The June Roundup of Scifi Books

Well the big news is that Fraternity will be released on 18 July. It is already available to preorder at several retailers, with more coming online as they process the files. Click on the cover to reserve your copy...

And now, to celebrate, a bumper edition of the round-up...

The Bad Company is the only force capable of unlocking destiny.
Terry and Char take the Bad Company beyond the frontier, back to Benitus Seven. What they find shocks them to the very core of their beings
Marcie and Kae develop a new force, a land army to win the peace and keep it. They are sent to Kor’nar, a planet populated by insect people. Their challenges start buzzing the second they land with a force ten thousand strong.
When two worlds clash, there can only be one winner.
Terry. Char. The last chapter. Read it now.

As the war between the Human Planetary Alliance and the Daklan intensifies, Captain Carl Recker experiences a sudden change in fortune.
With battle-hardened officers in short supply, he’s given command of a modified, shipyard-fresh destroyer and a mission to go with it. As part of a task force under the command of an officer Recker is unfortunately all-too-familiar with, the plan is to recover weapons and technology from an uncharted world on the edge of known space.
Easy.
Little does Recker know it, but the outcome of this mission may well determine the future of both humanity and the Daklan. The distant planet Pinvos will be the scene of conflict and destruction on a cataclysmic scale and even success will be tempered by the uncertainty of what he discovers.
With each passing day, a faraway war fought on a colossal scale comes ever nearer and humanity has no defence against the weapons created to fight it.
No defence except perhaps one thing. The alien warship Vengeance has survived countless engagements and still it endures, scarred by the brutality of its past.
And Recker is the only man with the key to unlock its secrets.

For three years, he’s fought the marauding alien Tahni on one God-forsaken planet after another, leading a squad of armored Drop Troopers.
But the war is about to change.
Cam is an officer now, fresh out of OCS and taking charge of his old platoon, and things have reached a tipping point. Instead of fighting a desperate holding action against the enemy, the Commonwealth is finally ready to take back the human colonies the Tahni seized early in the war. To free the people the enemy have kept as human shields.
However, victory comes at a price. Both for the hostage colonists and the Marines who fight to free them. When innocent lives are at stake, every shot fired is danger close…

It was a nice simple war. Just the Earth Federation and the League of Sovereign Systems fighting for the third time over who would be the supreme power in settled space, and who would have to exist in the victor’s shadow. Then the Ascendency showed up and ruined everything.One moment, Flight Lieutenant Mason Grey was a fighter pilot of the Federal Space Forces about to strike a League base located on a dwarf planet in an uninhabited system. The next, unknown starships showed up, blew his carrier to hell, killed his squadron, shot down his fighter, and left him stranded amid the ruins of the very base he had come to attack.With nothing but a space suit and a dwindling life support system, Mason was in way, way over his head. And that was just the start of his problems.

For centuries, the Daegon waited. They plotted. And now they are ready to strike.
The core worlds of settled space enjoy a tenuous peace, unaware and ill prepared for the threat building beyond the furthest reaches of humanity. The star kingdom of Albion stands as a shining light of justice and mercy in a harsh galaxy, and they will be the first to suffer the Daegon's fury.
Defying his low born status, and despite his self-doubt, Commodore Thomas Gage has risen through the ranks by sheer grit and determination, defending Albion from brutal pirate clans.
And when the onslaught comes, Gage and his fleet may be Albion's last hope for freedom.

Alex has discovered new abilities tied to his Implanted Neural Controller, but the galaxy is growing more dangerous by the day, and Ace always seems to find himself in the center of it.
As Cronus team heads to Arcadia for a well-earned victory lap and some much-needed rest, secret forces are at work to destabilize the galaxy. No one is safe—especially people like Ace Evans, whose integrity and morals make him a target. But as the dangers grow, so does the need for the valiant warriors in their mechanized battle armor. The action is just heating up, and nothing can stop the clash of forces that are charging toward one another at breakneck speed.

