Series: Earth Quarantined #2
Publication date: February 19th, 2021
Synopsis:
A new threat is coming.
Earth Arrested follows the story of Kethryn Miller and Neah, twins who didn't know of each other's existence. One lived a celebrity lifestyle, the other lived in a hidden underground city. The existence of twins is forbidden under Truce Law, and Neah's escape from the hidden city brought humanity's crimes to the attention of the aliens who were keeping Earth under tight control.
In Earth Arrested, the race is on to achieve space travel before the fleet of ships sitting on the edge of our solar system arrives. This fleet contains the Criterion leader, and she is coming to do what the first alien colonists failed to do: destroy all humanity.
Humanity can't surrender to this new alien occupation. But our fragile planet also can't take another war. Then there is an important factor that both humans and aliens are forgetting: there is a third side arming themselves for this coming war, and they have already lost everything.
If you like dystopian thrillers that turn conventional ideas about space exploration on their head, stories with twists and turns, and thought-provoking reads, then you'll enjoy D.L. Richardson's Earth Quarantined series.
Series: Earth Quarantined #1
Publication date: November 15th, 2018
Synopsis:
World peace came with rules. We've just broken them.
Kethryn Miller is an award-winning actress, destined to rule State Seven o a unified Earth, but nothing will prepare her for the role she'll take on when a strange woman who shouldn't be alive turns up in the city, threatening to expose the lies that have kept peace on Earth for 200 years.
******
In the year 2055, millions of humans were wiped out by a deadly virus. Our desire and need to get off the planet and into space became our highest priority. However, before any ships could be launched, First Contact was made by an alien race called the Criterion. To prevent this deadly virus from getting into space, they placed Earth under quarantine. Then they herded us into cities so they could control our dying population and the planet's resources. They saved us.
But they also rule over us. And we've let them because, for the past three hundred years, they have kept offering us the technology to get into space. Yet we're still here on this dying planet.
The Criterion are lying to us.
What they don't know is that we're lying to them.
"If you like dystopian thrillers that turn conventional ideas about space exploration on their head, stories with twists and turns, and thought-provoking reads, then you'll enjoy D.L. Richardson's first book in the Earth Quarantined series." -- BestThrillers.com
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Excerpt
The thud of her boots and the hum of overhead pipes clogged her head. Too loud in her ears, rude for the sound to be there but it had no other place to go.
Neah gulped in a lungful of air and for a split second obliterated time and space. Visualize the power to do whatever you want. Intense.
When she held her breath she could master the quiet. But her twenty-four-year-old lungs needed air the way the underground bunker needed to thump and hum and give off the stench of burning oil. At last she exhaled, though it came out as a heavy sigh. Somewhere in the distance a machine groaned. Life inside this station was like that heavy sigh. Intense.
Pressing a hand against the concrete wall, she tried to detect motion. Legend said the old power station housed their souls, and Neah's daughter, Becka -- four years old at the time -- had held her ear against the wall beside her bed, claiming to hear the beating of the station. If the station and its inhabitants existed as one, then if Neah detected the heart of the station, she could detect the same of Becka.
She pressed a fist against her chest.
"Always remember," she whispered.
A bang came from her left. The metal door to the guardhouse command room swung open and a sentinel stepped out, yawning and stretching. Neah whipped her hand away from the wall and brushed past the guard muttering her usual greeting.
Get out of my way, dipshit."
It was six a.m., August 17 of the year 197 ATW (After The War), and Neah was about to clock on to start a normal day in an abnormal world. She'd rather have been anywhere else on Earth. The problem was finding anywhere livable.
Gazing up at the duty roster brought a snarl to her lips. The board contained the running tab on which sentinel would die first from a routine check of the station for a contamination breach. The tab beat the boredom out of having nothing to do other than pursue young kids who spat from the top of the gangways and old folks who forget to wear pants. Someone had crossed out the hundred-to-one odds against Neah's name and written TODAY.
"Freaking scumbag," she said.
In two strides she stood at the board and scrubbed out the word TODAY, and upped the odds to two hundred. While it was considered bad form to complain about the pranks the other guards pulled, she wasn't in the mood for jokes today. Not today, not this week, not this month.
Evin, a tall guy with meaty arms who was her boss and also her roommate, walked into the room. He stood in the middle like a towering black stone.
Evin flicked his chin at the board. "Wasn't like that when I signed on."
"Probably that shithead, Gus." Neah clenched her hands into fists. "Always messing about with the board. I ought to skin him alive."
Augustine -- Gus -- was the seventeen-year-old son of the High Council Leader, Lucias. The smartest person in the station, also the weirdest, and definitely the biggest thorn in Neah's side. She'd deal with Gus later.
"I'm finishing up," said Evin. "Hitting the shower then crashing. You better have told Wes that if he plays his video games too loud, I'll break his neck."
If anyone else had threatened Neah's kid brother she'd have lunged at them with her stun stick and burned them a new breathing hole. But Evin treated Wes like his own, sometimes too much like his own. Maybe if Neah didn't neglect the kid so much the big guy wouldn't have to look after him. But they did things like that down here.
Evin placed his radio on the bench. Unhooked his belt. Rolled his neck. Obviously not in a hurry to leave.
"Do you need to brief me on anything?" Neah asked him.
"Actually, yeah. Chelsea called. She hasn't seen Jurden for twelve hours."
She is the author of the 'Welcome to the Apocalypse' series and 'The Shivers Novellas'. She also conducts writing workshop and appears at Australian pop culture conventions as few times a year.
