Alasdair C. Shaw's Blog, page 4
June 28, 2021
Not much to report heree this month. Chaos with work, fam...
Not much to report heree this month. Chaos with work, family, and now in self-isolation awaiting someone's test result.
And here are the books you want...
Thirty-five years of peace. One vicious attack destroys it all.
Reservist Lieutenant Justin Spencer loves every minute of flying fighters through space during his annual two-week tour with the Coalition Defense Force. The job back home isn’t nearly as thrilling as blowing up asteroids with the squadron under his command, but it keeps him close to his wife and daughter. After all, joining the CDF was only for the free education. Justin never expected a battle, much less a war.
With one shot across his cockpit, peacetime fades into memory.
An unexpected enemy emerges with overwhelming force designed to obliterate the Terran Coalition. The League of Sol has a different name, but it’s the same communist regime that chased away much of Earth’s population hundreds of years ago.
Illusions of returning home are shattered in a single instant. Simulated battles become all too real, and it’s full-on engagement or permanent elimination. Death and destruction erupt across the Terran Coalition and leave Justin in a protracted war with only one truth remaining.
The battlefield will leave no one unscathed.
The Emperor of the galaxy has fallen, slain at the hands of his own son.
Forced into exile, Katrijn was tasked with a mission sent to her by her father from beyond the grave: free the people of the Andlios Republic. Her biggest hurdle? First it's the assassins sent after her by the emperor. After years alone on the fringes of the galaxy, who will be there to help her dethrone the mad emperor and reclaim the throne. Then, it's dealing with her brother...
The Mad Emperor himself.
Katrijn must carve her own path forward, forging new alliances and swallowing her pride to take whatever help she can find along the way, no matter how... unconventional that help seems, even from sworn enemies.
If dethroning her deranged brother isn't hard enough, she's not the only one gunning for the throne, making it a deadly race to save the people of Andlios.
SHOOT FIRST. GET PAID. SAVE THE GALAXY ... 2 OUT OF 3 AIN'T BAD.
When deep space bounty hunters Gunn and Salvo chase down a teenager linked to the catastrophic loss of a space station, everything about the job feels off.
They're used to greedy people lying to them. But honest people who should know better? That's new.
So they do the one thing you don't do in their line of work: Ask questions.
Before they know it, they're the ones with a galaxy-wide bounty on their heads... and the fate of humanity in their hands.
Terry Clark grew up surrounded by his parent’s life’s work, the rescue and rehabilitation of cetaceans. Born just after first contact with the Galactic Union, he’s never known a time when aliens weren’t visiting Earth. At 10 years old, he had a normal life, until a visit from one of the aliens resulted in a ground-breaking discovery. The cetaceans have a developed and complex language…and it can be deciphered by the aliens’ translators.
When Terry’s father begins using alien implant technology to test the boundaries of the cetaceans’ language and society, though, he goes too far, and the fledgling world government becomes involved. Without warning, the scientists are labeled as criminals, and the cetaceans are scheduled for termination. In order to save the cetaceans, the researchers have to flee off-world with them.
In the Lupasha star system, Terry tries to begin a new life. While the world is ideal for the cetaceans, it’s difficult for their Human wardens. Even worse, the planet’s previous owners now want it back. As they don’t mind killing all the Humans in the process, Terry is trapped in a life or death struggle, which leads to a discovery that could change the course of humanity’s role in the galaxy.
The surprise attack within the Auriga Star System was worse than brutal, it was heinous—leaving the US-Navy's 3rd Fleet decimated. Thousands of crew are reported dead, including the ship’s Captain. Reluctantly, the young XO, Galvin Quintos, will be taking command of the fleet's crippled dreadnaught, the USS Hamilton, while doing his best to bring fleet survivors back to Earth. Going from bad to worse, there’s a murderer running loose onboard the ship. Add to that fuel levels are critically low, and the Grish are back and in fast pursuit—ready to finish what they’d started. Only by sheer luck, along with a good measure of cagey smarts, will Quintos be able to rise the challenge.
A terrible massacre was discovered... Did the same fate befall Sumer?
Captain Brian Royce brings Hadad to his home planet, which shows obvious signs of battle. Did any of his family survive?
Where are all the children... did the Zodarks take them?
Admiral Miles Hunt finds himself appointed to a new position beyond his current skillset. He now has to become more than just a ship captain and fleet commander...
He must become the Viceroy of the Milky Way Galaxy.
On Alpha Centauri, an archaeology team makes a discovery that sends shockwaves through the Republic—a discovery so profound it could cause a division and a potential split within the alliance.
The newly deployed 2nd Republic Army Group on the planet Intus finds itself the vanguard of the alliance's efforts to liberate the remaining Primord planets. As the Zodark forces are continually pushed back, the alliance edges closer to bringing the war to the enemies' core worlds.
Can Miles Hunt become the leader humanity needs him to become?
Will the 2nd Republic Army Group survive a gruesome battle on a frozen planet?
The story of the Klin has come full circle. After failing to conquer the Expansion -- again -- the aliens set their sights once again on Earth and the Human race. This time, they're bringing their deadly subcutaneous microchips to get the race to do their bidding. And their bidding involves another all-out war with the Juireans. But unlike before, this time the Humans won't have a choice. It's either fight ... or die.
Adam Cain and his team have followed the renegade Klin to the Solar System and learn of their plans. Now, it's a sad homecoming as Adam returns to Earth after a decade of being away, and even longer since he called the planet home. Now they must find the Klin surrogates, prevent the takeover of the Orion-Cygnus Union, and stop the Klin from forcing another bloody war on the unsuspecting people of Earth.
And this time, Adam is fighting Humans!
And here are the books you want...
Thirty-five years of peace. One vicious attack destroys it all.
Reservist Lieutenant Justin Spencer loves every minute of flying fighters through space during his annual two-week tour with the Coalition Defense Force. The job back home isn’t nearly as thrilling as blowing up asteroids with the squadron under his command, but it keeps him close to his wife and daughter. After all, joining the CDF was only for the free education. Justin never expected a battle, much less a war.
With one shot across his cockpit, peacetime fades into memory.
An unexpected enemy emerges with overwhelming force designed to obliterate the Terran Coalition. The League of Sol has a different name, but it’s the same communist regime that chased away much of Earth’s population hundreds of years ago.
Illusions of returning home are shattered in a single instant. Simulated battles become all too real, and it’s full-on engagement or permanent elimination. Death and destruction erupt across the Terran Coalition and leave Justin in a protracted war with only one truth remaining.
The battlefield will leave no one unscathed.
The Emperor of the galaxy has fallen, slain at the hands of his own son.
Forced into exile, Katrijn was tasked with a mission sent to her by her father from beyond the grave: free the people of the Andlios Republic. Her biggest hurdle? First it's the assassins sent after her by the emperor. After years alone on the fringes of the galaxy, who will be there to help her dethrone the mad emperor and reclaim the throne. Then, it's dealing with her brother...
The Mad Emperor himself.
Katrijn must carve her own path forward, forging new alliances and swallowing her pride to take whatever help she can find along the way, no matter how... unconventional that help seems, even from sworn enemies.
If dethroning her deranged brother isn't hard enough, she's not the only one gunning for the throne, making it a deadly race to save the people of Andlios.
SHOOT FIRST. GET PAID. SAVE THE GALAXY ... 2 OUT OF 3 AIN'T BAD.
When deep space bounty hunters Gunn and Salvo chase down a teenager linked to the catastrophic loss of a space station, everything about the job feels off.
They're used to greedy people lying to them. But honest people who should know better? That's new.
So they do the one thing you don't do in their line of work: Ask questions.
Before they know it, they're the ones with a galaxy-wide bounty on their heads... and the fate of humanity in their hands.
Terry Clark grew up surrounded by his parent’s life’s work, the rescue and rehabilitation of cetaceans. Born just after first contact with the Galactic Union, he’s never known a time when aliens weren’t visiting Earth. At 10 years old, he had a normal life, until a visit from one of the aliens resulted in a ground-breaking discovery. The cetaceans have a developed and complex language…and it can be deciphered by the aliens’ translators.
When Terry’s father begins using alien implant technology to test the boundaries of the cetaceans’ language and society, though, he goes too far, and the fledgling world government becomes involved. Without warning, the scientists are labeled as criminals, and the cetaceans are scheduled for termination. In order to save the cetaceans, the researchers have to flee off-world with them.
In the Lupasha star system, Terry tries to begin a new life. While the world is ideal for the cetaceans, it’s difficult for their Human wardens. Even worse, the planet’s previous owners now want it back. As they don’t mind killing all the Humans in the process, Terry is trapped in a life or death struggle, which leads to a discovery that could change the course of humanity’s role in the galaxy.
The surprise attack within the Auriga Star System was worse than brutal, it was heinous—leaving the US-Navy's 3rd Fleet decimated. Thousands of crew are reported dead, including the ship’s Captain. Reluctantly, the young XO, Galvin Quintos, will be taking command of the fleet's crippled dreadnaught, the USS Hamilton, while doing his best to bring fleet survivors back to Earth. Going from bad to worse, there’s a murderer running loose onboard the ship. Add to that fuel levels are critically low, and the Grish are back and in fast pursuit—ready to finish what they’d started. Only by sheer luck, along with a good measure of cagey smarts, will Quintos be able to rise the challenge.
A terrible massacre was discovered... Did the same fate befall Sumer?
Captain Brian Royce brings Hadad to his home planet, which shows obvious signs of battle. Did any of his family survive?
Where are all the children... did the Zodarks take them?
Admiral Miles Hunt finds himself appointed to a new position beyond his current skillset. He now has to become more than just a ship captain and fleet commander...
He must become the Viceroy of the Milky Way Galaxy.
On Alpha Centauri, an archaeology team makes a discovery that sends shockwaves through the Republic—a discovery so profound it could cause a division and a potential split within the alliance.
The newly deployed 2nd Republic Army Group on the planet Intus finds itself the vanguard of the alliance's efforts to liberate the remaining Primord planets. As the Zodark forces are continually pushed back, the alliance edges closer to bringing the war to the enemies' core worlds.
Can Miles Hunt become the leader humanity needs him to become?
Will the 2nd Republic Army Group survive a gruesome battle on a frozen planet?
The story of the Klin has come full circle. After failing to conquer the Expansion -- again -- the aliens set their sights once again on Earth and the Human race. This time, they're bringing their deadly subcutaneous microchips to get the race to do their bidding. And their bidding involves another all-out war with the Juireans. But unlike before, this time the Humans won't have a choice. It's either fight ... or die.
Adam Cain and his team have followed the renegade Klin to the Solar System and learn of their plans. Now, it's a sad homecoming as Adam returns to Earth after a decade of being away, and even longer since he called the planet home. Now they must find the Klin surrogates, prevent the takeover of the Orion-Cygnus Union, and stop the Klin from forcing another bloody war on the unsuspecting people of Earth.
And this time, Adam is fighting Humans!
May 27, 2021
May Roundup of Scifi Books
We're heading into summer again. Nests full of chicks. And the larger moths are starting to come out!
And here are the books you want...
Five hundred years ago, the human race discovered it was not alone in the universe when Earth was invaded and forcibly integrated by the Alphan Empire. Over the years, humans have grown used to their position within the empire, serving as soldiers and spacers for alien masters as well as building a place in the universe for themselves. But now, in the aftermath of a violent interstellar war that shattered the power of the Alphans, humanity has rediscovered its pride. Humanity wants to be free.
Facing a war they will lose even if they win, the Alphans give humanity its independence once again. Humanity stands alone in a hostile universe, facing alien threats that regard humans as nothing more than servants - or weaklings, easy meat for armed conquest. And if the human race cannot learn to stand on its own two feet, without its masters, it will rapidly discover that it has traded one set of masters for another ...
... And if they lose the coming war, all hope of independence will die with it.
Captain Stanley heads the first in a new breed of destroyers ...
Marine Captain Peters is the youngest son of Earth's greatest General ...
50 years of colonization and no contact ...
... until now.
In the Vonia system, humanity has colonised the largest planet, Euphra. And, Captain Stanley is out to prove the new destroyer is well worth its hefty price tag. But an invisible enemy strikes at the heart of those meant to protect humanity's greatest success story since the destruction of Earth.
What does the enemy want and why? With time running out, can Stanley and Peters find a way to protect the colony from a ruthless enemy that seeks to destroy their very existence?
Space is a deadly business, a truth Knox has experienced first hand. That's why he's so protective of his ship and family. So when pirates plunder an impoverished town--a town that's earned Knox's guarded friendship--he's going to do something about it.
Knox knows the pillagers will be back for more, so his town needs protection from any and all pirates, for years to come. Only one way to do that. His friends need shields to keep their town and children safe, and Knox will get those shields. Even if he has to steal them.
Knox devises a carefully crafted plan and hires the perfect crew. He’ll “borrow” from Caravan Suppliers—the Goliath of space shipping—a company that can afford to lose an expensive shield generator. No one will know he was there. Unfortunately, no plan survives contact with the enemy.
Caravan Suppliers has a dirty slave habit, and they’ll kill to keep it secret. When Knox stumbles onto it, he endangers his crew and his family. Will this mission cost Knox more than he’s willing to pay?
On the heels of his divorce, down-and-out history professor Lee Summerston doesn’t have a lot going for him—a nowhere job at a third-rate college with kids who don’t care about anything except how to slide through class. All of that changes, though, when Lee leads a team of old friends to virtual glory as the first-ever group to beat Mako Assault, a revolutionary new game that has emerged from nowhere to take the Internet by storm.
As a reward for their achievement, the group is flown to meet the game’s mysterious designer and assist in developing the follow-on game Mako 2.0. But what they find when they get there is more than they’d expected…much more. Mako’s intent was never to entertain its players. It was to train them.
Muldoon has a big problem: he's dead. Twenty years ago, a monk with a kodachi cut off his head. Now Irena, his widow, is searching for him. So is Gavin Lennox, power-hungry owner of The Pearl, the hottest night spot in all of NewCity. Cyrus Horton, an eccentric inventor, has also joined in the search. They're all looking for the BackTracker, a time travel device that has caused divergent realities to spiral out of control. In one of them, Muldoon is still alive.
He was a private investigator, the best at what he did. He solved his cases 100% of the time. Hindsight is, after all, 20/20. And the BackTracker allowed him to change the past. But in the process, his travels through time have unraveled the universe, stretching, tearing the fabric of space-time and sending his own mind into oblivion. He can no longer distinguish between true and false memories; he no longer knows who he was.
Thirty-five years of peace. One vicious attack destroys it all.
Reservist Lieutenant Justin Spencer loves every minute of flying fighters through space during his annual two-week tour with the Coalition Defense Force. The job back home isn’t nearly as thrilling as blowing up asteroids with the squadron under his command, but it keeps him close to his wife and daughter. After all, joining the CDF was only for the free education. Justin never expected a battle, much less a war.
With one shot across his cockpit, peacetime fades into memory.
An unexpected enemy emerges with overwhelming force designed to obliterate the Terran Coalition. The League of Sol has a different name, but it’s the same communist regime that chased away much of Earth’s population hundreds of years ago.
Illusions of returning home are shattered in a single instant. Simulated battles become all too real, and it’s full-on engagement or permanent elimination. Death and destruction erupt across the Terran Coalition and leave Justin in a protracted war with only one truth remaining.
The battlefield will leave no one unscathed.
Arlo Lewis was resigned to his station in life as a supply hauler for one of the Primary Corporations ruling Earth, until an acquisition forces him to re-evaluate his situation.
When he’s hand selected to lead SeaTech’s Race team, he struggles to return to the competitive field he abandoned as a teenager.
With an eager team, and the promise of a better future, Arlo takes on the challenge, only to find more at stake than the rights to Proxima.
Under the threat of a revolution brewing at the finish line, things don’t go as expected.
The galaxy will never be the same. But that may be exactly what Arlo needs.
And here are the books you want...
Five hundred years ago, the human race discovered it was not alone in the universe when Earth was invaded and forcibly integrated by the Alphan Empire. Over the years, humans have grown used to their position within the empire, serving as soldiers and spacers for alien masters as well as building a place in the universe for themselves. But now, in the aftermath of a violent interstellar war that shattered the power of the Alphans, humanity has rediscovered its pride. Humanity wants to be free.