Defeated in battle, the fractious alliance of Goltar, Spine Patriots, and the Midnight Sun Free Company are chased across the Spine Nebula by the Endless Night and their sea monster allies, the Tyzhounes.
Abandoning the nebula is not an option. For the free trader skipper, Lenworth Jenkins, the people of its fifteen tormented worlds are the cause he’s been searching for all his life.
The Midnight sisters, Sun and Blue, can’t abandon their people trapped in the nebula or its fabulous prospects of wealth and opportunity.
On a water world behind enemy lines, Branco, the former Binnig spy is dying. Can he make a difference one last time?
As Endless Night stretches across the nebula, those who still resist must dig deep and believe that however dire the situation, this is the dark before the light.

Special forces vet, Samantha Jones, is a lowly bodyguard for Ethan Anderson, the biotech billionaire who revolutionized life extension. But at least she’s got a job, unlike most, and won’t have to sell her organs to support her family. Sure, they’re poor, but she’s got death insurance and a roof over her head. Life is livable...
But then Sam’s daughter is kidnapped and sold for parts. Overnight, her life (and belief in the system) shatters. When the rich bastards get off scot-free, Sam’s weak husband commits suicide, and the ex-assassin snaps. Someone is going to pay.
The question: how to kill the heartless elites that use the poor like livestock and whose security rivals the president. And then there’s the senator fighting to abolish life extension, the trillion-dollar corporate standoff, and bloody protests in the streets as conditions deteriorate. Things are about to get ugly.

Two centuries after humanity colonized the stars, new dangers emerge. The peaceful inhabitants of the Conclave are threatened by expanding alien powers. Invaders threaten the star cluster, attacking our fringe settlements.
Captain Bill Gorman has mysteriously disappeared. His clone, set aside for a dark day like this, awakens and begins to put together the pieces. What’s gone wrong out on the frontier? Why are our colonies being attacked by aliens while the Conclave worlds dream of better days? And what happened to the original Captain Gorman?

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.

There is a personal price to pay for having aligned with the wrong side in a reckless war. For Aden Jansen it’s the need to adopt a new identity while keeping his past hidden. Now he’s integrated himself aboard the Zephyr, a merchant ship smuggling critical goods through dangerous space. But danger is imminent on planet Gretia, as well. Under occupation, torn between postwar reformers and loyalists, it’s a polestar for civil unrest.
Meanwhile an occupation forces officer is pulled right back into the fray when the battle alarm is raised, an ambitious heiress is entangled in a subversive political conspiracy, and an Allied captain is about to meet the enemy head-on.
As Aden discovers, the insurgents on Gretia—and in space—are connected, organized, and ready to break into full-scale rebellion. History is threatening to repeat itself. It’s time that Aden rediscovers who he is, whom he can trust, and what he must fight for now.

Tyler Barron and his associates are divided, split between two courses of action. Barron doesn't believe in the desperate plan to eradicate the Highborn, the strange virus that has been created for that purpose, but may or may not be the exact formula used by the empire three hundred years ago. There are too many possible problems... a small difference in the virus, a cure created by the enemy... for him to accept the plan. Barron commits instead to a traditional defense, even though he knows the chances of ultimate success are almost zero.
Many of Barron’s cohorts are on his side, but not all. The leader of the other party is none other than Andi Lafarge, Barron’s wife. If the odds were any less gruesome, either one would have given in to the other. But Andi wants nothing less than the extinction of the Highborn, and she believes the virus will work. She will do anything to see it used. Anything.
The two work together, somewhat at least, and apart as well, striving to end the conflict in any way possible, with millions of spacers fighting…and facing probable doom either way. It is the last stand of free humans on the Rim, the final chance to evade slavery... or worse.

Karin Makos lives a lie. Genetically engineered from birth and raised in a scientific compound to gain unnatural powers, she has since escaped and built another life, hidden from those who created her. For her, the chance to pilot a small-time scrounging vessel to remote corners of space is the dream. After years on the run with her sister and enduring the constant paranoia of living planet-side, going off-radar gives her exactly what she wants: freedom.
That dream is shattered.
A system-wide attack decimates humanity and leaves the survivors scraping for clues. And Karin might know where to look.
But digging into her past comes with a whole new set of secrets and consequences, none of which she wants to face. Plagued by strange dreams of her sister and a sense of growing danger, Karin and the crew of the Nemina must race desperately across space to find their loved ones—and answers.

