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

Duncan Rojas, an employee in the research department of Wilford Braxton’s Records of Big Game, rarely gets such a request. Bukoba Mandaka, the last descendant of the Maasai, wants his help finding a relic that has been lost for three thousand years: the tusks of the famous Kilimanjaro Elephant. In the year 6303 of the Galactic Era, all animals have become extinct. It’s an almost impossible job, but what Bukoba is willing to pay—and Duncan’s own curiosity—prove irresistible.

As Duncan puts all the technology at his disposal to the task, he begins to follow the remarkable odyssey of the ivory through cultures, time, and the universe—from being used as a pawn in a power play by unethical scientists to propping up a brutal warlord, from being worshipped as a symbol of immortality by an alien race to being turned into a matter of national pride by an opportunistic politician. But to Duncan, the even bigger mystery—and one that he must solve—is why Bukoba is willing to put his own future on the line for something so irretrievably lost to the past...

Jake Pace is halfway through mixing a batch of cookies when his lawyer arrives with a corpse. The body in the coffin is an android, built in the shape of recently deceased electronics heiress Sylvie Kirkyard and implanted with a chip that holds Sylvie’s memories. Although she was only twenty-seven, Sylvie had for a long time feared for her life, and took the precaution of insuring her consciousness with Kirktronics’ patented Brainz, Inc. method. Upon her death, the chip was implanted in this electronic body, and the body was brought to Jake. Luckily, as the planet’s smartest private detective, Jake is used to corpses—robotic and otherwise. When the dead girl awakes and asks him to find her killers, Jake doesn’t blink an eye. But fulfilling her last request will be perilous, and by the time it’s over Jake may wish he had a spare body of his own.

Bank manager Cosmo Topper has settled into a stable, respectable, and thoroughly boring life. In need of a little adventure, he decides to buy a secondhand car—a detail he neglects to tell his staid wife, Mary. But Topper’s little secret turns into an unexpectedly wild ride when he discovers the automobile is haunted by its previous owners...

George and Marion Kerby were a ribald, reckless, fun-loving couple—right up until they crashed into a tree. But even in death, they’re determined to be the life of the party. Making it their mission to save Topper from his dreary life, they conjure up endless hijinks for him and anyone else who crosses their path.

Azra has just turned sixteen. She’s shed her teen awkwardness overnight: Her body lengthens and curves, and a brand-new silver bangle glistens on her wrist.

As she always knew it would, the day has come for Azra’s Jinn ancestry to fully blossom. But beneath the magical fun of her new powers is the reality of her servitude, as her wish-granting is controlled by a remote ruling class of Jinn known as the Afrit. Like other female Jinn, Azra has always lived among humans, and the summer begins with a job at the beach snack bar and newfound flirtations—but when no one’s watching, Azra is learning how to harness her powers and fulfill the obligations of her destiny. Mentored by her mother and a small community of Zar “sisters,” Azra soon discovers she may not be quite like the rest of them... and her powers could endanger them all.

The haunting gothic tale started in Archon continues-a mesmerizing work of the paranormal in which a young woman discovers that she is caught in a labyrinth of intrigue where angels, demons, and all the creatures between Heaven and Hell will stop at nothing to possess her.

A year ago, Angela Mathers, a talented artist with a tortured soul, enrolled at the Westwood Academy and encountered the angels who haunted her dreams. Then she discovered the dark truth … she is the Archon, a being of supreme power who will determine the fate of the universe. But with such power comes great danger, and for every force seeking to aid Angela there is another burning to stop her. After a scheming demon kidnaps the Book of Raziel, Angela must find her way through a nightmarish game and enter the Door to Hell to rescue her only friend before it is too late.

The perilous fate of both Heaven and Hell rests on her success.

In the early years of the 21st century humanity has advanced step by slow step into space, but has discovered through constant monitoring of the heavens that certain asteroids have changed their orbits and are headed for horrifying impact with Earth. Urgent action is required, but politics and a worldwide financial crash get in the way. 

The members of the van Huyten family, led by matriarch Mariesa who heads the vast space industry complex she has spent her life developing, the Pooles with their computer and security expertise, many political movers and shakers and dedicated pilots and space travelers of all stripes must pull together to save humanity from disaster. From the government offices and factories of Earth, to the Low Earth Orbit station, to manufacturing facilities on the moon, all of space-going humanity is united in an epic effort to save the planet from certain destruction and a new Dark Age, or perhaps even the extinction of all life on Earth.

Wolfgang Hauser was a privileged and pampered aristocrat—until the day aliens invaded his world and took everything from him. Now he’s an outcast accused of cowardice and murder. Without a family or a home, he’s on the run. And the only chance he has to escape his enemies is to join the Fifth Foreign Legion.

But the Legion demands a high price from the misfits who flock to his banner in search of a new life. Wolfgang must now surrender his name, his beliefs, and his very identity to become a Legionnaire. But after losing so much already, can he bare the cost of hope?

During a live television broadcast on the night of a lunar eclipse, renowned astrophysicist Andrew Leland is suddenly lifted into the sky by a giant spacecraft and taken away for all to see. Six years later, he turns up, wandering in a South American desert, denying ever having been abducted and disappearing from the public eye.

Meanwhile, he inspires legions of cultish devotees, including a young physics graduate student named Shawn Ferris who is obsessed with finding out what really happened to him. When Shawn finally tracks Leland down, he discovers that he’s been on the run for years, continuously hunted by a secret organization that has pursued him across multiple continents, determined to force him into revealing what he knows.

Shawn soon joins Leland on the run. Though Leland is at first reluctant to reveal anything, Shawn will soon learn the truth about his abduction, the real reason for his return, and will find himself caught up in a global conspiracy that puts more than just one planet in danger.