The Best Monthly Science Fiction and Fantasy Ebook Deals

Two enthralling novels by Robert Silverberg about a future in which the minds of the living can be changed for a price—often with dire consequences

In To Live Again, thanks to the Scheffing Institute, death is not the end. For a hefty fee, the soul bank stores the personas of those who have died and inserts them into the brains of willing, living hosts. It’s a process that integrates the two minds, imbuing the host with a menu of highly valuable abilities, memories, and traits. 

The more personas one absorbs, the greater his social status. When banking mogul Paul Kaufmann dies, many people apply to receive his persona. The leading applicants—his bitter business rivals—are locked in a battle to claim his soul. The Institute follows strict rules to ensure that the host always remains in control, but of course accidents do happen.

In The Second Trip, Paul Macy wears the Rehab badge, the sign of healing that advertises his status as a reconstruct job. When society derides capital punishment and opts, instead, for personality rehabilitation, criminals undergo mindpick operations in which their identities are stripped and extinguished. 

Given a new bank of memories and a fresh identity, they are offered a second chance at life. For Paul, though, this gift comes with a price. His former self still lingers inside him, waiting for the opportunity to emerge and battle Paul’s new self for ultimate control. 

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Set against a backdrop of Cold War paranoia, this futuristic novel about identity and technology is “one of the unrecognized classics of SF” (Locus).

East and West have fused into separate superstates known as the Allied National Government (ANG) and the Soviet International Bloc (SIB). As the Cold War rages, brilliant scientist Lucas Martino works on a top-secret project known only as K-Eighty-eight that could alter the balance of world power. 

The project goes horribly awry at an Allied research facility near the Soviet border, and Martino is abducted. After several months of tense negotiations, he returns severely injured from the lab explosion, and under pressure from America, undergoes extensive reconstructive surgery. He has a mechanical arm. 

His polished metal skull—a kind of craniofacial prosthesis—contains few discernable features. Several of his internal organs are artificial. While his fingerprints are identified as belonging to Lucas Martino, they could be the result of transplant. 

Is he the real Martino? Or a technologically altered imposter sent by America’s enemies for the purpose of spying and infiltration? Tasked with uncovering the truth, ANG Security Chief Shawn Rogers makes some shocking discoveries

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The award-winning author How to Fracture a Fairy Tale revamps the Camelot legend with stories of King Arthur’s powerful mentor, the great magician Merlin.

There is perhaps no more beloved and enduring myth in the Western canon than the story of King Arthur, his knights, Queen Guinevere, and of course, his mysterious tutor and magical advisor, Merlin. A sorcerer, sage, prophet, and teacher, Merlin’s mysterious life has inspired a vast array of classic works while giving rise to numerous conflicting legends. 

Here, award-winning author Jane Yolen, one of the most acclaimed fantasy writers of our time, retells Merlin’s tales as never before. 

Through a series of stories and poems ranging across centuries—from the days of Merlin’s childhood as a feral boy to the possible discovery of his bones in a much later era—Yolen reimagines both the glory and grimness of Camelot, recalling characters and events from Arthurian legend, while ingeniously inventing new myths and dark fables. 

Merlin’s Booke is a brilliant patchwork, made up of tales that explore the mysteries of King Arthur’s world and the terrible magic that pervaded it.

A supernatural mystery set in Singapore featuring a “detective whose beat reaches to the fringes of Heaven and Hell,” by the author of Snake Agent (Booklist).

No mortal has ever heard of the Book, and few in Heaven even believe it is real. Instead, they regard the stories of a bound volume older than time itself as something of a creation myth. But Mhara, the Emperor of Heaven, knows the Book is very real, very powerful, and very much missing. It has a mind of its own, and it appears to have wandered off—taking the secrets of the universe with it.

To find it, Mhara calls Detective Inspector Chen, a supernatural sleuth with previous experience in saving the universe. Chen has a lot on his plate at the moment: His wife is pregnant, his demonic partner is tracking the movement of an immortal horde, and he hasn’t had a vacation in years. But for the sake of the Emperor, he’ll do his best to return order to the cosmos. If he doesn’t, who will?
 

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A teenage girl and her brother fight for their family’s future in a world devastated by climate change: “Thrillingly scary ... There is much here to enjoy” (The Washington Post).

In a dystopian future brought about by global warming, seventeen-year-old Nat and her hacker brother, Sam, have come by ship to the Big Island of Hawaii for their parents’ Final Week. 

The few Americans who still live well also live long—so long that older adults bow out not by natural means but by buying death contracts from the corporates who now run the disintegrating society, keeping the people happy through a constant diet of “pharma.”

Nat’s family is spending their pharma-guided last week at a luxury resort complex called the Twilight Island Acropolis. Deeply conflicted about her parents’ decision, Nat spends her time keeping a record of everything her family does in the company-supplied diary that came in the hotel’s care package. 

