Speculative Fiction Books

After surviving a harrowing explosion in Seneca Lake, Olivia Ando and Aerin McLeary return to Indiana with more questions than answers. While Olivia revels in their newfound love, finally having everything she’s wanted since high school, Aerin begins to build a life for herself outside of her small hometown.

But all is not as it seems.

By chance, Olivia discovers that Aerin has plans for a machine that will open the portal in the lake and channel alien energy to Earth, a revelation that exposes an even greater and unforgivable betrayal. With the world on the precipice of a monumental invasion, Olivia must choose between protecting her heart and trusting that Aerin has lied for a greater good. With life as they know it at stake, will their love survive the inception of a new world?

The sequel to Uninvited 

Far from her Midwestern roots, Kathleen Schmitt is living in Tokyo as the project head for Personal Love Companion, a synthetic love robot made to match a customer's preference in personality and appearance. When Kathleen receives her own beta model for testing, she’s shocked to find her personalized robot is the exact replica of her neighbor, Yuriko Vellucci.

American-born engineer for the PLC project, Yuriko is sympathetic to Kathleen’s difficulties adjusting to Tokyo’s culture, but quickly realizes Kathleen will need her help if this transition—and the PLC project—is to be a success. With Yuriko to show her the way, Kathleen learns to socialize at an izakaya, find the best onsen in Nikko, party at a matsuri, buy doujinshii in Akihabara, fall in love with Japan, and, perhaps, fall for the person who showed it to her.

First Bold Strokes Books edition; previously published 2016.

Moon De Cruz hasn’t had an easy life. Born a slave, she’s stationed aboard a Bramalian trader ship for twenty years. Miraculously, she survives a pirate attack and flees in an escape pod. As she crashes onto an uninhabited planet, she learns to become one with nature. 

Four years later, Captain Beaux Lestarion is orbiting a virgin planet that appears rich in natural resources. She shuttles miners to the surface, but unexpected complications suggest someone is deliberately sabotaging their efforts to probe for stones, ores, and minerals.

When Moon saves Beaux’s life, Beaux is drawn to the beautiful young woman against her better judgment. Moon doubts a seasoned and cynical captain working for the government can help to defend the planet—no matter how attractive she might be. Reluctant allies or secret enemies—can love survive the challenge?

When a simple mission goes wrong, intergalactic space captain Jessa Arbelle nearly goes down with her ship.

First came the storm, and then the blinding white light that made everyone in town disappear. Everyone except Ellery, Loveday, Rocky the dog, and Claude, Loveday’s big ginger cat. The light brought something else, too, something that isn’t human. Plagued by prophetic dreams that signal the end of the world, Ellery and Loveday set out across the country to save a girl they’ve never met who just might be humanity’s last hope.

Rosemary Decker, leader of the Children of the Ark, wants the girl too. Except she wants her dead. Rosemary’s seen the end of the world coming and has been preparing for years. She’s going to make a new world in her own image, and nothing’s going to stand in her way.

Another storm is coming and not everyone will survive it.

Surviving in an unknown galaxy hundreds of light-years from Earth is far from easy. Captain Jordan Kellow is missing, and Lieutenant Alison Ash must take charge of the Persephone and get the crew back to the Posterus in one piece if she has any hope of saving the woman she loves.

Lost in a dying escape pod, Jordan is rescued by a crew of war hungry aliens bent on revenge. She must find a way off the ship and back to Ash before she’s conscripted for the cause.

Jordan and Ash struggle with different views on the alien agenda and must find their way back to each other before they’re swallowed up by a centuries-old war.

Aerin McLeary’s post-divorce Finger Lakes vacation is interrupted when an ominous vibration shocks her entire body, leaving her with the strange new ability to read minds along with an extreme sensitivity to sound. Fearing the consequences if her condition becomes public, Aerin has no choice but to turn to her childhood best friend and first love for help. 

College professor Olivia Ando is not happy to see Aerin again after their disastrous breakup, but she can’t resist a great research challenge. When they discover that Aerin’s body is the host for an alien being, they race against time to find the truth and stop an impending explosion. 

Will Aerin and Olivia be able to save the world or will Aerin become an unwitting instrument in the alien agenda before she can tell Olivia how she truly feels?

Naos has come to Calamity, and chaos has come with her. Cordelia had enough problems without teaming up with former enemies in order to defeat a mad goddess. And she doesn’t yet know that the Storm Lord has been resurrected in a new body. On the plains, the prophet Lydia is convinced that Fajir is the one chosen to stop a massive firestorm in the future, if only Fajir wasn’t so set on killing everyone around her.

With their murderous leader dead, hostilities have ceased among the drushka, but the long-living aliens are slow to adapt. The last thing they want is a drushkan king with powers none of them dreamed of before.

The last thing Commander Neenja KahSandra wants is to be babysitting Zoem Malderyn, an orphan who can barely remember her past, and who has just regained consciousness after being used as a template for an army of changer clones. Despite herself, she comes to care for Zoem, whose courage and vulnerability is difficult to resist. 

But as Zoem starts to remember more, a deadly countdown to destruction occurs inside her. She needs to discover why the malevolent changers programed her, and how to stop herself from carrying out their plan. Can the famous sisters, Caya and Briar Lindemay, help save Zoem and the Gemoconians, or will Zoem end up sacrificing herself—before she kills them all?

The year is 2088 and the bones of American democracy have been left sweltering in the ashes of a hostile takeover. Sixty-five years before, four carefully chosen individuals in the Phoenix Program were cryogenically frozen until the time was right for them to combine forces and restore the government. That time is now. 

