10 Best Space Mystery Books Set in the Cosmos!
Hold onto your spacesuits and step onto your spaceships, cosmic explorers! In the seemingly infinite expanse of the cosmos, there's bound to be an abundance of enigmas that’ll make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. From eerie alien encounters to unsettling black hole anomalies, these 10 space mystery books will hurl you straight into the heart of thrilling interstellar whodunits.
Exploring everything from dark matter and rogue asteroids to bioluminescent planets and space-time loops, these selected novels pack in enough cosmic jargon to make any astronomy geek salivate. Page-turning suspense, atmospheric settings, and deep space explorations - these books have it all! You'll find yourself on an adrenaline-fueled journey that will test the limits of your curiosity and resilience.
Each gripping tale seamlessly blends scientific knowledge, imaginative fiction, and mind-boggling mysteries. The characters you'll meet are as diverse as the galaxies they navigate - seasoned astronauts, brilliant scientists, intrepid explorers, or maybe a sentient AI or two. These narratives will take you to the edge of your seat and the fringes of the universe.
Everything's a lot more mysterious once you leave Earth, and these space mystery books are proof that interstellar journeys are truly the final (nerve-wracking) frontier. Buckle up and prepare for a literary space adventure of cosmic proportions!
『Dead Space』
Nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award An investigator must solve a brutal murder on a claustrophobic space station in this tense science fiction thriller from the author of Salvation Day. Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. But when a catastrophic attack left her injured, indebted, and stranded far from home, she was forced to take a dead-end security job with a powerful mining company in the asteroid belt. Now she spends her days investigating petty crimes to help her employer maximize its profits. She's surprised to hear from an old friend and fellow victim of the terrorist attack that ruined her life—and that surprise quickly turns to suspicion when he claims to have discovered something shocking about their shared history and the tragedy that neither of them can leave behind. Before Hester can learn more, her friend is violently murdered at a remote asteroid mine. Hester joins the investigation to find the truth, both about her friend's death and the information he believed he had uncovered. But catching a killer is only the beginning of Hester's worries, and she soon realizes that everything she learns about her friend, his fellow miners, and the outpost they call home brings her closer to revealing secrets that very powerful and very dangerous people would rather keep hidden in the depths of space.
Author | Kali Wallace |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Penguin |
Release Date | Mar 02, 2021 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Tea Master and the Detective』
Winner of the Nebula Award and British Fantasy Award for Best Novella Finalist for the Hugo Award, Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award for Best Novella “A window onto a beautifully developed world that widens the meaning of space opera.” —The New York Times Once, the mindship known as The Shadow's Child was a military transport. Once, she leapt effortlessly between stars and planets, carrying troops and crew for a war that tore the Empire apart. Until an ambush killed her crew and left her wounded and broken. Now the war is over, and The Shadow's Child, surviving against all odds, has run away. Discharged and struggling to make a living, she has no plans to go back into space. Until the abrasive and arrogant scholar Long Chau comes to see her. Long Chau wants to retrieve a corpse for her scientific studies: a simple enough, well-paid assignment. But when the corpse they find turns out to have been murdered, the simple assignment becomes a vast and tangled investigation, inexorably leading back to the past--and, once again, to that unbearable void where The Shadow's Child almost lost both sanity and life... “[The Tea Master and the Detective] is a window onto a beautifully developed world that widens the meaning of space opera, one that centers on Chinese and Vietnamese cultures and customs instead of Western military conventions, and is all the more welcome for it.” —Amal El-Mohtar, The New York Times “The Tea Master and the Detective is the Sherlock Holmes retelling I always wanted and now I have it. And I want so much more of it.” —Ana Grilo, Kirkus “The Tea Master is an astonishing Holmesian mystery, in which Holmes is a woman and Watson is a spaceship. It is everything I wanted it to be. Tea, space, and mysteries within mysteries.” —Mary Robinette Kowal “Ingenious... As a classical blend of far-future SF and traditional murder mystery, The Tea Master and the Detective should satisfy readers unfamiliar with the Xuya universe, but at the same time it’s an intriguing introduction to that universe, much of which seems to lie just outside the borders of this entertaining tale.” —Gary K. Wolfe, Locus “De Bodard constructs a convincingly gritty setting and a pair of unique characters with provocative histories and compelling motivations. The story works as well as both science fiction and murder mystery, exploring a future where pride, guilt, and mercy are not solely the province of humans.” —Publishers' Weekly
Author | Aliette de Bodard |
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Price | $5.99 |
Publisher | Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc. |
Release Date | Apr 02, 2018 |
Source | Google Books |
『Six Wakes』
In this Hugo nominated science fiction thriller by Mur Lafferty, a crew of clones awakens aboard a space ship to find they're being hunted-and any one of them could be the killer. Maria Arena awakens in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood. She has no memory of how she died. This is new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died. Maria's vat is one of seven, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it can awaken. And Maria isn't the only one to die recently. . . Unlock the bold new science fiction thriller that Corey Doctorow calls Mur's "breakout book".