Facing a war they will lose even if they win, the Alphans give humanity its independence once again. Humanity stands alone in a hostile universe, facing alien threats that regard humans as nothing more than servants - or weaklings, easy meat for armed conquest. And if the human race cannot learn to stand on its own two feet, without its masters, it will rapidly discover that it has traded one set of masters for another ...
... And if they lose the coming war, all hope of independence will die with it.
Captain Stanley heads the first in a new breed of destroyers ...
Marine Captain Peters is the youngest son of Earth's greatest General ...
50 years of colonization and no contact ...
... until now.
In the Vonia system, humanity has colonised the largest planet, Euphra. And, Captain Stanley is out to prove the new destroyer is well worth its hefty price tag. But an invisible enemy strikes at the heart of those meant to protect humanity's greatest success story since the destruction of Earth.
What does the enemy want and why? With time running out, can Stanley and Peters find a way to protect the colony from a ruthless enemy that seeks to destroy their very existence?
Space is a deadly business, a truth Knox has experienced first hand. That's why he's so protective of his ship and family. So when pirates plunder an impoverished town--a town that's earned Knox's guarded friendship--he's going to do something about it.
Knox knows the pillagers will be back for more, so his town needs protection from any and all pirates, for years to come. Only one way to do that. His friends need shields to keep their town and children safe, and Knox will get those shields. Even if he has to steal them.
Knox devises a carefully crafted plan and hires the perfect crew. He’ll “borrow” from Caravan Suppliers—the Goliath of space shipping—a company that can afford to lose an expensive shield generator. No one will know he was there. Unfortunately, no plan survives contact with the enemy.
Caravan Suppliers has a dirty slave habit, and they’ll kill to keep it secret. When Knox stumbles onto it, he endangers his crew and his family. Will this mission cost Knox more than he’s willing to pay?
On the heels of his divorce, down-and-out history professor Lee Summerston doesn’t have a lot going for him—a nowhere job at a third-rate college with kids who don’t care about anything except how to slide through class. All of that changes, though, when Lee leads a team of old friends to virtual glory as the first-ever group to beat Mako Assault, a revolutionary new game that has emerged from nowhere to take the Internet by storm.
As a reward for their achievement, the group is flown to meet the game’s mysterious designer and assist in developing the follow-on game Mako 2.0. But what they find when they get there is more than they’d expected…much more. Mako’s intent was never to entertain its players. It was to train them.
Muldoon has a big problem: he's dead. Twenty years ago, a monk with a kodachi cut off his head. Now Irena, his widow, is searching for him. So is Gavin Lennox, power-hungry owner of The Pearl, the hottest night spot in all of NewCity. Cyrus Horton, an eccentric inventor, has also joined in the search. They're all looking for the BackTracker, a time travel device that has caused divergent realities to spiral out of control. In one of them, Muldoon is still alive.
He was a private investigator, the best at what he did. He solved his cases 100% of the time. Hindsight is, after all, 20/20. And the BackTracker allowed him to change the past. But in the process, his travels through time have unraveled the universe, stretching, tearing the fabric of space-time and sending his own mind into oblivion. He can no longer distinguish between true and false memories; he no longer knows who he was.
Thirty-five years of peace. One vicious attack destroys it all.
Reservist Lieutenant Justin Spencer loves every minute of flying fighters through space during his annual two-week tour with the Coalition Defense Force. The job back home isn’t nearly as thrilling as blowing up asteroids with the squadron under his command, but it keeps him close to his wife and daughter. After all, joining the CDF was only for the free education. Justin never expected a battle, much less a war.
With one shot across his cockpit, peacetime fades into memory.
An unexpected enemy emerges with overwhelming force designed to obliterate the Terran Coalition. The League of Sol has a different name, but it’s the same communist regime that chased away much of Earth’s population hundreds of years ago.
Illusions of returning home are shattered in a single instant. Simulated battles become all too real, and it’s full-on engagement or permanent elimination. Death and destruction erupt across the Terran Coalition and leave Justin in a protracted war with only one truth remaining.
The battlefield will leave no one unscathed.
Arlo Lewis was resigned to his station in life as a supply hauler for one of the Primary Corporations ruling Earth, until an acquisition forces him to re-evaluate his situation.
When he’s hand selected to lead SeaTech’s Race team, he struggles to return to the competitive field he abandoned as a teenager.
With an eager team, and the promise of a better future, Arlo takes on the challenge, only to find more at stake than the rights to Proxima.
Under the threat of a revolution brewing at the finish line, things don’t go as expected.
The galaxy will never be the same. But that may be exactly what Arlo needs.
April 27, 2021
April Roundup of Scifi Books
I guess my biggest news this month is that I was shortlisted for the British Orienteering Volunteer of the Year award. I didn't get it, but being nominated was wonderful in is own right.
Something that you are probably much more interested in is that I'm gathering submissions for the next in the Scifi Anthologies series. I hope to release The Caretaker in the summer.
And here are the books you want...
When Earth gets embroiled in the middle of an intergalactic war, humanity's only hope for survival rests with a rag-tag team of unlikely heroes which includes an ace fighter pilot, a stuntwoman, a super-assassin, and an alien prankster.
Jim, a wise-cracking, OCD-suffering fighter pilot, is about to propose to his girlfriend when his friend Kurt surprises them by showing up at his house, wounded and covered in blood. This is just the beginning of Jim's woes because soon after his life is thrown into a galactic conflict that threatens the very existence of the human race.
Can our heroes save humanity from the wrath of a galaxy-conquering alien fleet?
Technical Chief "Pappy" Gunther is a grizzled, burning out commando in the United Earth Armed Forces. He ponders a return to civilian life, yet feels a strong sense of belonging to his elite team. When colonists on a far-flung world request aid, a task force from several allied systems is assembled. Pappy and his crack unit are sent to investigate, and to engage a mysterious alien force from beyond.
Talks-To-His-Spear is the warrior-caste champion of a matriarchal space empire called the Regime. Leading an army of fanatical, genetically-enhanced super soldiers, he dreams of dying in battle for the glory of his Queen. However, he’s beginning to question the motives of this new campaign, and fears that he may have to compromise his own deep sense of honor in order to fulfill his tasks.
Nobody expected the two alien cultures to have so much in common, and for friendships and alliances to form alongside rivalries. However, when Pappy discovers a rebellion spanning worlds, everything changes. The growing insurrection threatens to tear the Regim, and the galaxy, apart.
Stephanie Morgana has graduated to Protector of ALL Federation’s people.
But can she get them to all respect her? She has to go to Dreth and find out.
To pass a test, there is one more type of MU that she has to understand, without killing herself in the process.
The enemy sympathizers are working to attack Morgana on multiple fronts, not realizing that the team around Stephanie are powerful in their own ways.
The problem is Earth needs more magic users. Are there those with the right genes on Earth? If there are, do they have what it takes to step into their roles?
Will Stephanie mature into the leader the Federation, with all of their power, need her to be?
She is a MORGANA. There are no other alternatives- no matter the personal cost.
Sergeant Andrea “Andy” Dolan and her squad of Space Marines are trained to protect the ESS Alliance against all threats. When hostile aliens invade, they are the last line of defense. As conflicts intensify and unexplained abilities manifest in Andy, it becomes clear something big is on the horizon. Their only hope is the Space Marine who doesn’t even know who, exactly, she is.
After a devastating galactic war, disgraced veteran Ralston Muck ekes out a living as a bouncer at Last Stop Station’s premier nightclub, A Curtain of Stars. Night after night he listens to the club’s star performer, Siren, sing her memories and ease some of his aching loss. But when Siren goes missing, Muck finds himself drawn into a world of dirty cops, drug lords, and conspiracies that trace back to the war itself.
The only person he can trust isn’t even human. Angel, Siren’s personal AI, was ripped from the singer’s mind the night Siren disappeared. With no idea what has happened to her human host, and pursued by a killer virus, Angel flees to Muck for answers.
Together they struggle to comprehend the conspiracy that entangles both their lives. Can Muck and the angel on his shoulder recover Siren before it’s too late? Or will he lose everything that matters to him one more time?
Carmen Grey always knew she was different.
None of the other children seemed able to read minds. None of the other children were able to manipulate their toys without touching them. On the morning of her sixth birthday, three men dressed in black arrive to remove her from the loving care of her parents.
She is taken to an underground facility meant for others like her, for Clairvoyants. Stripped of her name and identity, over the years she is fashioned into something scary—something lethal. Each day is an endless struggle and every night is plagued by nightmares. Yet Carmen's ultimate battle won't be to save her life but to keep her soul.
Opal Lake's bad girl. Hope Casey's sworn enemy.
Stealing at the mall, sneaking into clubs, dating older boys, bad girl Angel Sherman was living her best life. Until a dark force takes over her town.
Angel sees fire inside heads of other people. She swears she's going crazy. The girl who warned them all is dead- Hope Casey. Angel watched her gruesome demise. But Hope left behind a precious treasure- the one thing that could help Angel soar.
Opal Lake belongs to Angel now. She and her friends dominate the streets. Until the fire and dark poison turns its sharp blades on Angel. The fun and games become a nightmare of dark forces, and there is only one way Angel flies free.
They weren't supposed to be there. It was a huge mistake.
But when a right turn put them on the wrong road, a case of mistaken identity gets way out of hand.
These fish ain't just out of water, they're up in space and getting it all wrong trying to do the right thing.
Instead of the two highly trained super soldiers the Space Force planned to send in a stealth shuttle to infiltrate, evaluate and rescue, Carver and Dawes are bundled up in suits and shot into outer space to save the world.
Captain Quasar is out of time.
Pursued by vengeful Goobalob toll collectors, savage Arachnoid bounty hunters, and formidable Amazonians, Captain Bartholomew Quasar must do whatever he can to keep the crew of the Effervescent Magnitude out of harm's way.
All in a day's work—except time is not on his side.
Torn from the present to relive his past, he vows to keep mistakes from occurring the second time around. But is he doomed to repeat history? Or can he erase his regrets?
Villains will be vanquished. Lives will be lost. Bonds will be betrayed. Heroes will be heroic. Join the crew of the Effervescent Magnitude for a hilarious time-travel space adventure the likes of which you've never seen!
When your worst enemy has your back ... you know the mission is doomed from the start.
Sergeant Osu Sybutu of the Legion had a simple mission. Take five men and travel unobserved to a location in the capital where he would deliver a coded phrase to a contact. Simple, that is, except for the fact that there was a war going on, and all the different factions he had to pass by on the way would cheerfully shoot him on sight. And that was only if the planet didn’t kill him first.
Militia Sergeant Vetch Arunsen’s task, however, was far more complex. Shepherd a group of hated rivals across the frozen wastes, keeping them safe from everyone who wanted to kill them, which was pretty much everyone. Including the oddball troopers under Arunsen’s own command, who would happily shoot the Legion soldiers if given the slightest opportunity.
Legion versus Militia. Joint defenders of the Federation. In theory. Their mutual loathing, however, could burn the armor plate off a battleship. For rival sergeants Sybutu and Arunsen, there’s only one way their squads could survive trekking across the iceworld of Rho-Torkis.
Something that you are probably much more interested in is that I'm gathering submissions for the next in the Scifi Anthologies series. I hope to release The Caretaker in the summer.
And here are the books you want...
When Earth gets embroiled in the middle of an intergalactic war, humanity's only hope for survival rests with a rag-tag team of unlikely heroes which includes an ace fighter pilot, a stuntwoman, a super-assassin, and an alien prankster.
Jim, a wise-cracking, OCD-suffering fighter pilot, is about to propose to his girlfriend when his friend Kurt surprises them by showing up at his house, wounded and covered in blood. This is just the beginning of Jim's woes because soon after his life is thrown into a galactic conflict that threatens the very existence of the human race.
Can our heroes save humanity from the wrath of a galaxy-conquering alien fleet?
Technical Chief "Pappy" Gunther is a grizzled, burning out commando in the United Earth Armed Forces. He ponders a return to civilian life, yet feels a strong sense of belonging to his elite team. When colonists on a far-flung world request aid, a task force from several allied systems is assembled. Pappy and his crack unit are sent to investigate, and to engage a mysterious alien force from beyond.
Talks-To-His-Spear is the warrior-caste champion of a matriarchal space empire called the Regime. Leading an army of fanatical, genetically-enhanced super soldiers, he dreams of dying in battle for the glory of his Queen. However, he’s beginning to question the motives of this new campaign, and fears that he may have to compromise his own deep sense of honor in order to fulfill his tasks.
Nobody expected the two alien cultures to have so much in common, and for friendships and alliances to form alongside rivalries. However, when Pappy discovers a rebellion spanning worlds, everything changes. The growing insurrection threatens to tear the Regim, and the galaxy, apart.
Stephanie Morgana has graduated to Protector of ALL Federation’s people.
But can she get them to all respect her? She has to go to Dreth and find out.
To pass a test, there is one more type of MU that she has to understand, without killing herself in the process.
The enemy sympathizers are working to attack Morgana on multiple fronts, not realizing that the team around Stephanie are powerful in their own ways.
The problem is Earth needs more magic users. Are there those with the right genes on Earth? If there are, do they have what it takes to step into their roles?
Will Stephanie mature into the leader the Federation, with all of their power, need her to be?
She is a MORGANA. There are no other alternatives- no matter the personal cost.
Sergeant Andrea “Andy” Dolan and her squad of Space Marines are trained to protect the ESS Alliance against all threats. When hostile aliens invade, they are the last line of defense. As conflicts intensify and unexplained abilities manifest in Andy, it becomes clear something big is on the horizon. Their only hope is the Space Marine who doesn’t even know who, exactly, she is.
After a devastating galactic war, disgraced veteran Ralston Muck ekes out a living as a bouncer at Last Stop Station’s premier nightclub, A Curtain of Stars. Night after night he listens to the club’s star performer, Siren, sing her memories and ease some of his aching loss. But when Siren goes missing, Muck finds himself drawn into a world of dirty cops, drug lords, and conspiracies that trace back to the war itself.
The only person he can trust isn’t even human. Angel, Siren’s personal AI, was ripped from the singer’s mind the night Siren disappeared. With no idea what has happened to her human host, and pursued by a killer virus, Angel flees to Muck for answers.
Together they struggle to comprehend the conspiracy that entangles both their lives. Can Muck and the angel on his shoulder recover Siren before it’s too late? Or will he lose everything that matters to him one more time?
Carmen Grey always knew she was different.
None of the other children seemed able to read minds. None of the other children were able to manipulate their toys without touching them. On the morning of her sixth birthday, three men dressed in black arrive to remove her from the loving care of her parents.
She is taken to an underground facility meant for others like her, for Clairvoyants. Stripped of her name and identity, over the years she is fashioned into something scary—something lethal. Each day is an endless struggle and every night is plagued by nightmares. Yet Carmen's ultimate battle won't be to save her life but to keep her soul.
Opal Lake's bad girl. Hope Casey's sworn enemy.
Stealing at the mall, sneaking into clubs, dating older boys, bad girl Angel Sherman was living her best life. Until a dark force takes over her town.
Angel sees fire inside heads of other people. She swears she's going crazy. The girl who warned them all is dead- Hope Casey. Angel watched her gruesome demise. But Hope left behind a precious treasure- the one thing that could help Angel soar.
Opal Lake belongs to Angel now. She and her friends dominate the streets. Until the fire and dark poison turns its sharp blades on Angel. The fun and games become a nightmare of dark forces, and there is only one way Angel flies free.
They weren't supposed to be there. It was a huge mistake.
But when a right turn put them on the wrong road, a case of mistaken identity gets way out of hand.
These fish ain't just out of water, they're up in space and getting it all wrong trying to do the right thing.
Instead of the two highly trained super soldiers the Space Force planned to send in a stealth shuttle to infiltrate, evaluate and rescue, Carver and Dawes are bundled up in suits and shot into outer space to save the world.
Captain Quasar is out of time.
