The best books where science fiction is simply a mundane way of explaining away the angelic creation

Why am I passionate about this?

Carlyle Labuschagne was born in South Africa, Johannesburg in the early 1980s. Growing up my imagination always trumped the world around me. I was obsessed with stories, sneaking off to watch them or going off on my own to play out my own. I am now an award-winning, International and USA Today bestselling fiction author – kind of a rare species in my neck of the woods. I write many genres but started off with mild Science – fiction with a dystopian undertone. I guess growing up in the apartheid era, and being raised by an African nanny who I regarded as my mom, left a lasting impression on me.


I wrote...

The Broken Destiny

By Carlyle Labuschagne,

Book cover of The Broken Destiny

What is my book about?

The Broken Destiny is a profound book about a select group of South African children who were conceived in a laboratory and exiled to another planet. On the planet the factions are quickly apparent. Military, Agricultural. Zulu tribe and all these earthlings live alongside an ancient race known as the Minoans. A council rules with a strict hand and keeps the children hidden from many truths about who and what they really are. That is until a girl meets a boy from a different sector and a prophecy is set in motion that could cause Ava to become their salvation or their destroyer.

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Child in Darkness

Carlyle Labuschagne Why did I love this book?

This is one of my favorite on the border of Science Fiction books. About a lonely boy who spends time on a hill in a tree near a closed mine entrance. One day he drops his apple and it rolls to the closed up entrance and the unexpected happens. I long blue arm reaches for the apple and disappears back in the min. 

Toward the end, the boy makes friends with the blue-skinned creature from the mine and discovers an entire community living in the cave. The explanation given on why they are so skinny and blue-skinned intrigued me as to why things are the way they are – that all things have a scientific explanation. 

By Robert Hill,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Child in Darkness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Pure

Carlyle Labuschagne Why did I love this book?

As a science fiction, speculative writer this book opened up my imagination to stretch my mind even more when it came to what science is capable of. Not only man-made science but the science within our own natural bodies and how certain scenarios can cause mutations. Lack of certain elements or too much of another can cause a very strong reaction on humans and earth. This book explores a world destroyed by nuclear bombs and how the poison has scarred earth and its human survivors afterward. Just another display of how science can change life on a minuscule level as much as a gigantic level all at the same time.

By Julianna Baggott,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Pure as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters. We will, one day, emerge from the Dome to join you in peace. For now, we watch from afar, benevolently.

Pressia Belze has lived outside of the Dome ever since the detonations. Struggling for survival she dreams of life inside the safety of the Dome with the 'Pure'.

Partridge, himself a Pure, knows that life inside the Dome, under the strict control of the leaders' regime, isn't as perfect as others think.

Bound by a history that neither can clearly remember, Pressia and Partridge are destined to forge a new world.


Book cover of Fire

Carlyle Labuschagne Why did I love this book?

This book is more in the fantasy realm but fits with science fiction too as all the magical things in this realm are very much explained in detail of why and how it exists. This is a colorful and adventurous book that upped my imaginary game as a writer. Science can turn fantasy into something almost real. The main character and the extraordinary creatures are otherworldly, but explained so well on how and why they exist. Why the main character’s hair is so red like fire and seems to move like fire, that fantasy almost to me feels like science in this book.

By Kristin Cashore,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Fire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

A must-read title for all fans of Patrick Rothfuss and Trudi Canavan, Fire will have you hooked on its gripping action, political intrigue, and beautiful central relationship.

'The book is REALLY good. Reading it made me very, very happy!' Tamora Pierce

Set in a world of stunningly beautiful, exceptionally dangerous monsters, Fire is one of the most dangerous monsters of all - a human one. Marked out by her vivid red hair, she's more than attractive. Fire is mesmerising.

But with this extraordinary beauty comes influence and power. People who are susceptible to her appeal will do anything for her…


Book cover of Across the Universe

Carlyle Labuschagne Why did I love this book?

