Science Fiction and Fantasy Books You Can Read for $5 or Less

A peasant is sent to the arena, fodder for the carnage—but before the horrified gaze of noble ladies, the warrior named Dog slaughters headsmen, hunters, and beasts to win freedom as a full-fledged gladiator. Then deep-space rebels attack an Empire ship where Dog performs combat killings for the amusement of the passengers, and the gladiator becomes a rebel. Now a beautiful officer of the court finds her life depends on the mercy of Dog, the man she ordered put to death!

Two thousand years into the future, runaway pollution has made the earth uninhabitable except in giant biodomes. The society is an anarchy, with disputes mediated through the Machiavellian Committee for the Revolution. Mars, Venus, and the moon support flourishing colonies of various political stripes. On the fringes of the solar system, in the gas planets, a strange, new, violent kind of human has evolved. In this unstable system, the anarchist Paula Mendoza, an agent of the Committee, works to make peace and ultimately protect her people in a catastrophic clash of worlds that destroys the order she knows.

Revolution spreads like wildfire through humanity’s interstellar empire, sparked by the opening of Geodesica and the destruction of an entire inhabited system. But who was ultimately responsible? And who will pay the price?

Melilah Awad and Palmer Eogan delve deeper into Geodesica’s ancient alien labyrinth than anyone has ever dared, hoping to unravel its secrets before the hunter-killers from Earth bring them down. Former Exarch of Bedlam, Isaac Forge Deangelis, finds his grip on sanity slipping as his very reason for existing is ripped from him. While a rebel Exarch and Palmer Horsfall, grieving for her lost sister, form an alliance that might tear humanity’s interstellar empire apart…

Lixia and the members of her human crew are determined not to disturb the life on the planet circling the Star Sigma Draconis which they have begun exploring. But the factions on the mother ship hovering above the planet may create an unintended chaos for both the life on the planet and the humans exploring it. As the anger increases on the ship, the ground crew becomes more and more affected by the conflict and begins to rely on their instincts to keep the project moving forward. Unexpected danger plagues the mission as Lixia is determined to expand her knowledge.

It's been 10 years since the world officially ended. In the last city on Earth, Jon Salt is addicted to Sadness, a drug that invokes its name, and obsessed with his lover, Michelle; both of which threaten to drive him insane. Strange creatures and new technologies appeared in the last days of humanity and the widespread adoption of teleportation technology sundered the fabric of time and space, leaving a smattering of looping ghosts. It is a sad, monotone world, but the remaining populace is happy, thanks to the anti-depressants in the water supply.

The last government on Earth has taken a special interest in a gift that Jon possesses: the ability to make his thoughts real. Jon must rely on that gift and the help of a few unlikely friends to stay one step ahead of those who desperately want to use him for something far more sinister than even he could dream.

As 01-01-00 approaches, Susan Garnett, a senior analyst at the FBI's high-tech crime unit, and Cameron Slater, an anthropologist, must draw on their combined knowledge of ancient glyphs and modern algorithms in order to crack a code hidden in a formidable computer virus. Susan traces the virus's signal to its point of origin, an area near Tikal, the site of one of the largest cities of the ancient Maya. Susan and Cameron travel to the remote jungle, convinced that if they fail to solve the riddles, both ancient and new, before the turn of the new millennium, the virus could trigger a powerful event of global proportions.

Set in the early nineteenth century, Pharos is a dazzling ghost story from award-winning author Alice Thompson.

A young woman is washed up on the shores of Jacob's Rock, a remote lighthouse island off the coast of Scotland. She does not know who she is or how she got there. She has no memory. The keeper of the lighthouse and his assistant take her in and feed and clothe her. But this mysterious woman is not all that she seems, and neither is the remote and wind-swept island.