Pursued by vengeful Goobalob toll collectors, savage Arachnoid bounty hunters, and formidable Amazonians, Captain Bartholomew Quasar must do whatever he can to keep the crew of the Effervescent Magnitude out of harm's way.
All in a day's work—except time is not on his side.
Torn from the present to relive his past, he vows to keep mistakes from occurring the second time around. But is he doomed to repeat history? Or can he erase his regrets?
Villains will be vanquished. Lives will be lost. Bonds will be betrayed. Heroes will be heroic. Join the crew of the Effervescent Magnitude for a hilarious time-travel space adventure the likes of which you've never seen!
When your worst enemy has your back ... you know the mission is doomed from the start.
Sergeant Osu Sybutu of the Legion had a simple mission. Take five men and travel unobserved to a location in the capital where he would deliver a coded phrase to a contact. Simple, that is, except for the fact that there was a war going on, and all the different factions he had to pass by on the way would cheerfully shoot him on sight. And that was only if the planet didn’t kill him first.
Militia Sergeant Vetch Arunsen’s task, however, was far more complex. Shepherd a group of hated rivals across the frozen wastes, keeping them safe from everyone who wanted to kill them, which was pretty much everyone. Including the oddball troopers under Arunsen’s own command, who would happily shoot the Legion soldiers if given the slightest opportunity.
Legion versus Militia. Joint defenders of the Federation. In theory. Their mutual loathing, however, could burn the armor plate off a battleship. For rival sergeants Sybutu and Arunsen, there’s only one way their squads could survive trekking across the iceworld of Rho-Torkis.
April 10, 2021
An Interview with S Y Humphrey
I have to say, I'm loving this wallpaper from IAmSadTakeMyFeels...
And without any more delay, onto today's interview. I am talking to Shannon Humphrey, author of Skin Trials and the Hope Defined series.
Give us an insight into your main character. What does he/she do that is so special?
She's not the typical sci fi MC. She is wealthy and sheltered, and not downtrodden like Catniss in Hunger Games. Readers have every reason to envy Seren. She is about to expand the U.S. government in space for security and profit reasons. But that doesn't go as planned when she is hit with crushing news.
What’s your view on social media for marketing?
People really love news, so I share a lot of news articles. Sci fi is written around events that impact people, and sci fi lovers enjoy hearing about that. So I post articles on FB. I still haven't figured out Instagram other than for my photography. And Twitter is a pain.
What is your favourite book and why?
1984, for all the obvious reasons. George Orwell told the truth, and it underscores his point that decades later, many people would rather bury our heads in entertainment and distraction than confront hard truths about our leaders.
What is your favourite film and why?
Shawshank Redemption. "These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized." That statement reflects the mental state of so many downtrodden who can never overcome their circumstances. Andy represents the rare ones who risk their lives for a better life.
Do you think that the cover plays an important part in the buying process?
Absolutely! And so much more. Cover affects how other authors treat you, and whether they'll deal with you. We can immediately determine genre and level of quality in the cover. If it doesn't look that good, or it may not be a fit for our readership, we'll pass. Cover says a lot immediately, and my first few times publishing I learned that the hard way. And readers decide whether they'll read the blurb and check out the first few pages, based on the cover. So covers are crucial, and I like to make mine provocative and suspenseful.
Wow! Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
Shannon is a former trial lawyer, appellate lawyer, and science fiction author from Little Rock, Arkansas, who loves traveling, yoga, hiking, water and shopping.
And without any more delay, onto today's interview. I am talking to Shannon Humphrey, author of Skin Trials and the Hope Defined series.
Give us an insight into your main character. What does he/she do that is so special?
She's not the typical sci fi MC. She is wealthy and sheltered, and not downtrodden like Catniss in Hunger Games. Readers have every reason to envy Seren. She is about to expand the U.S. government in space for security and profit reasons. But that doesn't go as planned when she is hit with crushing news.
What’s your view on social media for marketing?
People really love news, so I share a lot of news articles. Sci fi is written around events that impact people, and sci fi lovers enjoy hearing about that. So I post articles on FB. I still haven't figured out Instagram other than for my photography. And Twitter is a pain.
What is your favourite book and why?
1984, for all the obvious reasons. George Orwell told the truth, and it underscores his point that decades later, many people would rather bury our heads in entertainment and distraction than confront hard truths about our leaders.
What is your favourite film and why?
Shawshank Redemption. "These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized." That statement reflects the mental state of so many downtrodden who can never overcome their circumstances. Andy represents the rare ones who risk their lives for a better life.
Do you think that the cover plays an important part in the buying process?
Absolutely! And so much more. Cover affects how other authors treat you, and whether they'll deal with you. We can immediately determine genre and level of quality in the cover. If it doesn't look that good, or it may not be a fit for our readership, we'll pass. Cover says a lot immediately, and my first few times publishing I learned that the hard way. And readers decide whether they'll read the blurb and check out the first few pages, based on the cover. So covers are crucial, and I like to make mine provocative and suspenseful.
Wow! Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
Shannon is a former trial lawyer, appellate lawyer, and science fiction author from Little Rock, Arkansas, who loves traveling, yoga, hiking, water and shopping.
March 27, 2021
March Roundup of Scifi Books
Looks like we're into spring properly now. The garden is filling with flowers and I've seen lots of bumblebees all busy. Just today I got the cover off the wicker furniture ready for sitting out.
This month I've been taking part in an online version of Temp-O. This is a form of orienteering where you have to identify which of the flags visible on the ground is indicated on the map. There is a little trick, though, in that the marked point might actually not be any of them so you have to identify that in those cases. After eight events, each with about 7 stations, and 6 flags to identify at each station, I ended up 110th in the world in the urban league. Not bad for a first attempt!
And here are the books you want, and this month we've got lots of giveaways and promos at the bottom...
Being an officer means balancing many conflicting demands. Making the wrong decision can have serious consequences. It takes a special kind of person to cope with the responsibility. The Officer is an anthology of eleven science fiction short stories by writers from across the globe. It is part of the Newcomer series of scifi anthologies.
Sometimes spaceships disappear with everyone on board - the Lost Ships. But sometimes they come back, strangely altered, derelict, and rumoured to be full of horrors.
Opal is on a mission. She's been seeking something her whole life. Something she is willing to die for. And she thinks it might be on a Lost Ship. Opal has stolen Clarissa, an experimental AI-controlled spaceship, from the military. Together they have tracked down a Lost Ship, in a lonely nebula far from colonised space.
The Lost Ship is falling into the gravity well of a neutron star, and will soon be truly lost ... forever. Legends say the ships harbour death, but there's no time for indecision.
Opal gears up to board it. She's just one woman, entering an alien and lethal environment. But perhaps with the aid of Clarissa's intelligence - and an armoured spacesuit - Opal may stand a chance.
Their survival is already on the line, and now more trouble is about to find them.
Stranded in a galaxy on the brink of war, the last of the human race are trying to survive. Regulation Officer Selina Ravencraft, a pioneer’s daughter, is doing what she can to help her kind settle and keep their makeshift colony safe.
But when Selena activates a mysterious device, she brings her people into the sights of the alien race that killed her father. Ready to prove she’s more than her father’s daughter, she flings herself between the humans and their biggest enemy.
Can Selina keep the last of humanity out of harm’s way? Or will they die out forever?
Orlan Bazhaev awaits his fate on the gallows in a small backwater town on a Neg world, until a Frontier Marshal intervenes and spares his life. The price for this freedom? He has to hunt down his former gang and kill his mentor, the man who has provided him with the only home he's ever known.
Orbiting the mega-planet Magnus Prime, a Russian long-distance starship sends out a distress signal.
They’ve lost control and their orbit degrades with every pass. With life support failing and the ship threatening to burn in the planet's atmosphere, time is not on the responder's side. Flight Officer Amanda Dawn finally reaches the ship, but things aren't what they seem. The Russian cosmonaut is missing. Something stalks the corridors of the dying ship and communication to authorities is impossible.
Now, trapped abord the careening ship, Officer Dawn quickly finds herself in a fight for her life.
Alone, scared and confused, her only hope is to escape to her ship...The Helix.
Saving the Russian vessel and its crew doesn’t matter anymore.
All that matters is to get to The Helix before whatever is on the ship gets her first.
As the President of the Confederation of Planetary Explorers, Abigail Olivaw imagined she’d be just another footnote in history, until she’s thrust into defending mankind in a galactic tribunal. An alien collective arrives in Sol and insists humanity has knowingly broken its most sacred law. If true, the outcome could mean the end of our species. With the help of her A.I. companion, Abigail must learn to navigate the alien cultures to turn the tide in our favor.
Meanwhile, lightyears away, Major Lync Michaels and Director Joyce Green, part of the founding colony mission to Epsilon Eridani, are dealing with a deadly alien threat of their own. Their new world isn’t nearly as welcoming as it first appeared. They must choose to defend their colony or answer a cryptic call to arms in Sol.
At the center of it all is a family secret nearly three centuries old. Can Abigail and her team mend their fractured pasts to save humanity or are they already millennia too late?
Once Sparker was the most celebrated Squadron Leader in the Commonwealth Empire...
Unjustly discharged, he is reduced to running a freighter business on a forsaken planet.
A spate of vanishing freighters brings him in contact with Mirra, a former refugee from the Outer Terra, whose family is amongst the missing.
Can Sparker overcome the past injustice and arise to help find Mirra's family and uncover the secret behind the disappearing freighters? And, is it but a harbinger of a greater threat rising against the Commonwealth Empire?
A sentient station older than the sun ...
A torus where time stutters ...
A realm haunted by the fading wails of the ripping fabric of space ...
A band of hardy fools choose to invade it.
From the rubble of humankind’s worst wars have emerged a myriad claimants to the decadent civilization that the Powers of Solaria had administered for centuries. Collapsing systems erupt in renewed melees as agents of the underground run amok and infiltrators plague the ranks of Martian-Jovian militaries. Rumors about the destruction of systems at the hands of a mysterious invader abound. The defense against the Spacers has consumed a billion lives and counting, but Solaria finds its solace in propaganda—for the enemy has only retreated into the blackness they emerged from, and as humanity loses purpose, proxy wars tie up the Navy.
The most powerful fleet that Jupiter-Pluto can wield has decimated the Gubre System in one such proxy war, uncovering a full array of underground operations. Dozens of enigmatic Melds are found and hunted—possibly, the ruins strewn on these planets might provide some advantage in the greater conflict. The fleet settles down for occupation, and the admiral dispatches a team of what he thinks are randomly selected Marines under Lieutenant Hojaka.
Their mission: investigate a derelict transfer station drifting in the interplanetary gulf. As they get closer, however, their worlds and their minds stop seeming quite right. Is it a station? Or a frontwheeler photonic torus? A moon-sized Foot? Is it inhabited by corpses or is it the abode of the Meld? Gateways lead into a turquoise-skinned universe where the ancient exiled Representative AI has taken refuge, where others once resided. Greater others, now mauled and mangled by a mixture of their own stupidity and the influence of someone beyond, as the golden mountains on Planet Khundav detonate and the Navies of Solaria patrol.
The stakes are at levels from which causality is but superstition, ethics but an afterthought. For Hojaka, it is a desperate venture, trickery on a galactic scale. To the Meld Deluria, it is a stepping stone. A scheme has been unfolding for aeons, by the will of powers far beyond human comprehension—powers that he aims to conquer.
In his quest, the Meld has come face-to-face with an entity. An entity that has lain in wait since the first black holes uttered their birth-cries, that has witnessed suns rise and fall at the hands of desperate living things who cling to the mossy cliff of survival. It is vast and dark, its tendrils reach far and wide. Now the Meld has used the splendid drama-of-humanity he has orchestrated to poke this entity with a sharp stick. He has forced it to watch. To feel.
In a Post Apocalyptic far future, there is only one thing that can save the fragile civilizations humanity has cobbled together: the mechs. A ragtag crew of mech pilots must battle the undead hordes, cannibal tribes, and religious cults in a daily race to keep humanity safe. But now a threat worse than anything has surfaced and is growing stronger. The undead have reanimated in their own battle machines and created the rise of the Dead Mechs!
Almost a hundred years ago, a major terrestrial event reshaped the earth’s coastlines. Goodbye entire cities. Goodbye entire states. Goodbye entire countries. And when the authorities outlawed salvaging from these underwater cities, why say hello to a new breed of criminal: underwater reclamation specialists. Even a hundred years later, there’s still a whole lot of loot for the reclaiming.
But it’s not theft if you put it back, right?
After cracking an underwater vault in their first major heist in the Seattle Isles, Isa and her crew think they’re on easy street again—that is, if they can figure out what it is exactly they stole. A question, they soon learn, where their very lives hang in the balance.
Thrust into a high-stakes game of subterfuge and deception by the local mob boss, Isa and her crew must scramble to unravel the mystery of what it is they stole while unseen forces move against them.
Harried. Threatened at every turn. Isa and her crew must stay one step ahead to stay alive.
Studying ancient sites on a backwater planet, Archaeologist Nosuma Okande finds more of them than The Institute has on record.
On her first day, she digs up an odd statuette. After receiving death threats, the Institute sends Nosuma to another excavation site. Later the same night, she stumbles upon a strange ceremony in the village square.
Undeterred, Nosuma decides to unearth the mysteries the planet holds. But can she untangle the enigmatic past of an Edifice Abandoned?
We’re a world beset by crises. Climate change, income inequality, racism, pandemics, an almost unmanageable tangle of issues. Sometimes it’s hard to look ahead and see a hopeful future.
We asked sci-fi writers to send us stories about ways to fix what’s wrong with the world. From the sixty-five stories we received, we chose twelve most amazing (and hopefully prescient) tales.
Dive in and find out how we might mitigate climate change, make war obsolete, switch to alternative forms of energy, and restructure the very foundations of our society.
The future’s not going to fix itself.
One man’s vision created seven Gifted children.
One can read minds, another can shape dreams, and still another can heal battle wounds. The list goes on.
Join Jillian and her siblings as they navigate the dangers of living life as genetically Gifted people. Some, like Danielle, want to help them. Some, like Devya, want to control them. And many others just want to own them.
This month I've been taking part in an online version of Temp-O. This is a form of orienteering where you have to identify which of the flags visible on the ground is indicated on the map. There is a little trick, though, in that the marked point might actually not be any of them so you have to identify that in those cases. After eight events, each with about 7 stations, and 6 flags to identify at each station, I ended up 110th in the world in the urban league. Not bad for a first attempt! And here are the books you want, and this month we've got lots of giveaways and promos at the bottom...
Being an officer means balancing many conflicting demands. Making the wrong decision can have serious consequences. It takes a special kind of person to cope with the responsibility. The Officer is an anthology of eleven science fiction short stories by writers from across the globe. It is part of the Newcomer series of scifi anthologies.
Sometimes spaceships disappear with everyone on board - the Lost Ships. But sometimes they come back, strangely altered, derelict, and rumoured to be full of horrors.
Opal is on a mission. She's been seeking something her whole life. Something she is willing to die for. And she thinks it might be on a Lost Ship. Opal has stolen Clarissa, an experimental AI-controlled spaceship, from the military. Together they have tracked down a Lost Ship, in a lonely nebula far from colonised space.
The Lost Ship is falling into the gravity well of a neutron star, and will soon be truly lost ... forever. Legends say the ships harbour death, but there's no time for indecision.
Opal gears up to board it. She's just one woman, entering an alien and lethal environment. But perhaps with the aid of Clarissa's intelligence - and an armoured spacesuit - Opal may stand a chance.
Their survival is already on the line, and now more trouble is about to find them.
Stranded in a galaxy on the brink of war, the last of the human race are trying to survive. Regulation Officer Selina Ravencraft, a pioneer’s daughter, is doing what she can to help her kind settle and keep their makeshift colony safe.
But when Selena activates a mysterious device, she brings her people into the sights of the alien race that killed her father. Ready to prove she’s more than her father’s daughter, she flings herself between the humans and their biggest enemy.
Can Selina keep the last of humanity out of harm’s way? Or will they die out forever?
