A ReadOrbit guide
Explore recommendation-ready books selected for readers interested in standalone.
Get a personal shortlist
2021
by Anthony Doerr
"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of perhaps the most bestselling and beloved literary fiction of our time comes a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring novel about children on the cusp of adulthood in a broken world, who find resilience, hope, and story. The her…
2018
by Benjamin Eldon Stevens, Brett M. Rogers
"Frankenstein and Its Classics is the first collection of scholarship dedicated to how Frankenstein and works inspired by it draw on ancient Greek and Roman literature, history, philosophy, and myth. Presenting twelve new essays intended for students, scholars, and other readers…
2017
by Kay Kenyon
"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy meets X-Men in a classic British espionage story. A young woman must go undercover and use her superpowers to discover a secret Nazi plat and stop an invasion of England. In 1936, there are paranormal abilities that have slowly seeped into the world, br…
2017
by Jay Hosking
"Three Years with the Rat is a mind-warping thriller that will make you question reality as you conceive of it. One of the most assured and haunting debuts I've read in recent memory." --Blake Crouch, author of Dark Matter After several years of drifting between school and go-now…
2016
by Brendan DuBois
*A decade ago, the alien Creepers came to Earth, dropping asteroids to drown our coastal cities, detonating nuclear weapons overhead to destroy our communications, power and computer systems, and to set up their network of killer stealth satellites to kill anything on our planet…
2016
by Chuck Palahniuk, Cameron Stewart, David W. Mack
"Fight Club 2 is available exclusively as a Graphic Novel! Some imaginary friends never go away. Ten years after starting Project Mayhem, he lives a mundane life. A kid, a wife. Pills to keep his destiny at bay. But it won't last long, the wife has seen to that. He's back where h…
2014
by Toby Whaymand
Susan Atkins, Captain of Starship NOVA, is on a special mission to transport prisoner CX589 to the planet Troidon. It is Earth Year 2288, and she and her crew must ride a wormhole in order to propel themselves into the future to reach Troidon. While time travel is impossible, The…
2014
by Karen Burnham
"Greg Egan (1961- ) publishes works that challenge readers with rigorous, deeply-informed scientific speculation. He unapologetically delves into mathematics, physics, and other disciplines in his prose, putting him in the vanguard of the hard science fiction renaissance of the 1…
2013
by David Weber
Wrong number? There are two sides to any quarrel . . . unless there are more. Queen Elizabeth of Manticore's first cousin and Honor Harrington's best friend, Michelle Henke, has just handed the "invincible" Solarian League Navy the most humiliating, one sided defeat in its entire…
2012
by RJ Palmer
Bowen is an orphaned child in feudal England whose first appearance in this novel is having been bound hands and feet and whipped mercilessly by the monks in a monastery in an excess of bloodlust. He’s realistically of an indeterminate age but no more than about seven years old a…
2012
by Olivia M. Ravensworth
Released at the end of 2012 by Pink Flamingo Publications http://www.pinkflamingo.com/brands/Olivia-Ravensworth.html , Slave to Six Worlds is a tale of the future as imagined from the Golden Age of science fiction of the 1930s—a colorful, bawdy, brawling time of atomic-powered ro…
2010
by Cory Doctorow
Young adult science fiction set in the present or near future. The characters are "gold farmers" extracting virtual resources from online games and selling them to richer players. Their exploitation leads them to unionize, which leads to violence and trickery. In the virtual futu…
2010
by Connie Willis
In her first novel since 2002, Nebula and Hugo award-winning author Connie Willis returns with a stunning, enormously entertaining novel of time travel, war, and the deeds--great and small--of ordinary people who shape history. In the hands of this acclaimed storyteller, the past…
2010
by L.A.TAYLOR
A SYNOPSIS OF M.D. (MORGUE OF THE DEAD) BY L.A. TAYLOR WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF THE TOWN YOU LIVED IN WAS OVERTAKEN BY FLESH-EATING ZOMBIES? WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF A LOVED ONE TURNED INTO ONE OF THEM? The town of Clifton Falls had recently put aside the terrible bank robbery from a few…
2010
by Orson Scott Card
The book begins with Rigg, a boy that has the strange ability to see the path of any living being, no matter how long ago it existed. He spends his time hunting with his father in the mountains, trapping for valuable pelts. His father is his mentor, and so he has taught Rigg ever…
2010
by RJ Palmer
In 1969 a woman is admitted into the hospital in critical condition after having been the victim of a drunken driving accident. It was only after having undergone extensive testing including several x-rays to determine the nature and scope of her injuries that her pregnancy was d…
2009
by Philip K. Dick
[v. 1] Four novels of the 1960s: The great accomplishment of Philip K. Dick, in the words of editor Jonathan Lethem, was "to turn the materials of American pulp-style science fiction into a vocabulary for a remarkably personal vision of paranoia and dislocation." These four novel…
2008
by Neal Stephenson
Anathem, the latest invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizable — yet strangely inverted — world.Fraa Erasmas is…
2008
by James Rollins
What if you could bioengineer the next great world prophet: scientifically produce the next Buddha, the next Muhammad, or the next Jesus? Would it mark the Second Coming or initiate a chain reaction with disastrous consequences?A master at combining historical and religious intri…
2007
by Peter David
Some say the line between good and evil is narrower than we imagine – a divide as subtle as a mirror, and perhaps just as deep. To peer into its black, reflective glass is to know the dark potential we each possess, and we cross that obsidian boundary at our peril… into a world w…
2007
by David Gunn
Set in a chillingly realistic far-future world, and featuring a gritty antihero even more frightening than the evil empire he serves as soldier and assassin, Death's Head is sure to be one of the most talked-about novels of the year. David Gunn is loaded--and he shoots to kill.At…
2006
by Aaron Allston
This is the era of Luke Skywalker's legacy: the Jedi Master has unified the order into a cohesive group of powerful Jedi Knights. But as the new era begins, planetary interests threaten to disrupt this time of relative peace, and Luke is plagued with visions of an approaching dar…
2006
by Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy's tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a burnt-out cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi. The sky is perpetually shrouded by du…
2006
by James Rollins
The bestselling master of astonishing adventure James Rollins delivers his most relentlessly exciting page-turner to date -- a gripping and explosive novel of an ancient conspiracy to create a terrifying new world order out of the ashes of modern civilization.The crime is inhuman…