There’s no rest for the weary. The sun has set on General David Cohen’s galactic military service after twenty-two years in the Coalition Defense Force. Stripped of command of the CSV Lion of Judah by the new administration after his candid assessment of their tactics, David faces ending his illustrious career not as a war hero but a desk jockey.
But the League of Sol isn’t about to head off into the sunset to lick its wounds. Though its shipyards lie in ruins and its leaders talk peace, the League still has their reserve home defense fleet – and a seething determination to use it to claim victory over the Terran Coalition once and for all.
As well as an old adversary ready to take General Cohen down. Word reaches CIS that the enemy is secretly amassing forces. In a last-ditch effort, David joins old allies to commandeer a ship for a daring recon mission. With arrest warrants hanging over them but their suspicions confirmed, they risk their freedom to confront the Terran Coalition’s leadership with the newly discovered intelligence.
When the dust settles, David is tasked with a desperate mission: defend Canaan at all costs. And like his father before him, this mission may prove to be his last in this epic series conclusion.

The Kenmiri Empire has fallen, broken against the might of the Vesheron rebels and the United Planets Space Force. The alliance between the Vesheron and the UPSF has collapsed in turn, leaving the former empire as worlds without governance or leaders.
Amidst the chaos, the UPSF has launched a valiant effort to reach out to the weak and protect the defenseless. As part of the Peacekeeper Initiative, Colonel Henry Wong leads the battlecruiser Raven deep into once-hostile territory.
There, an old ally has begun to forge a new empire from the old slave worlds. As starvation forces worlds to surrender, Henry prepares a desperate plan to bring food to the hungry—and defeat to those who conquer!

Marc Gregorio wakes up paralyzed. He can’t feel his own body. Accident? Stroke? Did someone slip him an overdose of Botox? The answer, he discovers, is much, much worse. He’s only a copy of Marc, a digital brain without a body, burdened with all Marc’s human memories, but without access to human sensual pleasures. Now he has to find a reason to keep on, um, “living.” Adam the Mindclone meets the real Marc Gregorio--and his new girlfriend Molly Schaeffer. Adam loves her, too. But how does a digital entity experience love? He can’t even experience pizza. His one compensation: a powerful digital brain. At Molly’s urging, he applies it to unearthing terrorist plots, aborting schoolyard mayhem, exposing congressional malfeasance and Wall Street chicanery. However, his good deeds gain the attention of a power-mad military contractor who will stop at nothing—theft, kidnapping and worse—to control the technology for his own ends. Without a body, how will Adam save himself – and the world – from a terrible fate?

Descend into the Twilight, a world of illegal street races and genetically engineered animal companions, where the only thing more dangerous than the competition is the girl in its midst.
Hero Regan wants her freedom, but first she has an AI to hack and a race to win. Between the traps and the other racers, winning a Twilight race isn’t as easy as it sounds, and now with the police on her tail and something funky happening with her telepathy, the finish line may be out of reach.

Agent Tracker wishes his worst problem was not being able to buy toilet paper. But with a pandemic hitting the St. Louis area, and the entire country hard, and his goverment still allied with the Beng'azi aliens, he fears they'll use the virus to solidify their hold over the American people.
An alien species arrives, offering salvation and destruction. Agent Tracker's alien allies have no answers; they fear the government's choice as much as Dick does. He has no choice but to turn to the Qarshilk, a revolutionary group within the Beng'azis who once held him captive. Will they be the allies Dick needs to save his country? Or will the desire for toilet paper damn them all to planetary destruction?

The Federation will make you pay for your crimes, even the fake ones.
Tony, a spy from a rival star system who is the scion of a galactic crime family. Quinn, falsely accused former military betrayed by her husband. A conspiracy that intertwines their lives.
Where did the government go wrong? When they separated Quinn from her kids. She vowed to do whatever it would take to find them and rescue them.
They should have let her. Instead, they made her fight. Now Quinn and Tony will make the Federation wish it had taken the easy option.
Quinn’s escape starts today. Tomorrow will have to take care of itself.