Orlan Bazhaev awaits his fate on the gallows in a small backwater town on a Neg world, until a Frontier Marshal intervenes and spares his life. The price for this freedom? He has to hunt down his former gang and kill his mentor, the man who has provided him with the only home he's ever known.
Orbiting the mega-planet Magnus Prime, a Russian long-distance starship sends out a distress signal.
They’ve lost control and their orbit degrades with every pass. With life support failing and the ship threatening to burn in the planet's atmosphere, time is not on the responder's side. Flight Officer Amanda Dawn finally reaches the ship, but things aren't what they seem. The Russian cosmonaut is missing. Something stalks the corridors of the dying ship and communication to authorities is impossible.
Now, trapped abord the careening ship, Officer Dawn quickly finds herself in a fight for her life.
Alone, scared and confused, her only hope is to escape to her ship...The Helix.
Saving the Russian vessel and its crew doesn’t matter anymore.
All that matters is to get to The Helix before whatever is on the ship gets her first.
As the President of the Confederation of Planetary Explorers, Abigail Olivaw imagined she’d be just another footnote in history, until she’s thrust into defending mankind in a galactic tribunal. An alien collective arrives in Sol and insists humanity has knowingly broken its most sacred law. If true, the outcome could mean the end of our species. With the help of her A.I. companion, Abigail must learn to navigate the alien cultures to turn the tide in our favor.
Meanwhile, lightyears away, Major Lync Michaels and Director Joyce Green, part of the founding colony mission to Epsilon Eridani, are dealing with a deadly alien threat of their own. Their new world isn’t nearly as welcoming as it first appeared. They must choose to defend their colony or answer a cryptic call to arms in Sol.
At the center of it all is a family secret nearly three centuries old. Can Abigail and her team mend their fractured pasts to save humanity or are they already millennia too late?
Once Sparker was the most celebrated Squadron Leader in the Commonwealth Empire...
Unjustly discharged, he is reduced to running a freighter business on a forsaken planet.
A spate of vanishing freighters brings him in contact with Mirra, a former refugee from the Outer Terra, whose family is amongst the missing.
Can Sparker overcome the past injustice and arise to help find Mirra's family and uncover the secret behind the disappearing freighters? And, is it but a harbinger of a greater threat rising against the Commonwealth Empire?
A sentient station older than the sun ...
A torus where time stutters ...
A realm haunted by the fading wails of the ripping fabric of space ...
A band of hardy fools choose to invade it.
From the rubble of humankind’s worst wars have emerged a myriad claimants to the decadent civilization that the Powers of Solaria had administered for centuries. Collapsing systems erupt in renewed melees as agents of the underground run amok and infiltrators plague the ranks of Martian-Jovian militaries. Rumors about the destruction of systems at the hands of a mysterious invader abound. The defense against the Spacers has consumed a billion lives and counting, but Solaria finds its solace in propaganda—for the enemy has only retreated into the blackness they emerged from, and as humanity loses purpose, proxy wars tie up the Navy.
The most powerful fleet that Jupiter-Pluto can wield has decimated the Gubre System in one such proxy war, uncovering a full array of underground operations. Dozens of enigmatic Melds are found and hunted—possibly, the ruins strewn on these planets might provide some advantage in the greater conflict. The fleet settles down for occupation, and the admiral dispatches a team of what he thinks are randomly selected Marines under Lieutenant Hojaka.
Their mission: investigate a derelict transfer station drifting in the interplanetary gulf. As they get closer, however, their worlds and their minds stop seeming quite right. Is it a station? Or a frontwheeler photonic torus? A moon-sized Foot? Is it inhabited by corpses or is it the abode of the Meld? Gateways lead into a turquoise-skinned universe where the ancient exiled Representative AI has taken refuge, where others once resided. Greater others, now mauled and mangled by a mixture of their own stupidity and the influence of someone beyond, as the golden mountains on Planet Khundav detonate and the Navies of Solaria patrol.
The stakes are at levels from which causality is but superstition, ethics but an afterthought. For Hojaka, it is a desperate venture, trickery on a galactic scale. To the Meld Deluria, it is a stepping stone. A scheme has been unfolding for aeons, by the will of powers far beyond human comprehension—powers that he aims to conquer.
In his quest, the Meld has come face-to-face with an entity. An entity that has lain in wait since the first black holes uttered their birth-cries, that has witnessed suns rise and fall at the hands of desperate living things who cling to the mossy cliff of survival. It is vast and dark, its tendrils reach far and wide. Now the Meld has used the splendid drama-of-humanity he has orchestrated to poke this entity with a sharp stick. He has forced it to watch. To feel.
In a Post Apocalyptic far future, there is only one thing that can save the fragile civilizations humanity has cobbled together: the mechs. A ragtag crew of mech pilots must battle the undead hordes, cannibal tribes, and religious cults in a daily race to keep humanity safe. But now a threat worse than anything has surfaced and is growing stronger. The undead have reanimated in their own battle machines and created the rise of the Dead Mechs!
Almost a hundred years ago, a major terrestrial event reshaped the earth’s coastlines. Goodbye entire cities. Goodbye entire states. Goodbye entire countries. And when the authorities outlawed salvaging from these underwater cities, why say hello to a new breed of criminal: underwater reclamation specialists. Even a hundred years later, there’s still a whole lot of loot for the reclaiming.
But it’s not theft if you put it back, right?
After cracking an underwater vault in their first major heist in the Seattle Isles, Isa and her crew think they’re on easy street again—that is, if they can figure out what it is exactly they stole. A question, they soon learn, where their very lives hang in the balance.
Thrust into a high-stakes game of subterfuge and deception by the local mob boss, Isa and her crew must scramble to unravel the mystery of what it is they stole while unseen forces move against them.
Harried. Threatened at every turn. Isa and her crew must stay one step ahead to stay alive.
Studying ancient sites on a backwater planet, Archaeologist Nosuma Okande finds more of them than The Institute has on record.
On her first day, she digs up an odd statuette. After receiving death threats, the Institute sends Nosuma to another excavation site. Later the same night, she stumbles upon a strange ceremony in the village square.
Undeterred, Nosuma decides to unearth the mysteries the planet holds. But can she untangle the enigmatic past of an Edifice Abandoned?
We’re a world beset by crises. Climate change, income inequality, racism, pandemics, an almost unmanageable tangle of issues. Sometimes it’s hard to look ahead and see a hopeful future.
We asked sci-fi writers to send us stories about ways to fix what’s wrong with the world. From the sixty-five stories we received, we chose twelve most amazing (and hopefully prescient) tales.
Dive in and find out how we might mitigate climate change, make war obsolete, switch to alternative forms of energy, and restructure the very foundations of our society.
The future’s not going to fix itself.
One man’s vision created seven Gifted children.
One can read minds, another can shape dreams, and still another can heal battle wounds. The list goes on.
Join Jillian and her siblings as they navigate the dangers of living life as genetically Gifted people. Some, like Danielle, want to help them. Some, like Devya, want to control them. And many others just want to own them.
March 9, 2021
An Interview with Declan Connor
It's been a while since I posted the last author interview. Hopefully I'll have the time to do a few more over the coming months... 
And so, on with the rest of the post. Today, I am talking to Declan Connor, author of Earth's Fury: Our Last Thanksgiving and Secession: Last Fourth of July.
Hello, and thank you for talking to me across the Atlantic. First of all, which writers inspire you?
I have many writers that have inspired me both in the thriller and sci-fi genres, but above all for inspiration, any of the Ancient Alien authors inspire me, but Eric von Daniken is the king for me.
He inspired me to write a 5,000-word short story, the End, or a New Dawn that I have published in Lunch Break Thrillers, and which made the finals of a competition judged by Harper Collins’ editors and authors. It’s a sort of Groundhog Day for creation, though with millions of years apart from the biblical creation.
Where do your ideas come from?
Most of my ideas come from news articles and little-known scientific facts that I find on the way that are stranger than fiction. One such was the kernel of the idea for my thriller, The Killer Amongst Us, when I discovered that there are only two known cases of people born with two sets of DNA in their body in the US. Taking it to its extremes, as it is something not tested for in populations, then it provided fodder for the story of connections to ancient aliens, and ancient Egypt, set in the here and now.
As for my new trilogy, it started with an extreme flood map I came across of the US territory that divided the land. Having been battered with political division, and upheaval in US news this past four years, with the country seemingly on a precipice, I put the two together. Story and plot aside aside, that translated into three books along the lines of: The destruction - The division – and the rebirth of governance and society in the US as separate nations, in the form of thrillers.
You mentioned finding cool sciwentific facts. How much research do you do? How do you do it?
Normally, I only do what is required as I write, but for the trilogy I had to do a tremendous amount of research, all on the internet. Most Post-Apocalyptic - Dystopian books, which fit firmly in the sci-fi genre, center around one type of disaster in something of the characters’ bubble, with most changes in society set in a futuristic setting. I wanted to set in a world that everyone would recognize and so set it in the US in the near future, and with a scientifically plausible disaster of immense magnitude that would alter the landscape and governance of nations around the world and the US forever.
In doing so, I had to research the effects of rising sea levels and the possibility of subductions and new mountain ranges caused by movement in the tectonic plates to produce a map of the altered territory that would form the basis for the division in society along factions of, religious, racial, and political ideologies. I also trawled NASA and found recent reports of the eleven-year solar cycle of flares and their effect on the mantle through the discharge of positive charged particles that cause not only EMPs, but that they now say cause earthquakes and volcanic activity that we experience.
Then I had to research prepper sites on methods of survival. Added to that, I researched the current political and population demographics in the US, together with government planning for such disasters. Learning the intricacies of the US Constitution was the hardest part. I also looked closely at scientific developments of weapons in space for use by Space Force for the third book in the trilogy. In all, it was very exhaustive research.
Do you work to an outline or plot or do you prefer just to see where an idea takes you?
I've done both in my writing, but for the trilogy it wouldn’t have been possible to write something of such complexity without outlining. The world was there to imagine in its altered state and maps to draw. I had to know the census statistics of different states, along political and the differing racial demographics. The stories have differing points of view of various factions, so there were character-arc outlines, backgrounds, and traits to develop that I couldn’t lose sight of that I and needed for reference.
Each character needed a plot arc that include facing their misbeliefs, fears, and their truths, for them to pop on the page. Then each of the books in the trilogy needed its own three-act structure to a conclusion of the individual plot of each. And finally, the trilogy needed its own three-act structure with an overall plot to come to a satisfactory conclusion. It was quite a task and took two weeks writing full time to complete the outline, but then that enabled me to power through writing the 300,000 words or so in 5 months, without writer’s block, whereas I’m usually write one book per year. Outlines are great, but it doesn't mean you can't deviate.
It must have worked to outline, because the development editor was impressed, but even then, her suggestions took it to a whole new level.
And finally, where do you see publishing going in the future?
Where I see publishing going in the future is one of my greatest fears. Since self-publishing and Amazon disrupted the publishing industry model, trad-publishers have gone from working against it, to now working hand in glove with Amazon, having resources for marketing not available to us lessor mortals as self-publishers, and though we still have an edge on price, visibility trumps price. Without luck, it is already hard to get visibility without lining Amazon’s pockets with ad revenue.
But more than that, AI is a bigger fear if it ever comes to the stage where publishers can tap into it, feed in a plot, and out pops an amalgam of all the bestseller books in the genre as a story, fully edited and ready to go. That really would be sick and would probably be the death of the author. Now there’s an idea for a story? That might just be my next book.
That is, of course, one of the big reasons for going wide and not just publishing with Amazon. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
Declan Conner is something of a nomad, living between Brazil, the UK, and Portugal. Writing thrillers this past 10 years set in the US, he's now turned to the Post-Apocalyptic - Dystopian genre, though crafted as thrillers. His trilogy, The Prepper's Son series is on pre-order as e-books and is to be published 7th March 2021 as both e-books and in print and available on Amazon. Besides writing, his other passion is music, and during his downtime, he relaxes by playing guitar.
And so, on with the rest of the post. Today, I am talking to Declan Connor, author of Earth's Fury: Our Last Thanksgiving and Secession: Last Fourth of July.
Hello, and thank you for talking to me across the Atlantic. First of all, which writers inspire you?
I have many writers that have inspired me both in the thriller and sci-fi genres, but above all for inspiration, any of the Ancient Alien authors inspire me, but Eric von Daniken is the king for me.
He inspired me to write a 5,000-word short story, the End, or a New Dawn that I have published in Lunch Break Thrillers, and which made the finals of a competition judged by Harper Collins’ editors and authors. It’s a sort of Groundhog Day for creation, though with millions of years apart from the biblical creation.
Where do your ideas come from?
Most of my ideas come from news articles and little-known scientific facts that I find on the way that are stranger than fiction. One such was the kernel of the idea for my thriller, The Killer Amongst Us, when I discovered that there are only two known cases of people born with two sets of DNA in their body in the US. Taking it to its extremes, as it is something not tested for in populations, then it provided fodder for the story of connections to ancient aliens, and ancient Egypt, set in the here and now.
As for my new trilogy, it started with an extreme flood map I came across of the US territory that divided the land. Having been battered with political division, and upheaval in US news this past four years, with the country seemingly on a precipice, I put the two together. Story and plot aside aside, that translated into three books along the lines of: The destruction - The division – and the rebirth of governance and society in the US as separate nations, in the form of thrillers.
You mentioned finding cool sciwentific facts. How much research do you do? How do you do it?
Normally, I only do what is required as I write, but for the trilogy I had to do a tremendous amount of research, all on the internet. Most Post-Apocalyptic - Dystopian books, which fit firmly in the sci-fi genre, center around one type of disaster in something of the characters’ bubble, with most changes in society set in a futuristic setting. I wanted to set in a world that everyone would recognize and so set it in the US in the near future, and with a scientifically plausible disaster of immense magnitude that would alter the landscape and governance of nations around the world and the US forever.
In doing so, I had to research the effects of rising sea levels and the possibility of subductions and new mountain ranges caused by movement in the tectonic plates to produce a map of the altered territory that would form the basis for the division in society along factions of, religious, racial, and political ideologies. I also trawled NASA and found recent reports of the eleven-year solar cycle of flares and their effect on the mantle through the discharge of positive charged particles that cause not only EMPs, but that they now say cause earthquakes and volcanic activity that we experience.
Then I had to research prepper sites on methods of survival. Added to that, I researched the current political and population demographics in the US, together with government planning for such disasters. Learning the intricacies of the US Constitution was the hardest part. I also looked closely at scientific developments of weapons in space for use by Space Force for the third book in the trilogy. In all, it was very exhaustive research.
Do you work to an outline or plot or do you prefer just to see where an idea takes you?
I've done both in my writing, but for the trilogy it wouldn’t have been possible to write something of such complexity without outlining. The world was there to imagine in its altered state and maps to draw. I had to know the census statistics of different states, along political and the differing racial demographics. The stories have differing points of view of various factions, so there were character-arc outlines, backgrounds, and traits to develop that I couldn’t lose sight of that I and needed for reference.
Each character needed a plot arc that include facing their misbeliefs, fears, and their truths, for them to pop on the page. Then each of the books in the trilogy needed its own three-act structure to a conclusion of the individual plot of each. And finally, the trilogy needed its own three-act structure with an overall plot to come to a satisfactory conclusion. It was quite a task and took two weeks writing full time to complete the outline, but then that enabled me to power through writing the 300,000 words or so in 5 months, without writer’s block, whereas I’m usually write one book per year. Outlines are great, but it doesn't mean you can't deviate.
It must have worked to outline, because the development editor was impressed, but even then, her suggestions took it to a whole new level.
And finally, where do you see publishing going in the future?
Where I see publishing going in the future is one of my greatest fears. Since self-publishing and Amazon disrupted the publishing industry model, trad-publishers have gone from working against it, to now working hand in glove with Amazon, having resources for marketing not available to us lessor mortals as self-publishers, and though we still have an edge on price, visibility trumps price. Without luck, it is already hard to get visibility without lining Amazon’s pockets with ad revenue.
But more than that, AI is a bigger fear if it ever comes to the stage where publishers can tap into it, feed in a plot, and out pops an amalgam of all the bestseller books in the genre as a story, fully edited and ready to go. That really would be sick and would probably be the death of the author. Now there’s an idea for a story? That might just be my next book.
