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

In the first book in the Step By Step trilogy, global catastrophe occurs as all plastic mysteriously liquefies. All the small components making many technologies possible—navigation systems, communications, medical equipment—fail.

In Sycamore River, citizens find their lives disrupted as everything they've depended on melts around them, with sometimes fatal results. All they can rely upon is themselves. And this is only the beginning…

The year is 2135, and the international program to seed the galaxy with human colonies has stalled as greedy, immoral powerbrokers park their starships in Earth's orbit and begin to convert them into space condos. Ellen Starke's head, rescued from the fiery crash that killed her mother, struggles to regrow a new body in time to restore her dead mother's financial empire. And Pre-Singularity AIs conspire to join the human race just as human clones, such as Mary Skarland and her sisters, want nothing more than to leave it.

In the third volume of author Greg Keys's alternate history series, Age of Unreason, the dark magic that the great alchemist Sir Isaac Newton inadvertently unleashed with his discovery of philosopher’s mercury has taken a devastating toll on Earth. The destruction of Europe and the advent of eternal winter have aided the mysterious malakim in their apparent quest for the annihilation of the human race.

As Benjamin Franklin hones his alchemical skills and prepares his secret cabal of scientists, Native American tribesmen, former slaves, and fugitive European intellectuals for the upcoming battle for humankind’s survival, trouble looms on the other side of the world. In the court of the mysteriously vanished Peter the Great, the missing tsar’s chief alchemist prepares to depart Russia in search of her lost son, who may well be at the heart of a galactic conspiracy.

From Harry Turtledove, “the Master of Alternate History,” comes a tale of minor league baseball set in an alternate Great Depression America full of wild magic.

Jack Spivey's just a regular guy trying to stay alive by playing ball. When he joins a brash band of barnstormers who'll take on any team, his nation-wide tour displays an America that's as shot through with magic as it is dead broke. Jack will never be the same, and neither will baseball.

The author of the competitive pool thriller The Hustler and the groundbreaking sci-fi novel The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis was also a master of the short story. His work was published in Playboy, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and many other magazines. This anthology collects some of his best short work. Full of wit, surprise, dark humor, and deep emotion, these stories pack a punch—and are ideal for fans of his longer work or those looking for an introduction to one of America’s most iconic sci-fi writers.

Mr. Thundermug is the inventive, entertaining, and somehow poignant story of an animal who acquires the ability to eloquently speak human language. Using his own beautiful, eerie lithograph illustrations, Cornelius Medvei places us in a vivid world that is both familiar and alien. 

Lord Scott Oken, a prince of Albion, and Professor-Prince Mikel Mabruke live in a world where the sun never set on the Egyptian Empire. In the year 1877 of Our Lord Julius Caesar, Pharaoh Djoser-George governs a sprawling realm that spans Europe, Africa, and much of Asia. When the European terrorist Otto von Bismarck touches off an international conspiracy, Scott and Mik are charged with exposing the plot against the Empire.

Their adventure takes them from the sands of Memphis to a lush New World, home of the Incan Tawantinsuyu, a rival empire across the glittering Atlantic Ocean. Encompassing Quetzal airships, operas, blood sacrifice and high diplomacy, Ramona Wheeler's Three Princes is a richly imagined, cinematic vision of a modern Egyptian Empire.

Half man, half god, Hercules is the most famous hero of ancient Greece. Possessed of enormous strength, the son of Zeus roams the world in search of adventure, sharing the glories of a bygone age with such legendary comrades as Jason of the Argonauts and the proud warrior woman, Atalanta. Prepare yourself for wonders, O mortals, as the Quest for the Golden Fleece begins once more.

The fabled city of Troy has incurred the mighty anger of Poseidon, god of the seas, who calls forth from the ocean depths a fearsome creature to destroy the city. Only the sacrifice of the beautiful Princess Almacea can lift Poseidon's curse, unless Hercules and his companions can slay the dreaded and unstoppable sea monster!