Arrow Steele has trained her whole life to bring the Phoenix Program to fruition, but no amount of training could have prepared her for Phoenix One herself, Kaelyn Trapp, or the attraction neither one of them can deny. 

Kaelyn's destiny is to navigate the new world and bring America back to some semblance of a country the Founding Fathers had envisioned. That is, if Arrow can get them to safety. The only thing that stands in their way is thousands of miles and a militarized government.

Arrow and Kaelyn carry the fate of their country on their shoulders. Love couldn’t possibly have come at a more inconvenient time, but with their mission and their lives in jeopardy, love may be what matters most.

Climate change moved faster than anyone anticipated, and the Earth, along with many of its inhabitants, is dying. When a military convoy arrives to pick up Devin Rossi and Karissa Decker, along with dozens of other bewildered people, the two have no idea they are part of a group selected by the government to be transported to a space station preparing for the colonization of another planet. They are members of the Chosen.  

On their way to the military base, their convoy is attacked and Devin and Karissa learn the real reason behind their selection. Their attraction grows as they struggle to survive and wrestle with the decision to continue on to the base as part of the Chosen, which means leaving millions of others behind to die. 

Will they face an uncertain future together, or will the cost be too high?

Geologist Dr. Leah Warren wakes after extended cryogenic hibernation to discover she’s crash-landed on a foreign planet. The sole survivor of her crew, she struggles to piece together what went wrong. Leah ventures from the ship in search of signs of life only to be captured by desert raiders.

Keegan, a clan warrior, discovers Leah, weak and barely alive. Her kindness and affection for Leah seem in direct conflict with her tough and emotionally remote façade, and Leah’s attraction for the reserved warrior grows. Unfortunately, Tiago, the clan’s volatile chieftain, is a tyrant who wants Leah for himself. Keegan will have to relinquish Leah or challenge Tiago. Will love give Keegan the strength to defeat him?

Captain Jordan Kellow knows all too well that change only takes a moment to rip through your life. Since the moment she escaped the Burrs and her father, her life has been a series of life-altering moments. She thought she’d built an inner strength that would see her through every obstacle, until she meets Lt. Ali Ash on the eve of her first mission in command. Her feelings for Ali have her past and future colliding, setting in motion a series of events that strands her crew in an unknown galaxy thousands of light years from home.

Now Jordan must decide which moment will define her future. Is she the captain of the Persephone, in command of her ship and her life? Is she strong enough to forgive her father for past wrongs? And most important of all, is she brave enough to fight for the woman she wants?

Sue Jones is a spacebus driver from a nowhere colony. Yearning for adventure, she pilots a shuttle into uncharted regions—and crash-lands in a harsh world. Kara is an alien whose people are Outcasts who have been banished to this world and survive in Rings above the storm-swept surface. 

When Kara rescues her and brings her to the Rings, Sue soon learns that the Outcasts believe humans belong on the surface. As Sue discovers her protector’s secrets, Kara struggles to keep Sue safe and her own feelings at bay. Can love bridge the gap between worlds and heal the deepest of wounds?

Lieutenant Leah Samuels catches the first homicide case of the new year 2235, and a monster blizzard is obscuring the evidence. The Murder Scene Investigators find only blood and microscopic pieces of flesh and bone of an estimated twenty-plus people. With a winter that will last another six months, she can’t wait until spring to find more evidence in the killing field. Leah resorts to good old-fashioned detecting—and trusting her gut. The motive for the murders is more bizarre than she could have imagined. Finally, when she thought things could get no worse, she learns the woman she loves has betrayed her in devastating ways.

With the Storm Lord dead, Cordelia Ross and Simon Lazlo return to Gale, to normality, but when they find the populace poisoned by the drushka, it’s clear the aliens must be dealt with before life can be anything near normal. In the north, Patricia Dué takes control of Gale’s mine with Jonah, the servant she created in Dillon Tracey’s old body. She thinks controlling the humans’ only source of metal will bring her power, but her past won’t be banished so easily.

Amidst the chaos and conflict, a prophet predicts that true calamity is still to come, and the only way to stop it may be a murderous widow looking for revenge. As factions splinter and reconnect, the fate of Calamity lies uncertain, and even the prophets can’t see every ripple on the horizon.

Charming biochemist Ana Mitchell has a lot on her mind—she’s about to leave on a covert mission to colonize Mars. She enlists local art student Jolie Dann to keep her high-tech farmhouse in order while she’s at training camp. Jolie soon finds herself falling for the secretive and fascinating Ana, despite knowing she may never return home.

Their relationship is challenged when the mission’s timeline is suddenly accelerated. Will Ana choose to put the universe between herself and Jolie, or will she take a chance on the one person who can keep her on Earth?

A "brilliant debut lesbian sci-fi novel..." –The Advocate, "2018's Icons, Innovators, and Disruptors"

The spaceship Pathfinder arrives at its destination, Gemocon, the new homeworld for the Oconodian/Gemosian people. Commander Pamas Seclan has spent the journey incognito amid the civilians. Traumatized by years of captivity, she is both apprehensive and eager to locate her now grownup children.

Darmiya Do Voy arrived at Gemocon with the advance fleet three years ago. Normally exuberant and positive, the brilliant scientist has burned out and lost her spark. Darmiya meets Pamas and their mutual attraction is intense. Pamas feels she is too old and damaged for Darmiya, but still can’t keep away. Darmiya is determined to persuade Pamas to give them a chance.

During Pathfinder’s massive landing procedures, President Tylio and her associates learn the hard way of the remaining terrorist cells. As the terrorists unscrupulously attempt to reach their objective, Darmiya fights to save Pamas who is toe-to-toe with her former captors.