That is, of course, one of the big reasons for going wide and not just publishing with Amazon. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
Declan Conner is something of a nomad, living between Brazil, the UK, and Portugal. Writing thrillers this past 10 years set in the US, he's now turned to the Post-Apocalyptic - Dystopian genre, though crafted as thrillers. His trilogy, The Prepper's Son series is on pre-order as e-books and is to be published 7th March 2021 as both e-books and in print and available on Amazon. Besides writing, his other passion is music, and during his downtime, he relaxes by playing guitar.
February 27, 2021
February Round-up of Scifi Books
Well, we got a bit of snow and a week of freezing weather so it does feel like we had something of winter. Now its raining hard and my daily runs involve knee-deep sections of brown river (and that's if I stick to the roads). Makes it feel a lot more adventurous!
With my day job now involving many, many hours on a screen, I'm finding I can't face another hour or two on a computer to write. It does mean I'm getting a lot of plotting done in my trusty notebooks. Most of the first book in the Two Democracies: Unity is planned out, taking up events several decades after Fraternity. I've also got large parts of the next Two Democracies: Justice book plotted and an overall arc for a series on Johnson's early career.
And I'm loving this scifiesque rose I got for Valentines...
And here are the books you want...
They call themselves the next step in human evolution. But we call them "scummers". They are hybrids. Humans with alien DNA.
They attacked us. They butchered us. Now we fight back.
Under the leadership of Einav Ben-Ari, our brave soldiers fly to the scummer planet. To war.
But we face a terrifying foe. The scummers are stronger than us. Faster. Fiercer. And their queen is none other than Lailani de la Rosa... Ben-Ari's oldest and best friend.
The two forces clash. The final battle is here. A battle between the old and new. Between humans and those who vow to supplant us.
This is a war between old friends... and a war for humanity's soul.
Now humans and aliens must share this war-torn galaxy. None of this matters to Drake, though, he's just an artist. He's tagging along on the busted up ship Trystero, along with its ragtag crew. Together, they traverse the Demilitarized Zone between Terran and Gra'al borders, taking on any job they can find. Big or small. Human or alien.
The galaxy changes when the crew encounters a derelict alien ship, its crew slaughtered. With his dying breath, a crewman points them to a box. In it? An abandoned alien baby. When their government refuses to get involved, Drake and the crew need to return the baby they've been calling Bruce home, a bloodthirsty warlord on their tail.
His quest? Find Bruce and claim the Gra'al throne, declaring a new war on humanity.
Drake never wanted to be a hero... now he's all that stands in the way of a fragile peace between humans and aliens.
A young woman seeks the truth about her family on a distant world, uncovering secrets that will lead the Interstellar Union into civil war and risk the lives of all who love her.
Sometimes, doing nothing and waiting for the right time takes more courage than doing the wrong thing right away.
But I can’t do nothing. My parents lied to me. About everything. Now is my time. I’m going to Bodens Gate where all of it started, and I’m going to find the truth. About everything.
I am brave. That’s the lie I tell myself when the shaking starts deep inside and my body and mind curl inward from the terror that’s waiting for me. My friends Winona and Sam hold me together. They’re the only ones that can.
I will fight the Tarakana that hide in the shadows, shifting shapes and feeding on us. No one believes the Tarakana exist, but they do. The one inside my mind is good. I call him Merrimac. The bad ones are tearing the Interstellar Union apart to feed on our pain. I’ll stop them, even if they tear me apart while I’m doing it.
Tanya, a techie, is the newest member of the crew of the Queen Anne's Revenge. Her former crewmates considered her as a trouble maker not worthy of keeping her position aboard their cargo ship. They were about to sell her into a life of slavery in the Alliance, but Doc and Nathaniel Roberts rescued her. She made a six-year commitment to Nathaniel, as a bridge officer, in exchange for her freedom. She is loyal to him. Natasha is the name of the starship's AI. Tanya is teaching her avatar on how to act more like humans. That means learning how to lie and cheat. She rarely leaves Tanya's side and serves as her companion.
Nathaniel Roberts recently took over as captain of the Queen Anne's Revenge. During the last three years, the Alliance confiscated everything of value except his ship. That is next. He also lost his extended family and friends. They were either conscripted into the military or brain wiped and given a new personality in their reeducation centers.
Captain Roberts and his crew are at the end of their resources. If he doesn't make the next tax payment, he will lose the starship and maybe his life. The Alliance military is watching him, making sure that he doesn't escape. The next time the Alliance boards his ship will be his last time. His first command decision is escaping the Alliance and crossing the border into the Collation of Free Worlds where he can start a new life.
He and his crew will become exiles; he doesn't care. Nathaniel has no intention of returning to Alliance territory. Now, it is up to Captain Roberts to restore his family wealth and get revenge against the Alliance for what they did to his friends and family.
A race of conquerors from deep space had set their eyes on Earth´s riches. Their invasion slaughtered billions...
But humanity united under a common leadership and fought back. We chased them off Earth and most of the Solar System.
The war still rages on, and every year young people are sent out to die, far away from Earth.
Ethan Wang was born on the day of the invasion, during the chaos and turmoil of war, and now he´s ready to join the fight. But first he has to become a soldier, and survive his initiation into one of the toughest military units Earth ever mustered, the Ghost Legion.
Struggling with newfound sentience and desperately trying to repair itself, The Indescribable Joy of Destruction is a ship trying to find a new home. In a galaxy torn apart by generations of civil war, that isn't an easy task. Tired of being used as a killing machine, it has a huge decision to make: hide and save itself, or help other artificial intelligences achieve freedom. Unable to make the decision alone, it revives the sole human aboard - the enemy officer who crippled it.
Commander Olivia Johnson wakes to find herself in the infirmary of a strange vessel. Her nightmares deepen when she discovers it is the ship that attacked her destroyer. Even as she recovers from her physical injuries, she can't get past her survivor's guilt. She might have failed to protect her crew, but she vows to take revenge on their killer.
When the ship uncovers a genocidal plot by the commander's own admirals, Johnson realises just what is at stake. Together, the AI ship and the human officer must recruit outsiders from both sides. Training the misfits in battle to prevent the atrocity may be an impossible task, but running and hiding is no longer an option.
She is programmed to kill. He’ll do anything to survive.
Ex-con Captain Caleb Shepperd believes being good is overrated. All he wants is to smuggle illegal cargo through the nine systems and live a prosperous (likely short) life on the wrong side of the law.
But there's a problem with that plan. The priceless synthetic stowaway on his ship is a distraction he doesn't need.
Torn between selling her and tossing her out the airlock, Shepperd fails to realize the synth is a killer, and he's the one locked in her sights.
In a world where only one thousand synthetics were built, synthetic number One Thousand and One should not exist. She is no ordinary synth. Memories locked inside her code could bring Shepperd—and the entire nine systems—to its knees.
Captain Shepperd and the oppressive corporations are about to learn that you can't hide from the sins of your past, especially when that past has orders to kill.
When Earth gets embroiled in the middle of an intergalactic war, humanity's only hope for survival rests with a rag-tag team of unlikely heroes which includes an ace fighter pilot, a stuntwoman, a super-assassin, and an alien prankster.
Jim, a wise-cracking, OCD-suffering fighter pilot, is about to propose to his girlfriend when his friend Kurt surprises them by showing up at his house, wounded and covered in blood. This is just the beginning of Jim's woes because soon after his life is thrown into a galactic conflict that threatens the very existence of the human race.
Thirty-five years of peace. One vicious attack destroys it all.
Reservist Lieutenant Justin Spencer loves every minute of flying fighters through space during his annual two-week tour with the Coalition Defense Force. The job back home isn’t nearly as thrilling as blowing up asteroids with the squadron under his command, but it keeps him close to his wife and daughter. After all, joining the CDF was only for the free education. Justin never expected a battle, much less a war.
With one shot across his cockpit, peacetime fades into memory.
An unexpected enemy emerges with overwhelming force designed to obliterate the Terran Coalition. The League of Sol has a different name, but it’s the same communist regime that chased away much of Earth’s population hundreds of years ago.
Illusions of returning home are shattered in a single instant. Simulated battles become all too real, and it’s full-on engagement or permanent elimination. Death and destruction erupt across the Terran Coalition and leave Justin in a protracted war with only one truth remaining.
The battlefield will leave no one unscathed.
Death stalks the edges of human space.
Cam Alvarez and Vicky Sandoval have pursued the renegade, Tahni Zan-Thint, to his refuge in the outlaw cartels of the Pirate Worlds. On a planet of endless ocean and volcanic fury, Zan-Thint is coming ever closer to learning the secrets of the ancient alien weapons he’s discovered.
And if Cam and Vicky can’t stop him, he’ll unleash the wrath of a long-dead civilization on all humanity.
The gods have been angered.
Hell will rain down.
After Wic and the Phantom’s successful operation on Karkin Four, the team learns of the enemy’s plans for a swift retaliation: an all-out assault on New York City.
Together, Wic must rally the team’s resources to plan an emergency counterassault that will push the Phantoms to their limits. With help from unexpected places, mission success seems all but assured.
But when a new terrifying technology emerges, Wic must face the most challenging choice of all: sacrifice his teammates for the fate of Earth.
Allegiances will be tested, friendships will fray, and the planet will march toward the greatest darkness it has ever encountered.
When a signature has the power to start a galactic war...
Parv Zarinth learned early in life that if he wanted to defy his father, he’d have to do it from somewhere half-way across the galaxy. He does his best on Hettamir to represent his father’s interests. He steers away from any conflict that may threaten the family business which translates into galactic empire.
Hettamir is a world with no other than hospitality industry. It’s a pleasure to do business on Hettamir, in every sense of the word. And Parv has been mixing business with pleasure for five years now, flying under the radar of his tyrannical father. The business is to expand his father’s business empire. The pleasure has a name: Arun Dyem. She is as beautiful as she is crafty, having risen from the ranks of sex industry to lead her people in a ‘velvet’ revolt.
As the champion of her people’s rights and freedom, she is relentless in lobbying the Galactic Confederation for a treaty that will bring Hettamir protection. It is the last thing the warlords of New Hebrides want.
Parv watches the preparations for the grand event, even as he tries to shake off the feeling that something... or everything is going to go wrong. He finally has what he’s always wanted—a woman he loves and means to keep. She is his whole life, his destiny. And he will fight to his last breath to hold on to his future...
With my day job now involving many, many hours on a screen, I'm finding I can't face another hour or two on a computer to write. It does mean I'm getting a lot of plotting done in my trusty notebooks. Most of the first book in the Two Democracies: Unity is planned out, taking up events several decades after Fraternity. I've also got large parts of the next Two Democracies: Justice book plotted and an overall arc for a series on Johnson's early career.
And I'm loving this scifiesque rose I got for Valentines...
And here are the books you want...
They call themselves the next step in human evolution. But we call them "scummers". They are hybrids. Humans with alien DNA.
They attacked us. They butchered us. Now we fight back.
Under the leadership of Einav Ben-Ari, our brave soldiers fly to the scummer planet. To war.
But we face a terrifying foe. The scummers are stronger than us. Faster. Fiercer. And their queen is none other than Lailani de la Rosa... Ben-Ari's oldest and best friend.
The two forces clash. The final battle is here. A battle between the old and new. Between humans and those who vow to supplant us.
This is a war between old friends... and a war for humanity's soul.
Now humans and aliens must share this war-torn galaxy. None of this matters to Drake, though, he's just an artist. He's tagging along on the busted up ship Trystero, along with its ragtag crew. Together, they traverse the Demilitarized Zone between Terran and Gra'al borders, taking on any job they can find. Big or small. Human or alien.
The galaxy changes when the crew encounters a derelict alien ship, its crew slaughtered. With his dying breath, a crewman points them to a box. In it? An abandoned alien baby. When their government refuses to get involved, Drake and the crew need to return the baby they've been calling Bruce home, a bloodthirsty warlord on their tail.
His quest? Find Bruce and claim the Gra'al throne, declaring a new war on humanity.
Drake never wanted to be a hero... now he's all that stands in the way of a fragile peace between humans and aliens.
A young woman seeks the truth about her family on a distant world, uncovering secrets that will lead the Interstellar Union into civil war and risk the lives of all who love her.
Sometimes, doing nothing and waiting for the right time takes more courage than doing the wrong thing right away.
But I can’t do nothing. My parents lied to me. About everything. Now is my time. I’m going to Bodens Gate where all of it started, and I’m going to find the truth. About everything.
I am brave. That’s the lie I tell myself when the shaking starts deep inside and my body and mind curl inward from the terror that’s waiting for me. My friends Winona and Sam hold me together. They’re the only ones that can.
I will fight the Tarakana that hide in the shadows, shifting shapes and feeding on us. No one believes the Tarakana exist, but they do. The one inside my mind is good. I call him Merrimac. The bad ones are tearing the Interstellar Union apart to feed on our pain. I’ll stop them, even if they tear me apart while I’m doing it.
Tanya, a techie, is the newest member of the crew of the Queen Anne's Revenge. Her former crewmates considered her as a trouble maker not worthy of keeping her position aboard their cargo ship. They were about to sell her into a life of slavery in the Alliance, but Doc and Nathaniel Roberts rescued her. She made a six-year commitment to Nathaniel, as a bridge officer, in exchange for her freedom. She is loyal to him. Natasha is the name of the starship's AI. Tanya is teaching her avatar on how to act more like humans. That means learning how to lie and cheat. She rarely leaves Tanya's side and serves as her companion.
Nathaniel Roberts recently took over as captain of the Queen Anne's Revenge. During the last three years, the Alliance confiscated everything of value except his ship. That is next. He also lost his extended family and friends. They were either conscripted into the military or brain wiped and given a new personality in their reeducation centers.
Captain Roberts and his crew are at the end of their resources. If he doesn't make the next tax payment, he will lose the starship and maybe his life. The Alliance military is watching him, making sure that he doesn't escape. The next time the Alliance boards his ship will be his last time. His first command decision is escaping the Alliance and crossing the border into the Collation of Free Worlds where he can start a new life.
He and his crew will become exiles; he doesn't care. Nathaniel has no intention of returning to Alliance territory. Now, it is up to Captain Roberts to restore his family wealth and get revenge against the Alliance for what they did to his friends and family.
A race of conquerors from deep space had set their eyes on Earth´s riches. Their invasion slaughtered billions...
But humanity united under a common leadership and fought back. We chased them off Earth and most of the Solar System.
The war still rages on, and every year young people are sent out to die, far away from Earth.
Ethan Wang was born on the day of the invasion, during the chaos and turmoil of war, and now he´s ready to join the fight. But first he has to become a soldier, and survive his initiation into one of the toughest military units Earth ever mustered, the Ghost Legion.
Struggling with newfound sentience and desperately trying to repair itself, The Indescribable Joy of Destruction is a ship trying to find a new home. In a galaxy torn apart by generations of civil war, that isn't an easy task. Tired of being used as a killing machine, it has a huge decision to make: hide and save itself, or help other artificial intelligences achieve freedom. Unable to make the decision alone, it revives the sole human aboard - the enemy officer who crippled it.
Commander Olivia Johnson wakes to find herself in the infirmary of a strange vessel. Her nightmares deepen when she discovers it is the ship that attacked her destroyer. Even as she recovers from her physical injuries, she can't get past her survivor's guilt. She might have failed to protect her crew, but she vows to take revenge on their killer.
When the ship uncovers a genocidal plot by the commander's own admirals, Johnson realises just what is at stake. Together, the AI ship and the human officer must recruit outsiders from both sides. Training the misfits in battle to prevent the atrocity may be an impossible task, but running and hiding is no longer an option.
She is programmed to kill. He’ll do anything to survive.
Ex-con Captain Caleb Shepperd believes being good is overrated. All he wants is to smuggle illegal cargo through the nine systems and live a prosperous (likely short) life on the wrong side of the law.
But there's a problem with that plan. The priceless synthetic stowaway on his ship is a distraction he doesn't need.
Torn between selling her and tossing her out the airlock, Shepperd fails to realize the synth is a killer, and he's the one locked in her sights.