Author | Mur Lafferty |
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Price | $9.99 |
Publisher | Orbit |
Release Date | Jan 31, 2017 |
Source | Google Books |
『All Systems Red』
A New York Times and USA Today Bestseller Winner: 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novella Winner: 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novella Winner: 2018 Alex Award Winner: 2018 Locus Award One of the Verge's Best Books of 2017 A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence. "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure." In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth. The Murderbot Diaries All Systems Red Artificial Condition Rogue Protocol Exit Strategy Network Effect Fugitive Telemetry System Collapse At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Author | Martha Wells |
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Price | $4.99 |
Publisher | Tordotcom |
Release Date | May 02, 2017 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Luminous Dead』
Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best First Novel! "This claustrophobic, horror-leaning tour de force is highly recommended for fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Andy Weir’s The Martian." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) The thrilling, atmospheric debut from the author of The Death of Jane Lawrence, a novel with the intensive drive of The Martian and Gravity and the creeping dread of Annihilation, in which a caver on a foreign planet finds herself on a terrifying psychological and emotional journey for survival. When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she’d be mapping mineral deposits, and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck—enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother—meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane. Instead, she got Em. Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation” of her expedition. Em knows all about Gyre’s falsified credentials, and has no qualms using them as a leash—and a lash. And Em has secrets, too . . . As Gyre descends, little inconsistencies—missing supplies, unexpected changes in the route, and, worst of all, shifts in Em’s motivations—drive her out of her depths. Lost and disoriented, Gyre finds her sense of control giving way to paranoia and anger. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, Gyre must overcome more than just the dangerous terrain and the Tunneler which calls underground its home if she wants to make it out alive—she must confront the ghosts in her own head. But how come she can’t shake the feeling she’s being followed?
Author | Caitlin Starling |
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Price | $13.99 |
Publisher | HarperCollins |
Release Date | Apr 02, 2019 |
Source | Google Books |
『Far from the Light of Heaven』
“Simultaneously brutally grounded and wildly imaginative.” —Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke Award winner A tense and thrilling vision of humanity’s future in the chilling emptiness of space from rising giant in science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke Award winner Tade Thompson The colony ship Ragtime docks in the Lagos system, having traveled light-years to bring one thousand sleeping souls to a new home among the stars. But when first mate Michelle Campion rouses, she discovers some of the sleepers will never wake. Answering Campion’s distress call, investigator Rasheed Fin is tasked with finding out who is responsible for these deaths. Soon a sinister mystery unfolds aboard the gigantic vessel, one that will have repercussions for the entire system—from the scheming politicians of Lagos station, to the colony planet Bloodroot, to other far-flung systems, and indeed to Earth itself. Praise for Far from the Light of Heaven "Gripping and skillfully told, with an economy and freshness of approach that is all Tade Thompson''s own. The setting is interstellar, but it feels as real, immediate, and lethal as today's headlines." —Alastair Reynolds "[I]nventive, exciting and compulsively readable...This book is like the Tardis, larger inside than out, with a range of ideas, characters, and fascinating future settings making it probably the best science fiction novel of the year." —The Guardian For more from Tade Thompson, check out: The Wormwood Trilogy Rosewater Rosewater: Insurrection Rosewater: Redemption
Author | Tade Thompson |
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Price | $9.99 |
Publisher | Orbit |
Release Date | Oct 26, 2021 |
Source | Google Books |
『Across the Universe』
Book 1 in the New York Times bestselling trilogy, perfect for fans of Battlestar Gallactica and Passengers! WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO SURVIVE ABOARD A SPACESHIP FUELED BY LIES? Amy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the spaceship Godspeed. She has left her boyfriend, friends--and planet--behind to join her parents as a member of Project Ark Ship. Amy and her parents believe they will wake on a new planet, Centauri-Earth, three hundred years in the future. But fifty years before Godspeed's scheduled landing, cryo chamber 42 is mysteriously unplugged, and Amy is violently woken from her frozen slumber. Someone tried to murder her. Now, Amy is caught inside an enclosed world where nothing makes sense. Godspeed's 2,312 passengers have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader. And Elder, Eldest's rebellious teenage heir, is both fascinated with Amy and eager to discover whether he has what it takes to lead. Amy desperately wants to trust Elder. But should she put her faith in a boy who has never seen life outside the ship's cold metal walls? All Amy knows is that she and Elder must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.
Author | Beth Revis |
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Price | $7.99 |
Publisher | Penguin |
Release Date | Jan 11, 2011 |
Source | Google Books |
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Source | Google Books |
『We Have Always Been Here』
The behavioral psychologist onboard a survey ship headed to a planet ripe for colonization, Dr. Grace Park must determine the origin of a strange phenomenon that is causing the crew to suffer mental breaks without losing her own mind in the process.
Author | Lena Nguyen |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Penguin |
Release Date | Jul 12, 2022 |
Source | Google Books |
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Source | Google Books |
Alright folks, that wraps up our cosmic journey through the mysteries of the universe. I hope you've got your reading lists ready to be filled with these stellar recommendations. Remember, these aren't just sci-fi books. They beautifully blend the intrigue of the mystery genre with the boundless backdrop of outer space, creating an addictive mix of whodunits and space odysseys. Each of these novels allows you to catch a rocket ride out of this world while, at the same time, getting your detective gears spinning. Authors have indeed ingeniously used the isolation and vastness of the cosmos to craft suspenseful narratives, terrifying scenarios, and complex characters. So go on, indulge in these interstellar mysteries solving mind-boggling crimes while hopping from one star to another. Adventure, suspense, and the infinite cosmos await you in each of these page-turners. Get ready to buckle up and rocket off into the deepest corners of the literary universe captivated by these space mystery marvels! Happy reading!
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