Anthem's Fall, by S.L. Dunn

Rating: 3/5
374 pages
2014
Publisher: Prospect Hill Press
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers
Note: I read an ARC.

Description: Above a horrified New York City, genetics and ethics collide as the fallen emperor and a banished exile of the same herculean race ignite into battle over the city’s rooftops. In the streets below, a brilliant young scientist has discovered a technology that can defeat them both, yet might be more terrible than either.

Set both in modern New York City and in the technologically sophisticated yet politically savage world of Anthem, Anthem’s Fall unfurls into a plot where larger than life characters born with the prowess of gods are pitted against the shrewd brilliance of a familiar and unlikely heroine. (from Goodreads)

Labor Day, by Joyce Maynard

Rating: 0.5/5
244 pages
2009
Publisher: William Morrow
Source: Library book

Description: As the end of summer approaches and a long, hot Labor Day weekend looms, the life of lonely thirteen-year-old Henry Wheeler is irrevocably changed when he and his emotionally fragile mother show kindness to a stranger with a terrible secret. (from the back cover)

Three to Conquer, by Eric Frank Russell

Rating: 4/5
202 pages
1956
Publisher: Penguin
Source: Borrowed from family
(Note: Does not seem to currently be in print, at least in the US.)

Cover: I don't know what's up with the cover of the edition I read. The flowers don't have anything to do with the story, and it hardly sets the tone for the book.

Description: 'Wade Harper--Forger'. 

That was the cryptic inscription on his card. But it was lucky for the F.B.I. and the world that this tough, thick-set micro-instrument maker who first discovered the dying state trooper just off highway one April afternoon in 1980. For Harper possessed the uncanny telepathic power of 'hearing' thoughts which alone could track down the killers and crack a staggering interplanetary plot to grab world control through men's minds.

How he does it, his desperate fight to convince police and Pentagon of his own innocence and the Venusian threat, and the urgent America-wide manhunt that follows make a skillful scary blend of science and fiction at their best.

Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie

Rating: 4.5/5
384 pages
2013
Publisher: Orb
Source: B&N.com

Description: On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.

Breq is both more than she seems and less than she was. Years ago, she was the Justice of Toren--a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of corpse soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.
 
An act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with only one fragile human body. And only one purpose--to revenge herself on Anaander Mianaai, many-bodied, near-immortal Lord of the Radch. (From the back cover)

Consider Phlebas, by Iain M. Banks

Rating: 4/5
512 pages
1987
Publisher: Orbit
Source:My collection

Description: The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction. (from back cover)

The State of the Art, by Iain M. Banks

Rating: 4/5
216
1991
Publisher: Orbit
Source: My collection

Description: This first ever collection of Iain Bank's short fiction includes a novella never before published in Britian-- The State of the Art. A Striking addition to the growing body of Culture lore, it adds definition and scale to the previous works by using Earth of 1977 as contrast. The other stories in this collection, all previously published in magazines and anthologies, range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks staggering talent. (from the back cover)

How Much for Just the Planet?, by John M. Ford

Rating: 1.5/5
253 pages
1987
Publisher: Pocket books
Source: Borrowed from family

Description: Dilithium. In crystalline form, the most valuable mineral in the galaxy. It powers the Federation's starships... and the Klingon Empire's battlecruisers. Now on a small out-of-the-way planet named Direidi, the greatest fortune in dilithium crystals ever seen has been found.

Under the terms of the Organian Peace Treaty, the planet will go to the side best able to develop the planet and its resources. Each side will contest the prize with the prime of its fleet. For the federation-- Captain James T. Kirk and the starship Enterprise. For the Klingons-- Captain Kaden vestai-Oparai and the Fire Blossom.

Only the Direidians are writing their own script for this contest-- a script that propels the crew of the Enterprise into their strangest adventure yet! (from the back cover.)