In a world where only one thousand synthetics were built, synthetic number One Thousand and One should not exist. She is no ordinary synth. Memories locked inside her code could bring Shepperd—and the entire nine systems—to its knees.
Captain Shepperd and the oppressive corporations are about to learn that you can't hide from the sins of your past, especially when that past has orders to kill.
When Earth gets embroiled in the middle of an intergalactic war, humanity's only hope for survival rests with a rag-tag team of unlikely heroes which includes an ace fighter pilot, a stuntwoman, a super-assassin, and an alien prankster.
Jim, a wise-cracking, OCD-suffering fighter pilot, is about to propose to his girlfriend when his friend Kurt surprises them by showing up at his house, wounded and covered in blood. This is just the beginning of Jim's woes because soon after his life is thrown into a galactic conflict that threatens the very existence of the human race.
Thirty-five years of peace. One vicious attack destroys it all.
Reservist Lieutenant Justin Spencer loves every minute of flying fighters through space during his annual two-week tour with the Coalition Defense Force. The job back home isn’t nearly as thrilling as blowing up asteroids with the squadron under his command, but it keeps him close to his wife and daughter. After all, joining the CDF was only for the free education. Justin never expected a battle, much less a war.
With one shot across his cockpit, peacetime fades into memory.
An unexpected enemy emerges with overwhelming force designed to obliterate the Terran Coalition. The League of Sol has a different name, but it’s the same communist regime that chased away much of Earth’s population hundreds of years ago.
Illusions of returning home are shattered in a single instant. Simulated battles become all too real, and it’s full-on engagement or permanent elimination. Death and destruction erupt across the Terran Coalition and leave Justin in a protracted war with only one truth remaining.
The battlefield will leave no one unscathed.
Death stalks the edges of human space.
Cam Alvarez and Vicky Sandoval have pursued the renegade, Tahni Zan-Thint, to his refuge in the outlaw cartels of the Pirate Worlds. On a planet of endless ocean and volcanic fury, Zan-Thint is coming ever closer to learning the secrets of the ancient alien weapons he’s discovered.
And if Cam and Vicky can’t stop him, he’ll unleash the wrath of a long-dead civilization on all humanity.
The gods have been angered.
Hell will rain down.
After Wic and the Phantom’s successful operation on Karkin Four, the team learns of the enemy’s plans for a swift retaliation: an all-out assault on New York City.
Together, Wic must rally the team’s resources to plan an emergency counterassault that will push the Phantoms to their limits. With help from unexpected places, mission success seems all but assured.
But when a new terrifying technology emerges, Wic must face the most challenging choice of all: sacrifice his teammates for the fate of Earth.
Allegiances will be tested, friendships will fray, and the planet will march toward the greatest darkness it has ever encountered.
When a signature has the power to start a galactic war...
Parv Zarinth learned early in life that if he wanted to defy his father, he’d have to do it from somewhere half-way across the galaxy. He does his best on Hettamir to represent his father’s interests. He steers away from any conflict that may threaten the family business which translates into galactic empire.
Hettamir is a world with no other than hospitality industry. It’s a pleasure to do business on Hettamir, in every sense of the word. And Parv has been mixing business with pleasure for five years now, flying under the radar of his tyrannical father. The business is to expand his father’s business empire. The pleasure has a name: Arun Dyem. She is as beautiful as she is crafty, having risen from the ranks of sex industry to lead her people in a ‘velvet’ revolt.
As the champion of her people’s rights and freedom, she is relentless in lobbying the Galactic Confederation for a treaty that will bring Hettamir protection. It is the last thing the warlords of New Hebrides want.
Parv watches the preparations for the grand event, even as he tries to shake off the feeling that something... or everything is going to go wrong. He finally has what he’s always wanted—a woman he loves and means to keep. She is his whole life, his destiny. And he will fight to his last breath to hold on to his future...
January 27, 2021
The January Round up of Scifi Books
OK, so we're locked down here. After several wonderfully crisp days, with a tiny bit of snow, today is damp. So I had to make a Yoda meme!
And here are the books you want...
Meet eleven protagonists battling to save themselves and the ones they love. Human, cyborg, clone, or alien, they'll find themselves pitted against intergalactic crime bosses, interstellar mercenaries, a quantum-wave-riding collective mind, and the universe itself. Along the way, there’s plenty of action, adventure, humor, and even some romance.
Jason McKay and Shannon Stark, two young Republic Space Fleet Intelligence officers, are given the leadership of a new special ops unit. The mission? Guard the spoiled daughter of an important senator on a tour of the colonies.
Neither of them thought the mission would be anything more than babysitting…until the aliens invaded the colony.
Implacable, relentless, merciless, the armored creatures slaughter everyone who gets in their way. The team is forced to go on the run with the people they're supposed to protect.
But survival will be the least of their challenges. Because it’s not as simple as an alien invasion, and the truth may be even stranger than they can imagine.
Jason and Shannon are forced to weigh the lives of the people they lead–and the ones they love–against their duty, honor, and planet.
Security Lieutenant Dave is looking forward to some simple cases and patching things up with his wife. His handling of a terrorist attack has gained him acclaim and some new friends in high places, but he is still closely involved with Arancha Station's mob boss.
When the space station manager is killed in a new and worrying way, Dave realises that he's got possibly the biggest case of his career. Unfortunately, as soon as his new boss arrives with reinforcements, he is relegated to monitoring data and assigned a rookie partner to babysit.
Dave needs to find something that will crack the case open before the killer can strike again.
Fifteen years into a twenty-year voyage, war veteran Captain Throttle Reyne is looking forward to taking a break from dealing with malfunctions, glitches, and the hassles of monitoring a thousand colonists in cryo-sleep.
But when her colony ship breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Throttle and her crew must leave the colonists behind to search for help. They find a ship that's not only missing a crew… it's clearly not from their star system.
It's the discovery of a lifetime. All they need to do is tow the mysterious vessel back to their colony ship for further study and Throttle won't ever have to work again. One problem. While they're away, the colony ship is stolen—with the colonists still on board.
Throttle gives chase to a lawless star system on the outer rim. To get their colonists back, they must take on the pirates and ganglords who will do anything—and sell anyone—to make a buck.
They play dirty. But Throttle and her crew play dirtier.
Victory can have unexpected consequences, as Mason Grey, Jessica Sinclair, and the rest of the Federal Space Forces are about to find out.
For Mason, after almost getting killed helping the Special Purpose Branch recover the prototype battlecarrier Independence from enemy territory, he is rewarded with a new assignment. Forming a new special operations squadron from the remains of fighter squadrons decimated by the Ascendancy’s first attacks.
For Jessica, it is being sent on a dangerous journey to Earth to investigate the identity of those who created the Ascendancy, and perhaps discover why the Ascendancy decided to wage war against both the Earth Federation and the League of Sovereign Worlds.
For the Federal Space Forces at large, it is inadvertently giving the Ascendancy the opportunity to achieve a final victory without firing a shot. Namely, by creating a refugee crisis to put further strain on the fleet defending Earth after they expended a large portion of their precious fuel reserves supporting the operation to recover Independence.
The Federal Space Forces will have to turn to their old nemesis, the League of Sovereign Worlds for help if they are to ensure the Earth Federation’s continued existence. But the League is in just as much danger being overwhelmed by the Ascendancy as the Earth Federation. The Federal Space Forces will have to find a way to save their old enemy before they can think about rescuing Earth from an impending invasion.
Celeste is the Grekk Empire's top Envoy, but she harbors a secret.
The Enigma War destroyed humanity. Now, an uneasy peace rules the galaxy headed by the Imperium Alliance with the Grekk Empire working behind the shadows to increase its influence.
On a routine first round of negotiations with the Zandrax, a new species, at the fringe of the galaxy, something is amiss. A storm is emerging with the Zandrax bent on challenging the galaxy's order.
In the midst of this crisis, Celeste encounters a mysterious being, who will challenge everything she knows about herself.
Will Celeste be able to hold onto her secret? Can the Zandrax incursion be neutralized? And, will the peace survive this incursion?
After a tarnished military record leaves her unable to find work on Earth, Margo is hunting for a fresh start. A colonizing mission heading to a new world creates the perfect opportunity—or at least that’s what she thinks.
Strapped into a crashing colony ship, she realizes how wrong she is.
On the ground of their destination planet, the straight forward colonizing mission becomes a scramble for survival. Her new world is harsh and unforgiving. Accidents keep happening. Too many to blame on bad luck alone. The trail of evidence leads Margo to a startling conclusion—one of her fellow colonists is a saboteur.
Tomorrow is the colony’s first communications window with Earth and their only chance to send a message home.
With the fate of the colony at stake, will Margo stop the saboteur before it’s too late?
When renowned archeologist Gav Gendin discovers the wreck of an Ancient starship, with a stasis pod and a still living member of the extinct aliens inside, it should be the greatest triumph of his career. Instead, it ends in disaster and leads to his son, Siv, being placed in cryogenic sleep.
A century later, Siv Gendin wakes to a world in decline, a world where you do what you must to survive. With the help of a snarky, sentient AI companion named Silky, Siv becomes a top procurement specialist.
Enslaved to the Shadowslip Guild, Siv has little hope of ever being his own man. Until they offer him freedom in exchange for completing a practically suicidal mission. His target: a young girl with uncanny abilities. Rival criminal guilds, foreign governments, and religious extremists will risk all-out war to get their hands on her—for good reason.
With her mysterious link to the Ancients, this girl could reshape human civilization, perhaps even bring back the golden age Siv knew as a child. But only if he is willing to defy the Shadowslip and risk everything to keep her safe.
Once Sparker was the most celebrated Squadron Leader in the Commonwealth Empire...
Unjustly discharged, he is reduced to running a freighter business on a forsaken planet.
A spate of vanishing freighters brings him in contact with Mirra, a former refugee from the Outer Terra, whose family is amongst the missing.
Can Sparker overcome the past injustice and arise to help find Mirra's family and uncover the secret behind the disappearing freighters? And, is it but a harbinger of a greater threat rising against the Commonwealth Empire?
An ancient threat returns to conquer humanity. They ruled the planet once and they will do it again. Humans can't fight this war—not without help.
For years, Dr. Ethan Fawkes has been communicating with a mysterious scientist using an encoded signal, and together, they designed the first spaceship meant for war. But when the government orders Ethan to dismantle it, his collaborator reveals a terrible secret. An army of powerful aliens is about to invade Earth, and humans must rush to prepare a defense or risk losing their freedom forever.
Collaboration with an unlikely ally is humanity’s only chance at survival.
Fiona has no memories of her origins, but somehow, she shares half her DNA with the invaders. For this, she lives a life of scorn and shame amongst humans. When the enemy arrives to enslave her village, will she help the humans who hate her or join the aliens who welcome her? The key to victory lies in the depths of her obscure past. Can she remember her true heritage before it's too late?
Jada Breaker is on track to graduate from Station Alpha when her best friend is murdered in a terrorist attack. Now, all Jada wants is to stop the violence between her home and Planet Earth - and there's only one person standing in her way.
When Rowan Miles is assigned to compete against her, Jada knows it's her responsibility to crush the competition. And that's fine - how hard can it be to outwit a handsome high-school boy from Earth?
Apparently, harder than she thought. And the discovery of a shocking piece of evidence tied to her best friend's death certainly isn't making Jada's life any easier.
As Jada unravels a complex tapestry of lies, cover-ups, and diversions, she's forced to question whether the interplanetary terrorists truly live on the Earth below... or if they're the people she sees each and every day.
It’s 'The Inbetweeners' meets 'Groundhog Day.'
'Reverb: Live, Die, Rave, Repeat' tells the epic story of six young and adventurous students who get to relive the first day of their, no holds barred, holiday to the hedonistic party haven of Magaluf over and over and over again.
Kylla Torrance leads a mission to establish a sanctuary where genetically engineered Augments can live in peace, beyond the reach of the Shan Takhu Institute.
She knows the truth about the Institute's ominous plans to control the ancient alien technologies left behind in the Solar System, and that only engineered humans can fully access their potential.
People like her. And her team.
When someone on the Agamemnon sells her out to pirates, Kylla's plans spin into chaos. Worse yet, a telepathic slave hunter seeks to crush the threat she represents to the Institute's hold on power.
With the help of a mutinous officer, Kylla has one chance to give her people hope for a future, but to succeed they must disappear into the deep.
The mission to the recently terraformed planet of Lisa should be nothing to worry about for the special unit of the Federation Galactic Military. But there are no straight forward missions that deep in the outer rims, and even the simplest of tasks can be fatal. And no matter how much they train and what their experiences might be, some things space marines can just not account for...
Draken Kosset is a soldier of the Halden Army. He wants to become an officer to protect his homeworld but must pass a final test. Will he succeed?
In a Post Apocalyptic far future, there is only one thing that can save the fragile civilizations humanity has cobbled together: the mechs. A ragtag crew of mech pilots must battle the undead hordes, cannibal tribes, and religious cults in a daily race to keep humanity safe. But now a threat worse than anything has surfaced and is growing stronger. The undead have reanimated in their own battle machines and created the rise of the Dead Mechs!
Captain Jonathan Hogart’s first mission to Frequency One seems to be going well. New crew, new flash ship, and a new race of aliens to make first contact with.
But the binary suns start affecting his team in strange ways, the friendly aliens turn out to be not so friendly, and now he finds himself glued to the ground awaiting possible separation if he doesn’t hand over flash relocation technology.
As the sticky situation gets more and more complicated, and the mushroom bugs reveal further surprises, the alien crew discover that it’s not only planet brown and purple that they have to worry about. There is a much greater threat towards the center of the star system.
And here are the books you want...
Meet eleven protagonists battling to save themselves and the ones they love. Human, cyborg, clone, or alien, they'll find themselves pitted against intergalactic crime bosses, interstellar mercenaries, a quantum-wave-riding collective mind, and the universe itself. Along the way, there’s plenty of action, adventure, humor, and even some romance.
Jason McKay and Shannon Stark, two young Republic Space Fleet Intelligence officers, are given the leadership of a new special ops unit. The mission? Guard the spoiled daughter of an important senator on a tour of the colonies.
Neither of them thought the mission would be anything more than babysitting…until the aliens invaded the colony.
Implacable, relentless, merciless, the armored creatures slaughter everyone who gets in their way. The team is forced to go on the run with the people they're supposed to protect.
But survival will be the least of their challenges. Because it’s not as simple as an alien invasion, and the truth may be even stranger than they can imagine.
Jason and Shannon are forced to weigh the lives of the people they lead–and the ones they love–against their duty, honor, and planet.
Security Lieutenant Dave is looking forward to some simple cases and patching things up with his wife. His handling of a terrorist attack has gained him acclaim and some new friends in high places, but he is still closely involved with Arancha Station's mob boss.
When the space station manager is killed in a new and worrying way, Dave realises that he's got possibly the biggest case of his career. Unfortunately, as soon as his new boss arrives with reinforcements, he is relegated to monitoring data and assigned a rookie partner to babysit.
Dave needs to find something that will crack the case open before the killer can strike again.
Fifteen years into a twenty-year voyage, war veteran Captain Throttle Reyne is looking forward to taking a break from dealing with malfunctions, glitches, and the hassles of monitoring a thousand colonists in cryo-sleep.
But when her colony ship breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Throttle and her crew must leave the colonists behind to search for help. They find a ship that's not only missing a crew… it's clearly not from their star system.
It's the discovery of a lifetime. All they need to do is tow the mysterious vessel back to their colony ship for further study and Throttle won't ever have to work again. One problem. While they're away, the colony ship is stolen—with the colonists still on board.
Throttle gives chase to a lawless star system on the outer rim. To get their colonists back, they must take on the pirates and ganglords who will do anything—and sell anyone—to make a buck.
They play dirty. But Throttle and her crew play dirtier.
Victory can have unexpected consequences, as Mason Grey, Jessica Sinclair, and the rest of the Federal Space Forces are about to find out.
For Mason, after almost getting killed helping the Special Purpose Branch recover the prototype battlecarrier Independence from enemy territory, he is rewarded with a new assignment. Forming a new special operations squadron from the remains of fighter squadrons decimated by the Ascendancy’s first attacks.
