-Science Fiction/Fantasy-
Deborah Jackson
THE BOOKS
The following is a list of all my published works. Each novel promises action and adventure along with some intriguing concepts and a mystery or two. The Silent Gene Series is a work in progress. The first two books are The Furies' Bog and For The Love of Mars, both adult science fiction. Ice Tomb and Sinkhole are also adult books, although they can be read by a younger audience. Mosaic is a young adult ghost-pirate story, recommended for older teens, and the Time Meddlers series is intended for middle grade and young adult readers.
The Furies' Bog
A bog may be Earth’s undoing, but it will be a gift to Mars.
Digging up bog bodies and analyzing corpses are the last things archaeology graduate student Felicity Cratchett wants to do. And when unusual mummies are discovered in the subpolar region of Polar Bear Provincial Park, it’s the last place she wants to go. But since her faculty advisor insists that she log more hours in fieldwork, she has little choice. In a remote bog with a small team of scientists, Felicity unearths the greatest secret of our time—a secret with ties to ancient Rome, roots in Botswana, and a link to the first people to exercise abstract thought. This revelation will challenge the conventional theory of human origins and human evolution.
Meanwhile, astronaut Lucas Wilson, a man tormented with a deep-seated anger, is terraforming Mars. He reluctantly descends to the Red Planet’s surface with his fellow astronauts, preparing to direct their exploration. Mars, in its birth pangs, will challenge every step he takes, with gas explosions and raging rivers, with damaged fuel processors and limited oxygen supplies. In the midst of these disasters, Lucas must keep his companions from discovering a feat of genetic engineering that will transform Mars like nothing has in over a billion years. The double helix of this masterwork twists all the way back to Earth and Felicity’s mummies. But if he fails, Lucas must decide whether to take up Mars’s sword, or to cast the weapon into a bog.
For The Love of Mars
Mars resembles Earth in many ways, except it’s dead and red.
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But terraformed Mars is greening up. And life exists on the surface, below ground, and in a mysterious Robot Graveyard. (More on that later😉)
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Lucas Wilson, an astronaut on Mars, and member of the Gilgamesh Movement, a terrorist organization, has been instructed to prepare the planet for imminent colonization and do away with his fellow astronauts after he sabotaged Earth’s climate. But even after killing hundreds of thousands on Earth, he is reluctant to take this final step.
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The question is: how can he oppose the organization’s leader, Samson Teshda, a man who has devoted his entire existence to annexing the planet for his own people? This man has stridden over the boundaries of Earth’s laws and civil society. He’s even pushed the boundaries of evolution, creating genetic enhancements that provide extraordinary advantages, all for the love of Mars.
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But for the love of Mars, how can he not? The man is psychotic, as much a threat to their survival as terrifying, terraformed Mars itself.
Ice Tomb
​The year is 2015. Deep within the Antarctic Ice Sheet a hotspot suddenly appears on satellite tracking. The US science team, sent from McMurdo Station to investigate, finds an icy graveyard. Minutes later, their transmission is cut off. The last sounds heard over the radio are their screams.
NASA lures volcanologist Erica Daniels to a conference in Houston by promising to consider her for their upcoming mission—establishing the first moon base. Instead, her archrival and ex-lover, David Marsh, gets the plum assignment, while she’s sent to Antarctica to lead a new team beneath the ice. A British archaeologist and a Russian astrophysicist join her on a journey through unforgiving snowscapes and mysterious ice tunnels. They present her with extraordinary suggestions for the origin of the hotspot. But why is the ice sheet littered with bodies? Is the activity under the ice the remnants of an ancient civilization or is there a more sinister explanation? To discover the truth Erica will have to join forces with the man she despises—a man who’s on the moon.
