Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Science Fiction

Robert Baxter once reveled in the intoxicating delights of Atopia - the man-made island where humans lose themselves in a world of boundless virtual realities. Now, Bob has returned to immerse himself in this mind-altering, consciousness-sharing refuge from the eroding Earth. But something is very wrong. Bob feels a tidal wave of doom cresting above the pleasure dome that is Atopia. As alternate universes perish, the salvation of all he loves - and all that exists - rests with Bob alone.

At 11:46:01, California time, on a foggy Monday in January 1986, the universe - suddenly, inexplicably, without warning - bifurcated. Fast-forward to 35 years later: Felix Sayers is a culinary writer living in San Francisco of Universe A who spends his days lunching at Coconut Café and dreaming of a successful career penning Agatha Christie-style mysteries. But everything changes when his Aunt Henrietta dies, leaving Felix a photograph of his father and himself - dated 10 days before Felix was born. It can only mean one thing: Felix has an "alter" in Universe B.

The year is 2025. Astronaut Caitlyn "Sif" Wagner and her team emerge from stasis to discover that their Mars mission has gone terribly awry - the crew has run off course in space and, they suspect, in time as well. Their damaged ship returns to an Earth reduced to overgrown cities and blasted terrain. Yet humans have somehow survived, living in caves, foraging at night, returned to a tribal existence.

In Second Activation, the two brothers escape from Monroe, Michigan, and head for New York to face down Genesis Alliance, a despotic organization that is implementing the chaos to create a new order. Caught in a race against time, confronted with a local team intent on revenge and expecting the imminent arrival of a larger reinforcement, Harry and Jack must avoid existing dangers, gain allies, and stop the Alliance from launching its next Activation.

Big business is booming and state institutions are thriving thanks to advances in genetic engineering, which have produced a compliant population free from addictions. Violent crime is now a rarity. Mayhew McCline, a major corporation that analyzes global trends, has hired a genius: Jayna. A brilliant mathematical modeler, she has the ability to produce accurate predictions that are both good for the world and good for the bottom line. Her latest coup: finding a link between northeasterly winds and violent crime.

For once in her life, Rebecca Malone has decided to follow her impulses. After quitting her job and selling all of her belongings, she heads to Greece in search of adventure. So when a sexy local restaurant owner pursues her, she can't resist playing the role of sophisticated, well-traveled woman. But falling in love with Stephen Nickodemus was not part of the plan! Now she'll have to find a way to break the news of her true identity…without also breaking his heart.

Heather O’Grainne is the assistant secretary in the Office of Future Threat Assessment, investigating rumors surrounding something called “Daybreak.” Part philosophic discussion, part international terrorist faction, and part artists’ movement, it’s a group of diverse people with radical ideas who have only one thing in common — their hatred for the Big System and their desire to take it down. Until Heather can determine whether these people are all talk and no action, she wants to keep this information from going public.

Messiah traces the collapse of Christianity and the rise of the next great religion of Western civilization: Cavism. Founded by undertaker John Cave, Cavism holds that it is a holy thing to die. Packaged by a marketing genius, the new religion conquers the world more quickly than any prior memeplex, but pockets of resistance remain. Eugene Luther, formerly an apostle of Cavism, now a hunted apostate, writes his memoirs as a last gesture of freedom while the noose of a totalitarian religious state tightens around him.

Ex-CIA assassin Jack Gregory has been hired for a singular mission: to journey to South America and rescue an imprisoned shaman. Beloved by the struggling masses and feared by the ruling elite, shaman Tupac Inti is destined to unite Bolivia's indigenous people and bring down the corrupt government. But Jack isn't the only one trying to track down the shaman.

Donnchadh and Gwalcmai were birthed on a far-flung planet in the Milky Way - a human breeding colony with the purpose of churning out disposable foot soldiers. But the masters of the colony, the Airlia, created humans with one fatal flaw: an insatiable thirst for freedom. Though Donnchadh and Gwalcmai become God-killers in the bloody revolt against their seemingly omnipotent creators and captors, their planet is already doomed.

In Massachusetts, neuroscience students Luke, Josh, and Hope have formed an unbreakable and unconditional friendship. Bound by their wit, brilliance, and curiosity, they throw themselves heart and soul into their research. Their new computer program can capture a person’s entire consciousness, memory, and personality - a digital map of the brain’s connections that promises to bridge the relationship between human and machine, between the past and the future. When Hope is diagnosed with a fatal and aggressive illness, their work takes on a new significance and urgency.

Humanity put all its fading hopes in New Eden, a pristine star system 230 light-years from the ravaged Earth. But upon arrival, the would-be colonists encountered the Kresh - a diabolical alien race who quickly captured the human starship and tortured its inhabitants in hopes of learning the coordinates of Earth. Street-smart Cyrus Gant managed to escape, crashing to the surface of a nearby moon terraformed by the Kresh and inhabited by primitive humans.

Eighteen-year-old Anna Morgan is on the run from the very government project that created her abilities. Now they seek to weaponize the gift she doesn’t want and can’t control: the invasion of her mind and her body by spirits, some of whom have their own unusual powers. Her latest “hitcher” is a former top Delphi executive. Unlike Anna’s previous guests, this one has taken over, and he’s on a personal mission of revenge.

In a near future where climate change has severely affected weather and agriculture, the North End of an unnamed city has long been abandoned in favor of the neighboring South End. Aside from the scavengers steadily stripping the empty city to its bones, only a few thousand people remain, content to live quietly among the crumbling metropolis. Many, like the narrator, are there to try to escape the demons of their past. He spends his time observing and recording the decay around him, attempting to bury memories of what he has lost.

James Patterson is a gay accountant living in Keyes, Oklahoma - deep in the Bible Belt - the religious heartland of America. He's also the first person to make contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence seeking to understand our world, and that makes him the most important person on the planet.

Human pioneers fleeing Earth for the promised land of New Eden found hell instead, falling prey to the reptilian Kresh. But street-savvy Cyrus Gant escaped the aliens, rescued master telepath Klane, and began a desperate journey to head off the impending Kresh invasion of Earth.

A single raindrop opens a Pandora's box of horrors when the spawn of perverse genetic research performed during World War II - refined by Cold War enemies and perfected by nature - are unleashed on an unsuspecting world. By dawn only a dead city remains, eerily quiet and still except for the mutant beasts who hide from the light, multiply, and await the shadows of day's end.

Three years after the unprovoked attack on a peaceful colony, the war between the Rojok dynasty and the Tri-Galaxy Fleet rages on. Born of that war is the Morcai Battalion, a fleet comprised of Centaurians and humans - the first collaboration of its kind and a step toward an intergalactic alliance. But the fragile union is tested as their courageous commander in chief, Dtimun, is faced with the temptation of the forbidden - and human - Dr. Madeline Ruszel.

Raphael of Acre, a young initiate of the Shield-Brethren, becomes a war hero during a vicious battle for control of a Muslim stronghold. One of his companions, Eptor, is wounded in the battle and falls under the influence of strange hallucinations. When a superior plots to manipulate Eptor’s visions into war propaganda, Raphael struggles between duty to the cause and duty to his faith. Unable to reconcile his roles as Christian and soldier, Raphael seeks out an unlikely source of counsel - Francis of Assisi.

The Hospital Ship is no more, and Yang Wei awakens to find himself at the mercy of monstrous doctors and the tumult of his own mind. Not helping matters, of course, is the Mars Hospital’s Pool of Dead Souls. A ghastly body of water, it traps people in an endless cycle of treatment, death, and resurrection. When an unruly band of patients revolts against this suffering, the Hospital descends into chaos, the likes of which have never been seen before.