The best lesser-known YA/NA books with amazing science and futurism

The Earth is being invaded, but no-one knows about it. When Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie and Marco stumble upon a downed alien spaceship and its dying pilot, they're given an incredible power they can transform into any animal they touch. With it, they become Animorphs, the unlikely champions in a secret war for the planet. And the enemies they're fighting could be anyone, even the people closest to them. So begins K.A. Applegate's epic series about five normal kids with a limitless amount of forms and abilities.

The galaxy has seen great empires rise and fall. Planets have shattered and been remade. Amongst the ruins of alien civilisations, building our own from the rubble, humanity still thrives.

And there are vast fortunes to be made, if you know where to find them . . .

Captain Rackamore and his crew do. It's their business to find the tiny, enigmatic worlds which have been hidden away, booby-trapped, surrounded with layers of protection - and to crack them open for the ancient relics and barely-remembered technologies inside. But while they ply their risky trade with integrity, not everyone is… show more.

Stephen Baxter's highly acclaimed first novel and the beginning of his stunning Xeelee Sequence finally enters the SF Masterwork series!

A spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space-time to a universe where the force of gravity is one billion times as strong as the gravity we know. Somehow the crew survived, aided by the fact that they emerged into a cloud of gas surrounding a black hole, which provided a breathable atmosphere.

Five hundred years later, their descendants still struggle for existence, divided into two main groups. The Miners live on the Belt, a ramshackle ring of… show more.

In this thriller from the author of Jurassic Park, Sphere, and Congo, a group of young scientists travel back in time to medieval France on a daring rescue mission that becomes a struggle to stay alive.
 
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
 
“Compulsive reading . . . brilliantly imagined.”—Los Angeles Times
 
In an Arizona desert, a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world, archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to… show more.

Sean, a highly motivated medical student in his third year at Harvard Medical School, is thrilled to take a two-month research post at the renowned Forbes Cancer Centre. But Sean is denied the opportunity to work on the cancer project and so he starts his own investigations into the centre.