Ackbars Picks

Karan is forced to steal an ancient relic in payment for a debt, but is not told it is the Mirror of Aachan a deceitful thing that remembers everything it sees. Llian is expelled from his college for uncovering a perilous mystery. Thrown together by fate, they are hunted across a world at war.

The truth about he climate crisis is an invonvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives and this affects young people above all. Our climate crisis may at times appear to be happening slowly, but in fact it has become a true planetary emergency.

The hero of Ice Station is sent to a US Air Force installation in the Nevada desert. Schofield will be escorting the President on an inspection tour of the base itself. But, there are certain people who don't plan on the head of state leaving there alive.

Following the colossal battle against the Empire's warriors on the Burning Plains, Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have narrowly escaped with their lives. Still there is more at hand for the Rider and his dragon, as Eragon finds himself bound by a tangle of promises he may not be able to keep.

Rulke the Great Betrayer is free at last to use the deadly construct he has spent a thousand years perfecting. To succeed he needs just one thing Karan's unique sensitive talent. Karan and her lover Llian are lost in the Nightland and only Rulke has the power to open the gate and send them home.

After successfully evading an Urgals ambush, Eragon is adopted into the Ingeitum clan and sent to finish his training so he can further help the Varden in their struggle against the Empire.

An epic account of an ordinary bloke, with an extraordinary life. Paul Carter doesn’t have to try hard to make people laugh and draws upon his fascinating life on and around the world’s oil rigs and hot spots. Don’t tell mum indeed!

In Aagaesia, a fifteen-year-old boy of unknown lineage called Eragon finds a mysterious stone that weaves his life into an intricate tapestry of destiny, magic, and power, peopled with dragons, elves, and monsters.

In this space adventure, Lawrence Newton, the sergeant of a washed-out platoon, sets out on a private-enterprise operation in search of the Temple of the Fallen Dragon, where its priests are said to guard a hoard of treasure large enough to buy lifelong happiness.

Two hundred years after the Forbidding was broken, Santhenar is locked in war with the lyrinx intelligent, winged predators, who will do anything to gain their own world. Despite the development of battle clankers and mastery of the crystals that power them, humanity is losing. Tiaan, a lonely crystal worker in a clanker manufactory, is experimenting with crystal when she begins to have visions. The crystal has woken her latent talent for geomancy, the most powerful and most perilous of the Secret Arts.

It is an island that doesn't appear on any maps. A place where secret tests have been going on. Tests that have gone terribly wrong. When all contact with the island is suddenly lost, four crack special forces units are dropped in. Their mission: to land on Hell Island and discover what has happened. Nothing can prepare them for what they find there. You could say they've just entered hell. Only that would be wrong.

Humanity began sending out spaceships which took generations to reach their goal, until the the Ildiran found them and passed on the knowledge of the stardrive. 200 years later, human colonies proliferate through the galaxy. Now they have discovered technology that will change the universe forever.

"At a remote US ice station in Antarctica, a team of scientists has made an amazing discovery. They have found something unbelievable buried deep below the surface trapped inside a layer of ice 400 million years old. Something made of metal. something which shouldn't be there. It's the discovery of a lifetime. And a discovery men will kill for. Led by the enigmatic Lieutenant Shane Schofield, a crack team of US Marines is rushed to the ice station to secure this bizarre discovery for their own nation. Meanwhile other countries had developed the same idea. Fortunately, Schofield's men are a tough unit, all set to follow their leader into hell. -Publisher description.

After hundreds of years secretly manipulating the human race, the Starflyer alien has succeeded in engineering a war which should result in the destruction of the Intersolar Commonwealth. Now, thanks to Chief Investigator Paula Myo, the Commonwealth's political elite finally acknowledges the Starflyer's existence, and puts together an unlikely partnership to track down this enigmatic and terrifying alien. The invasion from Dyson Alpha continues with dozens of Commonwealth worlds falling to the enemy. The navy fights back with what it believes to be war-winning superweapons, only to find that the alien fleet has been given equally powerful weapons. How the aliens got them is the question which haunts Admiral Kime. Could it be that the Commonwealth's top-secret defence project has been compromised by the Starflyer's agents, or is the truth even worse?

When an astronomer observes a star over a thousand light years away vanish, imprisoned inside a force field of immense size, the Commonwealth is anxious to discover what actually happened. Does it indicate some kind of galactic conflict?

The third of Matthew Reilly's novels finds Captain Shane "Scarecrow" Schofield simultaneously evading bounty hunters hot on his trail while tracking down the perpetrators of a conspiracy that could soon reduce many of the major cities of the world to ashes.

The node has failed and the future of humanity is dependent on the survival of one wily old man.

It's the biggest treasure hunt in history. Nearly every nation is involved. A headlong race to locate the Seven wonders of the Ancient World. A magnificent golden capstone once sat atop the Great Pyramid at Giza. It was a source of immense power, capable of bestowing upon its holder absolute global rule for a thousand years. But then in 323 BC, the capstone was broken into seven pieces and hidden within the greatest structures of the age: monuments that would become known as the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. Now with the coming of a rare solar event, the time has come to locate the pieces and rebuild the capstone.

Two hundred years after the Forbidding was broken, Santhenar is locked in war with the Lyrinx intelligent, winged predators who will do anything to gain their own world. Despite the development of battle clankers and mastery of the crystals that power them, humanity is losing. Tiaan, a lonely crystal worker in a clanker manufactory, was experimenting with an entirely new kind of crystal when she began to have extraordinary visions. The crystal had woken her latent talent for geomancy, the most powerful of all the Secret Arts and the most perilous. Now Tiaan is leading her people in a last desperate stand against the Lyrinx but if they are to survive she must master her new powers or be destroyed

After spurning his father, the God-Emperor Jal-Nish, Nish is being hunted across the face of the world. Jal-Nish is determined to hunt Nish down and drag him back to prison, whatever it takes.

