17 Best Orson Scott Card Books

Young Ender Wiggin is recruited to an orbital military school to prepare for humanity's war against alien invaders. Competitive training and isolation test his tactical gifts while adults try to shape him into their ideal commander.

Bean survives Rotterdam's streets through intelligence rather than strength, attracting the attention of Battle School recruiters. Sent into orbit to train against an alien threat, he meets Ender Wiggin and becomes part of his military team.

With Lusitania threatened and Jane facing the loss of the network that sustains her, Ender's unusual younger counterparts join a desperate effort. They seek new worlds, political allies and a way to preserve a disembodied intelligence.

Long after his original war, Ender Wiggin travels as a Speaker for the Dead. The discovery of another alien species, followed by human deaths, draws him toward a mystery rooted in the difficulty of understanding other lives.

Three intelligent species share Lusitania, but a virus essential to one species is lethal to humans. When the Starways Congress orders the planet destroyed, Ender and his allies confront a crisis involving survival, understanding and moral responsibility.

A family mining ship in the Kuiper Belt detects a fast-moving alien vessel approaching the solar system. Its crew must recognize the danger and try to warn Earth amid rivalries with powerful corporate mining interests.

Years after discovering a sleeping princess in a Carpathian forest, American graduate student Ivan returns and awakens her. His kiss carries him into a medieval world, where unfamiliar customs and a threatening dark power complicate their relationship.

Rigg can see the paths people left in the past, a gift his father trained him to conceal. After his father's death, revelations about his identity draw him toward rival factions and the possibility of changing history.

Bean's relentless physical growth threatens his life as he and Petra worry about their children. Meanwhile, Peter Wiggin seeks a united world government, facing opposition from former Battle School classmates who have become powerful national leaders.

After the Formic War, Earth's nations compete for the talents of Battle School graduates. Bean escapes an assassination attempt while his former comrades are abducted, forcing him to confront Achilles and consider an alliance with Peter Wiggin.

Peter Wiggin brings the dangerous Achilles into his political circle, alarming Bean and Petra. As the pair hide from their enemy and contemplate having children, Bean's engineered genes make their hopes for a family especially uncertain.

An alien ship advances through the solar system, destroying human vessels and exposing the weakness of Earth's scattered defenses. Miners and other survivors attempt to resist while a largely unprepared humanity faces the beginning of the Formic invasion.

With Formic forces landing in China, humanity struggles to organize a response to invasion. Communications failures and divided defenses leave Earth vulnerable as an encounter first detected by distant miners becomes a war fought on the planet itself.

Scientists in a damaged future use technology to observe the past, seeking a way to prevent humanity's decline. Christopher Columbus's voyages become the focus of a plan that raises troubling questions about changing history and erasing lives.

Born on an American frontier where ordinary people possess supernatural knacks, Alvin is a seventh son with unusual potential. While his family protects him, a destructive power seeks to prevent him from becoming a Maker.

Bean travels near light speed with three children who share his extraordinary intelligence and fatal growth disorder. As their own ship deteriorates, a derelict Formic vessel offers resources and mysteries that may change their prospects for survival.

Danny North grows up among a hidden family of mages, apparently lacking the talents his relatives possess. The emergence of a forbidden kind of magic makes him dangerous to his own family and forces him beyond their isolated community.