While Nat attempts to come to terms with her impending parentless future, Sam begins to discover cracks in the corporates’ agenda—and eventually rebels against the company his parents have hired to handle their last days. Now Nat will have to choose a side, in this moving and suspenseful novel by a National Book Award–nominated author.

To save the future of their homeland, a young herald and petty thief must face off against a boy consumed by dark magic

Illmoor’s capital has a problem: rats. And lots of them. Desperate for a solution, the chairman of the Dullitch Council seeks the help of Illmoor’s roving mercenaries, hoping to find someone who can tame the ever-swelling tide of rodents. 

Jimmy Quickstint, the chairman’s grandson and junior thief in training, returns to Dullitch with the hulking Groan Teethgrit and his angry dwarf sidekick, Gordo Goldeaxe. Together, they are Dullitch’s best hope to eradicate the rats—until Diek Wustapha arrives.

Diek, still just a boy, has been possessed by a magical power that gives him the uncanny ability to control not just animals, but also people. He gets rid of the rats in town, but the relief in Dullitch is short lived. The city refuses to pay Diek, and he does not take the insult lightly. 

He is determined to strike back at Dullitch by kidnapping all of the capital city’s children. That is, unless Jimmy Quickstint and his two new friends can find a way to stop him.

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Getting into college is a game—of virtual reality—in this tale of higher education from the New York Times–bestselling author.

Odd Exam is a novella from Piers Anthony about an unusual college entrance examination. Entrance exams are taken in the form of a multi-player online game in a semi-virtual reality, with portals to other worlds and alien monsters. For those who qualify, board and tuition will be free. Can this be serious?

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A postapocalyptic thriller with “the fun aspect of an American International 50’s SF movie” from the Hugo Award–winning author of Stand on Zanzibar (Vintage45).

In To Conquer Chaos, John Brunner gives us a heaping helping of classic planetary science fiction adventure. The barrenland is a mystery and an enigma, a dangerous and terrifying place that none who enter ever return from. 

More than three hundred miles around, it has existed far longer than collective memory can guess, and all too often, strange beasts emerge from it and kill at random.

Conrad lives on the edge of the barrenland and is haunted by visions of its past as a haven, populated by magical people who could travel between worlds. He meets Jervis Yenderman, a soldier who has knowledge of the visions and who believes that within the barrenland is an island of human survivors—and that one man has escaped it within recent memory.

For each generation, there is a writer meant to bend the rules of what we know. Hugo Award winner (Best Novel, Stand on Zanzibar) and British science fiction master John Brunner remains one of the most influential and respected authors of all time, and now many of his classic works are being reintroduced. 

For readers familiar with his vision, it is a chance to reexamine his thoughtful worlds and words, while for new readers, Brunner’s work proves itself the very definition of timeless.

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With his fiancée about to testify against the Teklord drug cartels, PI Jack Cardigan is lured to Brazil in a deadly scheme that could spark a new TekWar.

A man in Berlin has just learned something that could save Jake Cardigan’s life. But before he can pass on this vital information, he dies under suspicious circumstances—setting off a chain reaction that will change Cardigan’s life forever, threatening to destroy every person he loves. 

Cardigan’s fiancée, Beth, goes to Berlin to testify against the ruthless drug cartel controlled by Sonny Hokori and the Teklords. Cardigan plans to be there to protect her against the nefarious assassins of the Teklords, but an urgent case calls him to Rio. 

By the time he realizes the Brazilian case is no more than a set-up to take him away from Beth, it may be too late to save her—and prevent a new round of TekWars from engulfing the earth. 

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A vengeful scientist uses his brilliant discovery to unleash terror on the world in this timeless science fiction classic from an early-twentieth-century master

The scientific community has always shunned William Carpenter. A strange, hulking giant, a talented biochemical investigator, and the self-styled “greatest mind in the western world,” he has locked himself inside a house with no windows, in the most desolate reaches of New Jersey, where he can conduct his experiments in peace and isolation. 

Here in his personal sanctuary, Carpenter has found something astonishing that could alter life on Earth as we know it: a chemical compound that can render all matter invisible, from rocks to plants to people. 

But the twisted genius has no intention of using this breakthrough to benefit the planet. Instead, he is about to declare war on all humankind by launching an unseen campaign of terror and destruction. 

For years the world has ignored William Carpenter, labeling him insane, sociopathic, or worst of all, insignificant. And now the world will have to pay.

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Far into the future, Hartstein's graduation present from his grandparents was a wonderful trip…into the past. He had a long future in the doughnut industry to look forward to but this trip was the icing on the cake. 

It had been a long time since that first experiment in time travel was successfully pulled off, although not without its flaws. Now, in the future, time travel was a lucrative tourist industry. 

But the time travel industry was keeping one little fact to itself: two percent never came back. This cover-up was the work of the Agency. The Agency knew what others did not: that the past wasn't really the past but a complicated dynamic of individual perceptions of what the past might have been. The past isn't real and reality becomes a state of mind. 

While selling their particular brand of escapist entertainment and vacation packages, the Agency didn't bother to tell its clients or the populace in general that a war was going on—a time war.