I read this book a very long time ago but what I do remember is that the humans were supposed to be in stasis for over a century until they reached their predetermined inhabitable planet. But something went wrong and Amy woke up too soon to discover someone is trying to kill her. What I loved about the book was the habitation and community they had set up in the space shit. The science used to keep a living habitat as close to as natural as they could to keep the living crew alive on the ship. Science for me is the miracles that God left for us to explore.

By Beth Revis,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Across the Universe as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

Amy has left the life she loves for a world 300 years away

Trapped in space and frozen in time, Amy is bound for a new planet. But fifty years before she's due to arrive, she is violently woken, the victim of an attempted murder. Now Amy's lost on board and nothing makes sense - she's never felt so alone.

Yet someone is waiting for her. He wants to protect her; and more if she'll let him.

But who can she trust amidst the secrets and lies? A killer is out there - and Amy has nowhere to hide .…


Book cover of Angels & Demons

Carlyle Labuschagne Why did I love this book?

I think by now it is obvious my main theme – Science is our way of understanding God’s ways. On the deathbed of Albert Einstein he had communicated that science is God’s way of explaining and demonstrating to humankind how the universe was made, and that because we were built in his image – we can create anything he has. Angels & Demons is a battle between religion and science and that they cannot co-exist. But from the beginning of this novel explores that science can replicate creation by creating antimatter. In the book, the pope gets killed and the container holding the antimatter is stolen and used as a tool to discredit science and religion.

By Dan Brown,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Angels & Demons as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

CERN Institute, Switzerland: a world-renowned scientist is found brutally murdered with a mysterious symbol seared onto his chest.

The Vatican, Rome: the College of Cardinals assembles to elect a new pope. Somewhere beneath them, an unstoppable bomb of terrifying power relentlessly counts down to oblivion.

In a breathtaking race against time, Harvard professor Robert Langdon must decipher a labyrinthine trail of ancient symbols if he is to defeat those responsible - the Illuminati, a secret brotherhood presumed extinct for nearly four hundred years, reborn to continue their deadly vendetta against their most hated enemy, the Catholic Church.

Origin, the spellbinding…


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Book cover of The Twins of Auschwitz: The inspiring true story of a young girl surviving Mengele's hell

Lisa Rojany Author Of The Twins of Auschwitz: The inspiring true story of a young girl surviving Mengele's hell

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I have published over 50 books, including award-winning and bestselling titles. I am also a publishing executive and editor with 20+ years of professional experience. My latest The Twins of Auschwitz: The Inspiring True Story of  Young Girl Surviving Mengele’s Hell, with Eva Kor, got a stellar review by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and is an international bestseller. As well as spearheading four publishing startups, I have run my own business, Editorial Services of L.A. I was Editorial/Publishing Director for Golden Books, Price Stern Sloan, Intervisual Books, Hooked on Phonics, and more. I am also the Publisher & Editor in Chief of NY Journal Of Books, the premier online-only book review site.

Lisa's book list on picture books for all ages

What is my book about?

This is the Inspiring true story of a young girl surviving Mengele’s hell. This is an incisive, harrowing, and touching memoir of Eva Mozes Kor and her twin sister Miriam, who are sent to Auschwitz only to be torn from their parents and given to Josef Mengele, "The Angel of Death," for his evil and damaging experiments on human subjects.

In the voice of the ten-year-old Eva, we learn about what life was like in the death camps and how a child survives when food, water, comfort, and care are absent. At times heartbreaking and at other times a triumph of the will of a child to survive, this is a memoir that is not easily forgotten.

By Lisa Rojany, Eva Mozes Kor,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Twins of Auschwitz as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

The Nazis spared their lives because they were twins.

In the summer of 1944, Eva Mozes Kor and her family arrived at Auschwitz.

Within thirty minutes, they were separated. Her parents and two older sisters were taken to the gas chambers, while Eva and her twin, Miriam, were herded into the care of the man who became known as the Angel of Death: Dr. Josef Mengele. They were 10 years old.

While twins at Auschwitz were granted the 'privileges' of keeping their own clothes and hair, they were also subjected to Mengele's sadistic medical experiments. They…


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