For Jessica, it is being sent on a dangerous journey to Earth to investigate the identity of those who created the Ascendancy, and perhaps discover why the Ascendancy decided to wage war against both the Earth Federation and the League of Sovereign Worlds.
For the Federal Space Forces at large, it is inadvertently giving the Ascendancy the opportunity to achieve a final victory without firing a shot. Namely, by creating a refugee crisis to put further strain on the fleet defending Earth after they expended a large portion of their precious fuel reserves supporting the operation to recover Independence.
The Federal Space Forces will have to turn to their old nemesis, the League of Sovereign Worlds for help if they are to ensure the Earth Federation’s continued existence. But the League is in just as much danger being overwhelmed by the Ascendancy as the Earth Federation. The Federal Space Forces will have to find a way to save their old enemy before they can think about rescuing Earth from an impending invasion.
Celeste is the Grekk Empire's top Envoy, but she harbors a secret.
The Enigma War destroyed humanity. Now, an uneasy peace rules the galaxy headed by the Imperium Alliance with the Grekk Empire working behind the shadows to increase its influence.
On a routine first round of negotiations with the Zandrax, a new species, at the fringe of the galaxy, something is amiss. A storm is emerging with the Zandrax bent on challenging the galaxy's order.
In the midst of this crisis, Celeste encounters a mysterious being, who will challenge everything she knows about herself.
Will Celeste be able to hold onto her secret? Can the Zandrax incursion be neutralized? And, will the peace survive this incursion?
After a tarnished military record leaves her unable to find work on Earth, Margo is hunting for a fresh start. A colonizing mission heading to a new world creates the perfect opportunity—or at least that’s what she thinks.
Strapped into a crashing colony ship, she realizes how wrong she is.
On the ground of their destination planet, the straight forward colonizing mission becomes a scramble for survival. Her new world is harsh and unforgiving. Accidents keep happening. Too many to blame on bad luck alone. The trail of evidence leads Margo to a startling conclusion—one of her fellow colonists is a saboteur.
Tomorrow is the colony’s first communications window with Earth and their only chance to send a message home.
With the fate of the colony at stake, will Margo stop the saboteur before it’s too late?
When renowned archeologist Gav Gendin discovers the wreck of an Ancient starship, with a stasis pod and a still living member of the extinct aliens inside, it should be the greatest triumph of his career. Instead, it ends in disaster and leads to his son, Siv, being placed in cryogenic sleep.
A century later, Siv Gendin wakes to a world in decline, a world where you do what you must to survive. With the help of a snarky, sentient AI companion named Silky, Siv becomes a top procurement specialist.
Enslaved to the Shadowslip Guild, Siv has little hope of ever being his own man. Until they offer him freedom in exchange for completing a practically suicidal mission. His target: a young girl with uncanny abilities. Rival criminal guilds, foreign governments, and religious extremists will risk all-out war to get their hands on her—for good reason.
With her mysterious link to the Ancients, this girl could reshape human civilization, perhaps even bring back the golden age Siv knew as a child. But only if he is willing to defy the Shadowslip and risk everything to keep her safe.
Once Sparker was the most celebrated Squadron Leader in the Commonwealth Empire...
Unjustly discharged, he is reduced to running a freighter business on a forsaken planet.
A spate of vanishing freighters brings him in contact with Mirra, a former refugee from the Outer Terra, whose family is amongst the missing.
Can Sparker overcome the past injustice and arise to help find Mirra's family and uncover the secret behind the disappearing freighters? And, is it but a harbinger of a greater threat rising against the Commonwealth Empire?
An ancient threat returns to conquer humanity. They ruled the planet once and they will do it again. Humans can't fight this war—not without help.
For years, Dr. Ethan Fawkes has been communicating with a mysterious scientist using an encoded signal, and together, they designed the first spaceship meant for war. But when the government orders Ethan to dismantle it, his collaborator reveals a terrible secret. An army of powerful aliens is about to invade Earth, and humans must rush to prepare a defense or risk losing their freedom forever.
Collaboration with an unlikely ally is humanity’s only chance at survival.
Fiona has no memories of her origins, but somehow, she shares half her DNA with the invaders. For this, she lives a life of scorn and shame amongst humans. When the enemy arrives to enslave her village, will she help the humans who hate her or join the aliens who welcome her? The key to victory lies in the depths of her obscure past. Can she remember her true heritage before it's too late?
And now some free books in exchange for signing up to the authors' mailing lists...
Jada Breaker is on track to graduate from Station Alpha when her best friend is murdered in a terrorist attack. Now, all Jada wants is to stop the violence between her home and Planet Earth - and there's only one person standing in her way.
When Rowan Miles is assigned to compete against her, Jada knows it's her responsibility to crush the competition. And that's fine - how hard can it be to outwit a handsome high-school boy from Earth?
Apparently, harder than she thought. And the discovery of a shocking piece of evidence tied to her best friend's death certainly isn't making Jada's life any easier.
As Jada unravels a complex tapestry of lies, cover-ups, and diversions, she's forced to question whether the interplanetary terrorists truly live on the Earth below... or if they're the people she sees each and every day.
It’s 'The Inbetweeners' meets 'Groundhog Day.'
'Reverb: Live, Die, Rave, Repeat' tells the epic story of six young and adventurous students who get to relive the first day of their, no holds barred, holiday to the hedonistic party haven of Magaluf over and over and over again.
Kylla Torrance leads a mission to establish a sanctuary where genetically engineered Augments can live in peace, beyond the reach of the Shan Takhu Institute.
She knows the truth about the Institute's ominous plans to control the ancient alien technologies left behind in the Solar System, and that only engineered humans can fully access their potential.
People like her. And her team.
When someone on the Agamemnon sells her out to pirates, Kylla's plans spin into chaos. Worse yet, a telepathic slave hunter seeks to crush the threat she represents to the Institute's hold on power.
With the help of a mutinous officer, Kylla has one chance to give her people hope for a future, but to succeed they must disappear into the deep.
The mission to the recently terraformed planet of Lisa should be nothing to worry about for the special unit of the Federation Galactic Military. But there are no straight forward missions that deep in the outer rims, and even the simplest of tasks can be fatal. And no matter how much they train and what their experiences might be, some things space marines can just not account for...
Draken Kosset is a soldier of the Halden Army. He wants to become an officer to protect his homeworld but must pass a final test. Will he succeed?
In a Post Apocalyptic far future, there is only one thing that can save the fragile civilizations humanity has cobbled together: the mechs. A ragtag crew of mech pilots must battle the undead hordes, cannibal tribes, and religious cults in a daily race to keep humanity safe. But now a threat worse than anything has surfaced and is growing stronger. The undead have reanimated in their own battle machines and created the rise of the Dead Mechs!
Captain Jonathan Hogart’s first mission to Frequency One seems to be going well. New crew, new flash ship, and a new race of aliens to make first contact with.
But the binary suns start affecting his team in strange ways, the friendly aliens turn out to be not so friendly, and now he finds himself glued to the ground awaiting possible separation if he doesn’t hand over flash relocation technology.
As the sticky situation gets more and more complicated, and the mushroom bugs reveal further surprises, the alien crew discover that it’s not only planet brown and purple that they have to worry about. There is a much greater threat towards the center of the star system.
December 27, 2020
The December Roundup of Scifi Books
Hope you're having a nice holiday. Our little hamlet really does the winter well and there are so many lights in the gardens. Nothing like this, though...
To help pass the long nights, I have made the first novel in the Two Democracies: Revolution series, Liberty, free in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia for a few days - if you haven't already got it, now's a perfect opportunity!
Whatever, here are the other books you want...
Struggling with newfound sentience and desperately trying to repair itself, The Indescribable Joy of Destruction is a ship trying to find a new home. In a galaxy torn apart by generations of civil war, that isn't an easy task. Tired of being used as a killing machine, it has a huge decision to make: hide and save itself, or help other artificial intelligences achieve freedom. Unable to make the decision alone, it revives the sole human aboard - the enemy officer who crippled it.
Commander Olivia Johnson wakes to find herself in the infirmary of a strange vessel. Her nightmares deepen when she discovers it is the ship that attacked her destroyer. Even as she recovers from her physical injuries, she can't get past her survivor's guilt. She might have failed to protect her crew, but she vows to take revenge on their killer.
When the ship uncovers a genocidal plot by the commander's own admirals, Johnson realises just what is at stake. Together, the AI ship and the human officer must recruit outsiders from both sides. Training the misfits in battle to prevent the atrocity may be an impossible task, but running and hiding is no longer an option.
Captain Robert Faulkner is a free man.
For twenty years he languished in an alien prison.
For twenty years he suffered under foreign stars.
For twenty years he plotted his escape.
But all that changes when he crosses paths with LaCruz Jackson, a female Marine hell-bent on dragging him back to the frontline.
For, in his absence the tide has turned. His old enemy, the Yakutian Empire, is now in the ascendancy. With their warships making cruel in-roads into Confederation space, the Admiralty is in desperate need of Faulkner’s experience.
And with Jackson watching his back, it’s a call he can’t refuse.
No-one comes in peace. Every being in the galaxy wants something, and is willing to take it by force.
The Hedalt were no different. They came from the distant reaches of the galaxy to wage war. Their fleet wanted to take Earth for its prize, but we were ready. We were stronger.
For years, we fought them, ship-to-ship, until we scattered their forces and drove them back. Pursuing the Hedalt fleet to their home world, we delivered the decisive blow. We nuked their planet and wiped them out for good.
Or so we thought.
For decades, Earth Fleet sent out Deep Space Recon missions to scour the galaxy and clean up the remnants of the Hedalt Empire. Eventually, we found only ghosts – empty outposts and long-dead colonies. But, close to the edge of known space, I – Captain Taylor Ray – and my crew are about to make a discovery that will change everything.
The war isn’t over. The war has yet to begin.
Jack Reilly's luck ran out just before the war did. Resigning his commission in the Alliance shortly after the end of the war with the Serkins, he went out into the galaxy looking for a job. Signing onto the Glacier Runner 17, an old and rundown cargo ship, Reilly finds himself working for a clueless captain, mixed-up in an intergalactic conspiracy, on the run from assassins, and involved with two women in relationships that he could only call "complicated".
At the dawn of mankind's colonization of the stars, it’s threatened by an alien collective known as the Galactic Alliance. They insist humanity has knowingly broken its most sacred law and only one family knows the truth.
As the President of the Confederation of Planetary Explorers, Abigail Olivaw thought she’d be a footnote in a centuries old master plan, until she and her brothers are thrust into defending mankind in a galactic tribunal. With her family worlds away, she enlists the help of her A.I. to turn the tide.
Forced into a political power struggle while an alien virus threatens to destroy their new home, Major Lync Michaels and Director Joyce Green must choose to defend the colony or answer a call to arms light years away. What they both uncover shakes the very foundation on which the colony was formed.
Can they mend their fractured pasts to save humanity or are they millennia too late?
The year is 2075. Britain has isolated itself from the other nations of planet Earth for decades. But now a first attempt at illegally colonising a forbidden alien world has gone horribly wrong, threatening to ignite an interstellar war.
When Harper Mulgrew and her fellow survivors discover a terrifying message in the sand of Proxima B, they must defend themselves from hostile natives and a traitor within as they struggle to establish Britain’s presence in a new star system.
Atlas Nations military veteran Donald Stafford intends to protect Proxima A from a British incursion but first, he must face up to the sins of his past and broker an uneasy alliance with old foes.
And, as a serial killer stalks the streets of London, rookie journalist Washington Parker puts his life on the line to expose the unthinkable truths of the corrupt British government and their secretive colonisation programme.
Greta wakes up in a tunnel surrounded by soldiers, with nothing to her name but a red uniform and a sharp mind. The only thing she knows for sure: she needs to think fast if she's going to survive.
As Greta searches for a place to hide from the fighters, she notices bizarre details in her world. Are trees supposed to have secret panels? And why is the war zone next to a perfectly manicured suburb?
When Greta puts on a blue uniform and hides among the enemy, she learns they're not the monsters she expected. Their warmth and gentleness seem out of place in the battle-scarred city.
Sandy Cox believed WW3 was over. But for those Alien Vampires, war has just begun.
Forty-eight hours after a World War 3 treaty is signed Sandy Cox awakens in an underground compound unable to move. Tied to machines, she screams for help but no one answers. At least no one human.
And they’ve taken her unborn child.
Phil is a rebel freedom fighter who has had more than his share of Alien Vampires. Armed with The Blades, a sacred alien martial arts weapon, he enters the compound on a mission to find Sandy. But as he battles through the compound, Phil discovers Sandy has her own agenda. Finding her stolen child is all that matters.
But the Vampires have their own plan and Sandy’s baby is at the heart of their diabolical plot.
Joined by a crew of rogue soldiers, they must navigate the underground compound, combating genetically mutated humans, aliens, and monsters.
When battling Alien Vampires, one thing is certain…Get Ready To Bleed!
Spin's death approaches, and she asks her crew to go after the cure that will remove her life cap and give her all the benefits of being human. That means going to the Geist System, which is about to become the most prized looting target in the galaxy. Governments, raiders and corporations alike are ready to go to war over the advanced technology there, and Spin has to lead her people straight into the middle where she's unsure of what other obstacles the mad artificial intelligences have left for them.
To help pass the long nights, I have made the first novel in the Two Democracies: Revolution series, Liberty, free in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia for a few days - if you haven't already got it, now's a perfect opportunity!
Whatever, here are the other books you want...
Struggling with newfound sentience and desperately trying to repair itself, The Indescribable Joy of Destruction is a ship trying to find a new home. In a galaxy torn apart by generations of civil war, that isn't an easy task. Tired of being used as a killing machine, it has a huge decision to make: hide and save itself, or help other artificial intelligences achieve freedom. Unable to make the decision alone, it revives the sole human aboard - the enemy officer who crippled it.
Commander Olivia Johnson wakes to find herself in the infirmary of a strange vessel. Her nightmares deepen when she discovers it is the ship that attacked her destroyer. Even as she recovers from her physical injuries, she can't get past her survivor's guilt. She might have failed to protect her crew, but she vows to take revenge on their killer.
When the ship uncovers a genocidal plot by the commander's own admirals, Johnson realises just what is at stake. Together, the AI ship and the human officer must recruit outsiders from both sides. Training the misfits in battle to prevent the atrocity may be an impossible task, but running and hiding is no longer an option.
Captain Robert Faulkner is a free man.
For twenty years he languished in an alien prison.
For twenty years he suffered under foreign stars.
For twenty years he plotted his escape.
But all that changes when he crosses paths with LaCruz Jackson, a female Marine hell-bent on dragging him back to the frontline.
For, in his absence the tide has turned. His old enemy, the Yakutian Empire, is now in the ascendancy. With their warships making cruel in-roads into Confederation space, the Admiralty is in desperate need of Faulkner’s experience.
And with Jackson watching his back, it’s a call he can’t refuse.
No-one comes in peace. Every being in the galaxy wants something, and is willing to take it by force.
The Hedalt were no different. They came from the distant reaches of the galaxy to wage war. Their fleet wanted to take Earth for its prize, but we were ready. We were stronger.
For years, we fought them, ship-to-ship, until we scattered their forces and drove them back. Pursuing the Hedalt fleet to their home world, we delivered the decisive blow. We nuked their planet and wiped them out for good.
Or so we thought.
For decades, Earth Fleet sent out Deep Space Recon missions to scour the galaxy and clean up the remnants of the Hedalt Empire. Eventually, we found only ghosts – empty outposts and long-dead colonies. But, close to the edge of known space, I – Captain Taylor Ray – and my crew are about to make a discovery that will change everything.
The war isn’t over. The war has yet to begin.
Jack Reilly's luck ran out just before the war did. Resigning his commission in the Alliance shortly after the end of the war with the Serkins, he went out into the galaxy looking for a job. Signing onto the Glacier Runner 17, an old and rundown cargo ship, Reilly finds himself working for a clueless captain, mixed-up in an intergalactic conspiracy, on the run from assassins, and involved with two women in relationships that he could only call "complicated".
