The Scourge Between Stars - by Ness Brown (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Ness Brown's The Scourge Between Stars is a tense, claustrophobic sci-fi/horror blend set aboard a doomed generation ship harboring something terrible within its walls.

"A perfect scare to swallow up in one sitting." --Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights
A LibraryReads Pick! - Featured on the 2024 RUSA Reading List: Science Fiction

As acting captain of the starship Calypso, Jacklyn Albright is responsible for keeping the last of humanity alive as they limp back to Earth from their forebears' failed colony on a distant planet.

Faced with constant threats of starvation and destruction in the treacherous minefield of interstellar space, Jacklyn's crew has reached their breaking point. As unrest begins to spread throughout the ship's Wards, a new threat emerges, picking off crew members in grim, bloody fashion.

Jacklyn and her team must hunt down the ship's unknown intruder if they have any hope of making it back to their solar system alive.

"Highly recommended." --Library Journal, STARRED review

Review Quotes

A LibraryReads Pick! - Featured on the 2024 RUSA Reading List: Science Fiction

"A perfect scare to swallow up in one sitting. Filled with blood galore while holding tender humanity at its center, this is my favorite type of horror." --Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights

"Following in Jack's desperate footsteps will have SF, horror, and thriller readers on the edge of their seats waiting to see what explodes out of where next....Highly recommended for readers who like their science-fictional thrills to be both real and out of this world at the same time." --Library Journal, STARRED review

"A perfect blend of science fiction and horror...Short, fast, engaging, wildly entertaining, and unexpectedly gory, it almost demands to be devoured in one sitting." --Locus

"Trust me, if you think you know where this story is going, you're wrong. Combines the sudden, heart-rending fear of immediate danger with the freezing spun-out dread of being lost in infinite space. Just wonderful." --David Wellington, author of The Last Astronaut

"I loved everything about The Scourge Between Stars. From the eerie thumps within the Calypso's walls--the call is coming from inside the spaceship!--to the mysterious collisions that endanger the aging generation ship, I devoured these pages. Magnificent." --S. A. Barnes, author of Dead Silence

"This novella has everything I want in a sci-fi horror: lots of action, excellent character arcs, and a solid resolution." --Buzzfeed

"Are you afraid of generation ships? And outer space? And dying airless, stranded in nothing? Then keep your eyes out for The Scourge Between Stars, which crosses The Expanse with Pandorum by way of Event Horizon and emerges darkly victorious." --Gemma Files

"A tense, pulse-pounding adventure.... Ness Brown deftly steers this to a surprising - and all-too-human - conclusion, wresting a glimmer of hope out of the Calypso crew's despair" --Ada Hoffmann, Philip K. Dick Award finalist, author of the Outside series

"Tense, gory, and genuinely creepy.... Brown handles the astronomy and exobiology equally as competently as the interpersonal dynamics and trauma. The result is a sci-fi horror mash-up that holds its own with the classics of the genre." --Publishers Weekly

"Compulsively readable and packed with both creepiness and outright scares, The Scourge Between Stars is a stellar, perfectly-formed piece of space horror: a smart blend of Alien-esque monsters with the generation-ship existential despair of Aniara." --Ally Wilkes, author of All the White Spaces

"This is everything I love in dark sf horror: a massive generation ship traversing the black ocean of space; a smart, embattled protagonist struggling to keep both crew and ship alive; and a monstrous, alien presence growing in the shadowy spaces between, ready to burst forth and consume them all...The Scourge Between Stars is an intense and exhilarating read." --Livia Llewellyn, author of Furnace

About the Author

NESS BROWN is a speculative fiction author by day and astrophysicist by night. They are a proud New Mexican living in New York City (and missing green chile) with their husband and two cats, Faust and Mephi. They are currently studying graduate astrophysics after several years of teaching astronomy and encouraging students to wonder about worlds beyond our own. The Scourge Between Stars is their debut.