Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel

Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel

Michael D. O'Brien

Literature & Fiction / Religion & Spirituality / Children's Books

Set eighty years in the future, this novel by the best-selling author Michael O'Brien is about an expedition sent from the planet Earth to Alpha Centauri, the star closest to our solar system. TheKosmos, a great ship that the central character Neil de Hoyos describes as a "flying city", is immense in size and capable of more than half light-speed. Hoyos is a Nobel Prize winning physicist who has played a major role in designing the ship. Hoyos has signed on as a passenger because he desires to escape the seemingly benign totalitarian government that controls everything on his home planet. He is a skeptical and quirky misanthropic humanist with old tragedies, loves, and hatreds that are secreted in his memory. The surprises that await him on the voyage-and its destination-will shatter all of his assumptions and point him to a true new horizon. Science fiction and fantasy literature are genres that have become dominant forces in contemporary worldwide culture. Our fascination with the near-angelic powers of new technology, its benefits and dangers, its potential for obsession and catastrophe, raises vital questions that this work explores about human nature and the cosmos, about man's image of himself and where he is going-and why he seeks to go there. Michael O'Brien, iconographer, painter, and writer, is the popular author of many best-selling novels including Father Elijah, The Father's Tale, Eclipse of the Sun, Sophia House, Theophilos, and Island of the World. His novels have been translated into twelve languages and widely reviewed in both secular and religious media in North America and Europe. He lives in Ontario with his wife, Sheila, and family.  Praise for Voyage to Alpha Centauri: "Michael O'Brien is a superior spiritual story teller worthy to join the ranks of C.S. Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, Graham Greene, and Evelyn Waugh." - Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., Boston College  "Some Sci Fi novels are scientism fiction, worshiping science. Others are science friction, where high tech makes humans lowly. Voyage to Alpha Centauri, though, neither creates a new god nor blames science for our sin. Its narrator excitedly embarks on a 19-year trip aboard a sleek, huge spaceship, only to learn of oppression in the heavens as on earth, with big brothers watching and demanding lying conformity. Michael O'Brien shows us the battle that ensues and its sensational result as he skillfully portrays a clash of world views without end, amen." - Marvin Olasky, Editor-in-chief, World Magazine "Ingenious, expansive, and enduringly wise, Voyage to Alpha Centauri is a tour de force of storytelling and moral imagination--sparkling in its humanity, rich in its embroidery, and chilling in its plausibility. It is a parable of an age that could easily become our own, with its concomitant wonders and dangers, an exploration of the most sublime heights and of the greatest depths of human possibility, and a thought-provoking meditation on the ethical limits of knowledge. InVoyage to Alpha Centauri, Michael O'Brien has given us a literary treasure and a deeply satisfying read."- Corban Addison, Author, A Walk Across the Sun
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Akata Warrior

Akata Warrior

Nnedi Okorafor

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Young Adult

The long-awaited sequel to the genre-breaking Akata Witch by multiple award-winner Nnedi Okorafor!"The most imaginative, gripping, enchanting fantasy novels I have ever read!" —Laurie Halse Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of SpeakA year ago, Sunny Nwazue, an American-born girl Nigerian girl, was inducted into the secret Leopard Society. As she began to develop her magical powers, Sunny learned that she had been chosen to lead a dangerous mission to avert an apocalypse, brought about by the terrifying masquerade, Ekwensu. Now, stronger, feistier, and a bit older, Sunny is studying with her mentor Sugar Cream and struggling to unlock the secrets in her strange Nsibidi book. Eventually, Sunny knows she must confront her destiny. With the support of her Leopard Society friends, Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha, and of her spirit face, Anyanwu, she will travel through worlds both visible and invisible to the mysteries town of Osisi,...
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Twilight's Last Gleaming

Twilight's Last Gleaming

Walter Wager

Mystery & Thrillers / Arts & Photography / Literature & Fiction

No one writes a political thriller like Walter Wager. No one writes a psychological thriller like Walter Wager. In Twilight's Last Gleaming, he checks both boxes, and the result will keep you reading through to sunrise. A retired general takes over a missile silo in the Badlands. His threat is to provoke a World War, launching deadly ordnance, unless the President is willing to reveal everything about a secret meeting he had during the Vietnam War. The situation is explosive, and so is the truth. Before the day is done, one man has his only shot at redemption—and countless lives hang in the balance.
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The Calligrapher's Secret

The Calligrapher's Secret

Rafik Schami

Literature & Fiction

Even as a young man, Hamid Farsi is acclaimed as a master of the art of calligraphy. But as time goes by, he sees that weakness in the Arabic language and its script limit its uses in the modern world. In a secret society, he works out schemes for radical reform, never guessing what risks he is running.
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Hide And Seek ir-2

Hide And Seek ir-2

Ian Rankin

Literature & Fiction / Mystery & Thrillers / Crime

Detective Inspector John Rebus finds the body of an overdosed drug addict in an Edinburgh squat, laid out cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, with a five-pointed star painted on the wall above. Some of his colleagues are inclined to categorise it as the routine death of a "junkie", but Rebus is perturbed by some unusual facts of the case: a full package of heroin in the dead man's room, and some mysterious bruises on his face and body. Rebus takes seriously a death which looks more like a murder every day, and he begins to investigate the true circumstances of the death. As part of his investigation, Rebus finds the young woman named Tracy who knew the dead man and heard his terrifying last words: "Hide! Hide!" It emerges that the dead man was a photographer who took and hid some sensitive photos in a specialist private members' club — Hyde's — where highly-connected people in society watch illegal boxing. Rebus is able to arrest Hyde's owner and several high profile members, but to his outrage and disgust all the prisoners die suspicious deaths: the powers-that-be are covering it up to prevent scandal.
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Against the Tide

Against the Tide

Melody Carlson

Literature & Fiction / Young Adult

EXPOSING THE TRUTHN Returning home for her father's funeral, big-city reporter Megan McCallister is brutally attacked—confirming her suspicions that her father's mysterious death was no accident. But only her childhood friend, Garret Larsson, believes her theory. The teenager she once knew has grown into a brave, honorable man...but can he keep her alive long enough to find the truth? Garret needs Megan to leave town, but he wants her to stay. He knows about the secrets her newspaperman father uncovered and the dangerous exposé he was writing. And now Megan has vowed to finish her father's final article. Someone's determined to kill the story—and Megan along with it—but he'll have to go through Garret first.
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