At the dawn of mankind's colonization of the stars, it’s threatened by an alien collective known as the Galactic Alliance. They insist humanity has knowingly broken its most sacred law and only one family knows the truth.
As the President of the Confederation of Planetary Explorers, Abigail Olivaw thought she’d be a footnote in a centuries old master plan, until she and her brothers are thrust into defending mankind in a galactic tribunal. With her family worlds away, she enlists the help of her A.I. to turn the tide.
Forced into a political power struggle while an alien virus threatens to destroy their new home, Major Lync Michaels and Director Joyce Green must choose to defend the colony or answer a call to arms light years away. What they both uncover shakes the very foundation on which the colony was formed.
Can they mend their fractured pasts to save humanity or are they millennia too late?
The year is 2075. Britain has isolated itself from the other nations of planet Earth for decades. But now a first attempt at illegally colonising a forbidden alien world has gone horribly wrong, threatening to ignite an interstellar war.
When Harper Mulgrew and her fellow survivors discover a terrifying message in the sand of Proxima B, they must defend themselves from hostile natives and a traitor within as they struggle to establish Britain’s presence in a new star system.
Atlas Nations military veteran Donald Stafford intends to protect Proxima A from a British incursion but first, he must face up to the sins of his past and broker an uneasy alliance with old foes.
And, as a serial killer stalks the streets of London, rookie journalist Washington Parker puts his life on the line to expose the unthinkable truths of the corrupt British government and their secretive colonisation programme.
Greta wakes up in a tunnel surrounded by soldiers, with nothing to her name but a red uniform and a sharp mind. The only thing she knows for sure: she needs to think fast if she's going to survive.
As Greta searches for a place to hide from the fighters, she notices bizarre details in her world. Are trees supposed to have secret panels? And why is the war zone next to a perfectly manicured suburb?
When Greta puts on a blue uniform and hides among the enemy, she learns they're not the monsters she expected. Their warmth and gentleness seem out of place in the battle-scarred city.
Sandy Cox believed WW3 was over. But for those Alien Vampires, war has just begun.
Forty-eight hours after a World War 3 treaty is signed Sandy Cox awakens in an underground compound unable to move. Tied to machines, she screams for help but no one answers. At least no one human.
And they’ve taken her unborn child.
Phil is a rebel freedom fighter who has had more than his share of Alien Vampires. Armed with The Blades, a sacred alien martial arts weapon, he enters the compound on a mission to find Sandy. But as he battles through the compound, Phil discovers Sandy has her own agenda. Finding her stolen child is all that matters.
But the Vampires have their own plan and Sandy’s baby is at the heart of their diabolical plot.
Joined by a crew of rogue soldiers, they must navigate the underground compound, combating genetically mutated humans, aliens, and monsters.
When battling Alien Vampires, one thing is certain…Get Ready To Bleed!
Spin's death approaches, and she asks her crew to go after the cure that will remove her life cap and give her all the benefits of being human. That means going to the Geist System, which is about to become the most prized looting target in the galaxy. Governments, raiders and corporations alike are ready to go to war over the advanced technology there, and Spin has to lead her people straight into the middle where she's unsure of what other obstacles the mad artificial intelligences have left for them.
November 28, 2020
The November Roundup of Scifi Books
Well, it's been a good autumn. Lots of lovely fungi on our family walks. As I write, we're shrouded in god and the leafless trees are stark black against this background. Glad to have logs crackling in the fire.
So tuck up tight with some more books...
Marine First Lieutenant Jacob Brown is bored.
For months he's been sitting around on an alien planet, waiting for command to recall his scout team so they could rest and be re-outfitted. The team went through hell during their previous mission, losing both their commanding officer and their ship. For now, Jacob was acting CO of Scout Team Obsidian and their ship was a broken down old surplus combat shuttle they'd stolen from narco-smugglers on a planet called Niceen-3.
When command finally does reach out, however, it isn't to order Obsidian home for some much needed R&R. Instead, they are being reactivated and sent out into the contested space of the recently conquered Eshquarian Empire to track down a single Terran cruiser called the Eagle's Talon.
The Talon's captain has gone rogue and is operating within a fleet of ships bent on open rebellion against the quadrant's only remaining superpower. If that ship is discovered within the rebel fleet, Earth will bear the brunt of the ConFed's reprisal. Jacob's team is in a race against time to locate the missing ship and her rogue captain so that a Navy strike force can swoop in and reclaim her... or destroy her.
An invading alien force puts humanity on trial. A deadly alien super-virus threatens the first human extrasolar colony. A family secret nearly three centuries old lies at the center.
At the dawn of mankind's colonization of the stars, it’s threatened by an alien collective known as the Galactic Alliance. They insist humanity has knowingly broken its most sacred law and only one family knows the truth.
As the President of the Confederation of Planetary Explorers, Abigail Olivaw thought she’d be a footnote in a centuries old master plan, until she and her brothers are thrust into defending mankind in a galactic tribunal. With her family worlds away, she enlists the help of her A.I. to turn the tide.
Forced into a political power struggle while an alien virus threatens to destroy their new home, Major Lync Michaels and Director Joyce Green must choose to defend the colony or answer a call to arms light years away. What they both uncover shakes the very foundation on which the colony was formed.
Can they all mend their fractured pasts to save humanity or are they millennia too late?
They thought it was a ship full of treasure, but it was a trap.
Hate Hudson, a rejuvie pirate, and her partner Xante discover a derelict safe ship. They break into hoping to cart off its treasures, but the danger mounts and the price grows steeper the closer they get to the end. As the noose closes, it becomes difficult to see any hope for escape.
Seeking to escape the shadow of Annette Bond’s success, Captain Morgan Casimir has taken a posting on the far side of the A!Tol Imperium. Here she hopes to begin a legend for herself that stands apart from her stepmother, the Duchess.
A chance encounter introduces her to the xenoarcheologist Rin Dunst—and to the strange mystery cult that tried to silence him. There are darker secrets in these stars than the A!Tol and their human allies ever guessed…and if they can’t find answers, the Precursors' mistakes might yet destroy the galaxy.
In the near future, a new ice age has begun.
Humanity stands on the brink of extinction.
Desperate for answers, scientists send probes into the solar system to take readings. Near Mars, they identify a mysterious object moving toward the Sun. Is it the cause of the ice age? Or could it be humanity’s only hope of survival?
With time running out, NASA launches a mission to make contact. But the object isn’t what anyone thought. In the dark of space, alone, the team makes a discovery that will change the course of human history—and possibly end it.
The year is 2075. Britain has isolated itself from the other nations of planet Earth for decades. But now a first attempt at illegally colonising a forbidden alien world has gone horribly wrong, threatening to ignite an interstellar war.
When Harper Mulgrew and her fellow survivors discover a terrifying message in the sand of Proxima B, they must defend themselves from hostile natives and a traitor within as they struggle to establish Britain’s presence in a new star system.
Atlas Nations military veteran Donald Stafford intends to protect Proxima A from a British incursion but first, he must face up to the sins of his past and broker an uneasy alliance with old foes.
And, as a serial killer stalks the streets of London, rookie journalist Washington Parker puts his life on the line to expose the unthinkable truths of the corrupt British government and their secretive colonisation programme.
Plundering innocent worlds; that is Doc Roberts job, and he is good at it. He was awarded a letter of Marque and a territory to hunt in exchange for his service to the Alliance and of course, a cut of his take.
The Alliance government can't openly operate in Commonwealth territory without starting another war, so they use privateers like Captain Roberts to destabilize governments and cause unease among the people in hopes that they will ask for Alliance protection.
Cheating and treachery cause Captain Roberts to reevaluate his loyalty. He can live with a little pilfering, but not outright stealing from him by trespassing on his planet. There is only one thing he can do. Teach the Alliance government that there is a price to pay for taking what is not theirs. The Alliance goes too far when they send an assassin to kill Doc's wife. Now it is outright war, for Captain Roberts anyway. Now he is both a pirate and a rebel with people on both sides of the border whom either loves him or hates him.
After fighting a duel with one of the Alliance's promising new captains, torturing him, and leaving him for dead; he has made powerful enemies in the Alliance hegemony. The Alliance military leaders want to make Captain Roberts suffer like he made their captain suffer.
One man can only do so much, and Doc is getting tired. It is time to pass the reins of command to his son. But first, he must crush his son's dreams and teach him what it means to be an Alliance citizen.
A mutated superhero. An evil scientist. When justice comes to the corrupt-ridden metropolis, will anyone survive? When the raindrops touch him, mutant Reinhardt’s enhanced strength and awareness pulse through his green-glowing veins. Using his superhuman abilities, the mysterious vigilante stalks those who turned his home into an anarchic chaos of violence. But when his activities attract the attention of a demented genius, Reinhardt is forced to mount an attack… or become the hunted.
Desperate for answers, he teams up with an intrepid journalist to expose the doctor and protect New Hampton. And when they discover the fiend’s secret lab, they fear the horror he’s unleashed with his unspeakable experiments can never be stopped.
Can Reinhardt save the city before the psychotic mastermind lines the streets with carnage?
The Solarian League's navy counts its superdreadnoughts by the thousands. Not even its own government knows how enormous its economy truly is. And for hundreds of years, the League has borne the banner of human civilization, been the ideal to which humanity aspires in its diaspora across the galaxy.
But the bureaucrats known as the "Mandarins," who rule today's League, are not the men and women who founded it so long ago. They are corrupt, venal, accountable to no one... and they've decided the upstart Star Kingdom of Manticore must be destroyed.
Honor Harrington has worn the Star Kingdom's uniform for half a century and served her monarch and her people well. In the course of those years, the woman the newsies call the Salamander has grown from a tactically brilliant but politically naïve junior officer to supreme fleet command and a seat on the highest military and political councils of the Grand Alliance.
So tuck up tight with some more books...
Marine First Lieutenant Jacob Brown is bored.
For months he's been sitting around on an alien planet, waiting for command to recall his scout team so they could rest and be re-outfitted. The team went through hell during their previous mission, losing both their commanding officer and their ship. For now, Jacob was acting CO of Scout Team Obsidian and their ship was a broken down old surplus combat shuttle they'd stolen from narco-smugglers on a planet called Niceen-3.
When command finally does reach out, however, it isn't to order Obsidian home for some much needed R&R. Instead, they are being reactivated and sent out into the contested space of the recently conquered Eshquarian Empire to track down a single Terran cruiser called the Eagle's Talon.
The Talon's captain has gone rogue and is operating within a fleet of ships bent on open rebellion against the quadrant's only remaining superpower. If that ship is discovered within the rebel fleet, Earth will bear the brunt of the ConFed's reprisal. Jacob's team is in a race against time to locate the missing ship and her rogue captain so that a Navy strike force can swoop in and reclaim her... or destroy her.
An invading alien force puts humanity on trial. A deadly alien super-virus threatens the first human extrasolar colony. A family secret nearly three centuries old lies at the center.
At the dawn of mankind's colonization of the stars, it’s threatened by an alien collective known as the Galactic Alliance. They insist humanity has knowingly broken its most sacred law and only one family knows the truth.
As the President of the Confederation of Planetary Explorers, Abigail Olivaw thought she’d be a footnote in a centuries old master plan, until she and her brothers are thrust into defending mankind in a galactic tribunal. With her family worlds away, she enlists the help of her A.I. to turn the tide.
Forced into a political power struggle while an alien virus threatens to destroy their new home, Major Lync Michaels and Director Joyce Green must choose to defend the colony or answer a call to arms light years away. What they both uncover shakes the very foundation on which the colony was formed.
Can they all mend their fractured pasts to save humanity or are they millennia too late?
They thought it was a ship full of treasure, but it was a trap.
Hate Hudson, a rejuvie pirate, and her partner Xante discover a derelict safe ship. They break into hoping to cart off its treasures, but the danger mounts and the price grows steeper the closer they get to the end. As the noose closes, it becomes difficult to see any hope for escape.
Seeking to escape the shadow of Annette Bond’s success, Captain Morgan Casimir has taken a posting on the far side of the A!Tol Imperium. Here she hopes to begin a legend for herself that stands apart from her stepmother, the Duchess.
A chance encounter introduces her to the xenoarcheologist Rin Dunst—and to the strange mystery cult that tried to silence him. There are darker secrets in these stars than the A!Tol and their human allies ever guessed…and if they can’t find answers, the Precursors' mistakes might yet destroy the galaxy.
In the near future, a new ice age has begun.
Humanity stands on the brink of extinction.
Desperate for answers, scientists send probes into the solar system to take readings. Near Mars, they identify a mysterious object moving toward the Sun. Is it the cause of the ice age? Or could it be humanity’s only hope of survival?
With time running out, NASA launches a mission to make contact. But the object isn’t what anyone thought. In the dark of space, alone, the team makes a discovery that will change the course of human history—and possibly end it.
The year is 2075. Britain has isolated itself from the other nations of planet Earth for decades. But now a first attempt at illegally colonising a forbidden alien world has gone horribly wrong, threatening to ignite an interstellar war.
When Harper Mulgrew and her fellow survivors discover a terrifying message in the sand of Proxima B, they must defend themselves from hostile natives and a traitor within as they struggle to establish Britain’s presence in a new star system.
Atlas Nations military veteran Donald Stafford intends to protect Proxima A from a British incursion but first, he must face up to the sins of his past and broker an uneasy alliance with old foes.
And, as a serial killer stalks the streets of London, rookie journalist Washington Parker puts his life on the line to expose the unthinkable truths of the corrupt British government and their secretive colonisation programme.
Plundering innocent worlds; that is Doc Roberts job, and he is good at it. He was awarded a letter of Marque and a territory to hunt in exchange for his service to the Alliance and of course, a cut of his take.
The Alliance government can't openly operate in Commonwealth territory without starting another war, so they use privateers like Captain Roberts to destabilize governments and cause unease among the people in hopes that they will ask for Alliance protection.
Cheating and treachery cause Captain Roberts to reevaluate his loyalty. He can live with a little pilfering, but not outright stealing from him by trespassing on his planet. There is only one thing he can do. Teach the Alliance government that there is a price to pay for taking what is not theirs. The Alliance goes too far when they send an assassin to kill Doc's wife. Now it is outright war, for Captain Roberts anyway. Now he is both a pirate and a rebel with people on both sides of the border whom either loves him or hates him.
After fighting a duel with one of the Alliance's promising new captains, torturing him, and leaving him for dead; he has made powerful enemies in the Alliance hegemony. The Alliance military leaders want to make Captain Roberts suffer like he made their captain suffer.
One man can only do so much, and Doc is getting tired. It is time to pass the reins of command to his son. But first, he must crush his son's dreams and teach him what it means to be an Alliance citizen.
A mutated superhero. An evil scientist. When justice comes to the corrupt-ridden metropolis, will anyone survive? When the raindrops touch him, mutant Reinhardt’s enhanced strength and awareness pulse through his green-glowing veins. Using his superhuman abilities, the mysterious vigilante stalks those who turned his home into an anarchic chaos of violence. But when his activities attract the attention of a demented genius, Reinhardt is forced to mount an attack… or become the hunted.
Desperate for answers, he teams up with an intrepid journalist to expose the doctor and protect New Hampton. And when they discover the fiend’s secret lab, they fear the horror he’s unleashed with his unspeakable experiments can never be stopped.
Can Reinhardt save the city before the psychotic mastermind lines the streets with carnage?
The Solarian League's navy counts its superdreadnoughts by the thousands. Not even its own government knows how enormous its economy truly is. And for hundreds of years, the League has borne the banner of human civilization, been the ideal to which humanity aspires in its diaspora across the galaxy.
But the bureaucrats known as the "Mandarins," who rule today's League, are not the men and women who founded it so long ago. They are corrupt, venal, accountable to no one... and they've decided the upstart Star Kingdom of Manticore must be destroyed.
Honor Harrington has worn the Star Kingdom's uniform for half a century and served her monarch and her people well. In the course of those years, the woman the newsies call the Salamander has grown from a tactically brilliant but politically naïve junior officer to supreme fleet command and a seat on the highest military and political councils of the Grand Alliance.