Sinkhole
​Kat Delaney is a world class caver and microbiologist. While investigating one of the deepest caves on Earth, she, along with her team of fellow cavers and scientists, becomes trapped. Far below ruins of a Mayan city, they struggle to escape this mysterious cave, reportedly cursed and haunted by the Lords of Death. Kat’s husband, Mark, a doctor and pioneer of nanotechnology with a deep-rooted fear of caves, must try to rescue her. He enlists the help of a Mayan guide, who turns out to have revolutionary ambitions.
Kat must keep her unravelling team together when they discover that something as threatening as the Lords of Death lurks within the cave. Mark must choose between trusting a guide who is patently untrustworthy, or leaving Kat to die. Will they escape? Will science be the solution? Or will it simply affirm their sentence as the Lords of Death win once again?
Mosaic
A car accident leaves Erin Rocheford, a seventeen-year-old hockey player, fractured, disfigured, near death. Not only has her future career in the NHL been erased, but when she’s finally released from the hospital, she can barely walk, her thoughts stumble into each other, and people grimace when they see the scars crisscrossing her face.
Erin's parents decide that a vacation in Florida, on an island of palm trees and pirate lore, is just what she needs to recover. But in her post-traumatic state, Erin is vulnerable to attack, to a ghostly invasion, and to a further fragmenting of her troubled grey matter. Soon after arriving on the island, a tale of an odd English pirate and his feisty captive—a story of defiance and decapitation—weaves itself into her mind, threatening her very soul. Erin will need to call upon every reserve in her hockey-toned body to keep from falling apart altogether, to fight back, and to protect her star player—the one boy who can see beyond the scars.
Time Meddlers - Book 1
One of Canada's top scientists has found the secret to time travel. But something has gone horribly wrong. . . .
On the first day of school, in a new city, Sarah Sachs experiences the shock of her life when she sees a car drive right through a strange boy. Did she really see it, or was it a figment of her imagination? The boy? Matt Barnes, son of the world-famous physicist, Dr. Nathan Barnes. The figment? Not so imaginary. A powerful new technology that could be behind Dr. Barnes’s disappearance.
Sarah becomes swept up in Matt Barnes’s life as she helps him search for his father. They uncover an unusual device in a secret laboratory—a device that throws them far from the modern city of Ottawa into the forest-matted land of the 1600’s. In this strange New World, they must contend with wild animals and somehow survive a war between the Algonquin and Iroquois nations. But eventually they’ll have to make a decision that might change the world as we know it. Should they meddle with time?
Time Meddlers Undercover - Book 2
One of Canada’s top scientists has found the secret to time travel. But something has gone horribly wrong . . . again.
When thirteen-year-old Matt Barnes finds out his time-travelling father is trapped in occupied Holland during World War II, there’s only one thing he can do. Even though he’s been forbidden to use the multiverse time machine, he drags his best friend, Sarah, along with him on another leap back in time. When they land in the war-torn country, they’re immediately caught up in a world of high intrigue and dangerous covert operations. They encounter courageous pilots, determined spies, gallant members of the Dutch resistance, and ordinary heroes. Matt and Sarah receive the surprise of their lives when they meet the legendary Anne Frank.
But . . . with what they know of the future, the time travellers will be tempted to meddle again. Can they prevent a blunder by the SOE—Churchill’s spy organization—that will cost so many lives? And is it worth it, when interfering will force Matt to choose between the two most important things in his life?
Time Meddlers on the Nile - Book 3
One of Canada’s top scientists has found the secret to time travel. But everything has gone wrong.
Thirteen-year-old Matt Barnes and Sarah Sachs, while attempting to rescue Matt's father from multiple universes, face an even more challenging obstacle: the erasure of their own timeline. What can they do before they, themselves, are erased?
Somewhere along the Nile the two teens must prevent the ultimate meddling during the time of Nubian pharaohs and princes, palaces and temples to rival the ancient Egyptians and fearsome desert raiders. They must puzzle out the moment and event where Matt's father or his arch nemesis, Nadine, interfered with history. If they don't, it could mean the end of time as we know it, or a never-ending loop of time.