranch life ends when Apex Industries arrives to evict settlers, monetizing the process by charging Earthers to remotely pilot war machines against real colonists as a premium game called Operation Bounce House—leaving Oliver fighting for his home against enemies who treat his survival as entertainment, armed with his grandfather’s old book and a bucket of rusty parts.
Until the summer of 1989, the wildest thing to happen in Sheboygan Bay, Wisconsin was surfers catching waves on frigid Lake Michigan. Then Lorraine Highsmith wakes up one morning to find a corpse on her lawn, and the town’s reputation for quiet gets permanently revised. 🌊
Detective Michaela “Mike” Zenoni is on the case immediately—ambitious, skilled, and determined to make her name in a male-dominated precinct that hasn’t made things easy for her. Lorraine, the local advice columnist with a nose for a story and more curiosity than is strictly healthy, falls in right behind her. They make an unlikely partnership, but murder in a small town requires all available resources. 🔍
What neither of them knows yet is that Lorraine has a past she’s worked very hard to keep buried. She’s a recent transplant to Wisconsin, her history shrouded in careful mystery for reasons that are about to become urgently relevant—because she once had ties to the mob, and those connections appear to be coming back in the form of a body on her lawn. 🤫
Mike might be working with her to find the killer, but Lorraine knows that alliances can change the moment the past becomes inconvenient. She needs to get ahead of this story before her carefully constructed present life gets dismantled by secrets she thought she’d left behind for good. 📰
What makes this engaging: Erica Ruth Neubauer’s amateur sleuth mystery follows advice columnist Lorraine Highsmith waking to a corpse on her lawn in sleepy 1989 Sheboygan Bay, partnering with ambitious Detective Mike Zenoni to find the killer—while hiding her own dangerous secret: former mob ties that appear to be resurfacing, forcing Lorraine to solve the murder before her buried past dismantles the quiet Wisconsin life she’s carefully built.