Nish, his battered little troop and his few remaining allies are trapped on the Range of Ruin by the God-Emperor's mighty army. Nish's only choices are a humiliating surrender to his father or a suicidal fight to the death. Yet Nish as to fight, and somehow he has to win, for the beautiful world of Santhenar is in peril and no one else can save it.

AD 3580. The Intersolar Commonwealth has spread through the galaxy to over a thousand star systems. It is a culture of rich diversity with a place for everyone. A powerful navy protects it from any hostile species that may lurk among the stars. For Commonwealth citizens, even death has been overcome. At the centre of the galaxy is the Void, a strange artificial universe created by aliens billions of years ago, shrouded by an event horizon more deadly than any natural black hole. In order to function, it is gradually consuming the mass of the galaxy. Watched over by its ancient enemies, the Raiel, the Void's expansion is barely contained. Inigo dreams of the sweet life within the Void, and shares these visions with billions of avid believers. When he mysteriously disappears, Inigo's followers decide to embark on a pilgrimage into the Void to live the life of their messiah's dreams a pilgrimage which the Raiel claim will trigger a catastrophic expansion of the Void. Aaron is a man whose only memory is his own name. He doesn't know who he used to be, or what he is. All he does know is that his job is to find the missing…

After ten years of servitude, Nish is about to be released from the blackest prison of the maimed God-Emperor, Jal-Nish Hlar, his corrupt father. Jal-Nish holds the two sorcerous quicksilver tears, Gatherer and Reaper, and with them controls all of the Secret Art. All opposition having been crushed, he has begun to remake the world in his depraved image. The only hope of overthrowing him lies in Nish, whom the oppressed peoples of the world see as a messianic figure. They have named him the Deliverer for, as Nish was dragged away to prison a decade ago, he wildly promised to return and cast down his father. Unfortunately Nish is powerless and without allies. But worse, his father wants Nish to become his lieutenant and become as corrupt as he is. Jal-Nish offers Nish everything he has ever desired and, faced with the unbearable alternative of another ten years in prison, he isn't sure he can resist the temptation.

"IT BEGAN WITH SIX STONES. Jack West Jr and his loyal team are in desperate disarray: they've been separated, their mission is in tatters, and Jack was last seen plummeting down a fathomless abyss. IT FINISHES HERE. After surviving his deadly fall, Jack must now race against his many enemies to locate and set in place the remaining pieces of The Machine before the coming Armageddon. WHO ARE THE FIVE WARRIORS? As the world teeters on the brink of destruction, he will learn of the Five Warriors, the individuals who throughout history have been most intimately connected to his quest. OCEANS WILL RISE, CITIES WILL FALL. Scores will be settled, fathers will fight sons, brothers will battle brothers, and Jack and his friends will soon find out exactly what the end of the world looks like" -Publisher.

Gaia Theory tells us that the entire Earth, including the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and upper layers of rock, functions as a single living superorganism, regulating its internal environment much as an animal regulates its body temperature and chemical balance. But now, says the theory's founder, James Lovelock, that organism is sick. It is running a fever born of a sun whose intensity is slowly growing over millions of years, and an atmosphere whose greenhouse gases have recently spiked due to human activity. Earth will adjust to these stresses, but on time scales measured in the hundreds of millennia and in the meantime, humanity faces a severe test. It is already too late, Lovelock says, to prevent the global climate from "flipping" into an entirely new equilibrium state that will leave the tropics uninhabitable, force much of humanity to flee to the poles, and threaten civilization along the way. In the tradition of Silent Spring and The Diversity of Life, this is a call to action to address a major threat to our collective future.

The world is in mortal danger. For Jack West Jr and his loyal team of heroes, the challenge now is to set six legendary diamonds known as 'the pillars' in place at six ancient sites around the world before the deadline for global destruction arrives. The locations of these sites, however, can only be revealed by the fabled Six Sacred Stones. With only the riddles of ancient writers to guide them, and time rapidly running out, Jack and his team must fight their way past traps, labyrinths and a host of deadly enemies knowing that this time they cannot, will not, must not fail.

"The Intersolar Commonwealth is in turmoil as the launch of Living Dream's Pilgrimage into the Void draws near and, with the Ocisen Empire fleet fast approaching on a mission of genocide, an internecine war has broken out between the post-human Factions over the destiny of humanity. Defying the increasingly desperate Factions is Paula Myo, the ruthlessly single-minded investigator. Beset by foes from her distant past and colleagues with a dubious allegiance, she is losing a race against time, and shocking truth of how far some people will go to determine the course of evolution is only just dawning on her. Meanwhile, somewhere in Colwyn City, Araminta is coming to terms with the discovery that she is the Second Dreamer and therefore on the run from just about everybody. At the heart of all this is Edeard, the Waterwalker, who lived long, long ago, deep inside the Void. He is the messiah of Living Dream, and visions of his life inspire billions of humans. They worship these dreams of Edeard's crusade against corruption, injustice and violence, of his struggle to hold true to his convictions in the face of temptation and…

War rages across Santhenar as the quest for the Mirror of Aachan continues. In desperation, Tensor, leader of the Aachims, flees with the Mirror into the wilderness, taking the chronicler Llian with him. Only Karan can locate them, but it will be a perilous journey: Tensor wants her dead.

Karan is held captive in desolate Carcharon tower. Rulke plans to use her to find the way between the worlds. If he succedds, the world will be overwhelmed by the dread armies of the void. There is only one solution. Karan must be the sacrifice.