Fantasy Opera

It started as a simple heist. It went to hell from there. On a space station orbiting a pale blue sun, a package changes hands. Data too sensitive to transmit will be exposed for one brief moment. The client is paying a crazy sum - if the job is clean. That’s not going to happen. Instead, the galaxy’s unluckiest crew of outlaws will have to put all their resources into salvaging what they can from the job. Even if it’s only avoiding blame for the fallout.

Years after defeating aliens bent on burning down the galaxy, the Interstellar Union is breaking apart, its member species undermining each other at every opportunity. When an interdimensional distress signal arrives, only humanity is interested in helping. Captain Vin Husher is given command of the UHS Relentless, and sent in as part of a carrier strike group...right into a trap laid by humanity’s old enemy. Surrounded by a bioengineered super-species and unable to return home, Husher must draw on decades of experience just to keep his people alive.

Saint Sabbat has returned, and she is being hunted by the deadliest of assassins. Gaunt's Ghosts must fight to protect her - but can they defend against treachery from within? It's the culmination of a massive story arc that sees tragedy strike even as the Sabbat Worlds Crusade is given new hope with the reappearance of the Saint herself. Mysticism and warfare collide, with compelling results.

Dev Cameron joined the military to fly a starship but is rated unsuitable and grudgingly accepts an assignment with the ground forces, piloting a massive walking tank (a warstrider). But Cameron may yet get a chance at glory when he makes a discovery about the alien foes that could change the course of the war.

Jonathon Hunter has evoked the wrath of 27th-century pirates. With his sexy twin bodyguards, Jonathon seeks to come to grips with station life in a suddenly hostile universe. Celebrity, gratitude, sudden attacks, and a mysterious prophecy are more than most 18-year-olds can handle. A reluctant hero, Jonathon is on a journey, seemingly out of his time, but always in time. Meet Jon Hunter as he starts a two-year journey to prophecy, with his AI sidekick and mostly female mercenary team.

Nine years of tranquility came to an abrupt end when a Méridien starship entered the Hellébore system, sounding a dire warning for Alex Racine, the Haraken president. Unwanted visitors had arrived again. But this time, they're not alien; they're human. Claiming to have followed the course of a colony ship launched a millennium ago when Earth wrestled with resource wars and climate change, the mission commander, Antonio García, requests a meeting with the planet's leaders.

Dr. Neil Anson Clemons was born at the very moment that men first landed on the moon and always strived to become an astronaut and reach the stars. Neil devoted his life to staying physically fit as any astronaut should be through martial arts and mentally fit by studying and becoming one of the world's foremost experts in quantum physics and gravitational theory. Now he and his team have achieved a breakthrough, both in building a warp drive, and finding a new energy source powerful enough to make the drive more than an interesting theoretical concept.

Jacques McKeown is the most celebrated author of star-pilot fiction in the galaxy. He's rich, famous, and living in luxury, and his universe-wide fanbase eagerly awaits any news of his next book. There's just one small hitch. He's not Jacques McKeown. He's Dashford Pierce, star pilot and con artist, and if only the impatient calls from his publisher were the worst of his problems. There's also the last vestige of the Henderson crime gang, trouble brewing in the retired star-pilot community, and a small matter of somebody trying to kill him.

In the aftermath of a devastating attack on the Earth, Adam learns that the humans have been played for fools by the evil Klin race. Now he has two enemies to fight: the Juireans and the Klin. Yet as before, the aliens don't realize what trouble they're in. Now they're up against an entire planet of human supermen. Pity their weak and fragile bodies. Adam Cain - as well as the entire human race - is out for revenge.

“I have sensed a disturbance in the Force.” Ominous words under any circumstances, but all the more so when uttered by Emperor Palpatine. On Batuu, at the edges of the Unknown Regions, a threat to the Empire is taking root - its existence little more than a glimmer, its consequences as yet unknowable. But it is troubling enough to the Imperial leader to warrant investigation by his most powerful agents: ruthless enforcer Lord Darth Vader and brilliant strategist Grand Admiral Thrawn.

The war for the fate of mankind blazes on. Though the outer defences have fallen, the walls of the Palace itself remain inviolate as Rogal Dorn, the Praetorian of Terra himself, uses every known stratagem and ploy to keep Horus' vast armies at bay. In Perturabo, the Traitor siegebreaker, Dorn faces an adversary worthy of his skill. A terrible, grinding attrition ensues. The crucial battle for the Lion's Gate spaceport is at the heart of this conflict. With it in their possession, the Traitors can land their most devastating weapons on Terran soil. Dorn knows it must not fall.

Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr is a Confederation Marine's marine. She has survived more deadly encounters---and kept more of her officers and enlistees alive---than anyone else in the Corps. Unexpectedly pulled from battle, Torin finds herself in an underground POW camp that shouldn't exist, where her fellow marine prisoners seem to have lost all will to escape.

Esmay Suiza wasn't a member of a great Navy family like the Serranos. She'd had to make her way on grit alone, which meant it wasn't likely she'd ever make admiral and "hoist her own flag." Well, that was fine with her: all Esmay wanted was a secure berth where she could be part of something greater than herself, and otherwise just live her life in peace.

The planet of Kiln is where the tyrannical Mandate keeps its prison colony, and for inmates the journey there is always a one-way trip. One such prisoner is Professor Arton Daghdev, xeno-ecologist and political dissident. Soon after arrival he discovers that Kiln has a secret. Humanity is not the first intelligent life to set foot there. In the midst a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem are the ruins of a civilization, but who were the vanished builders and where did they go?

Raised fatherless in a galactic Brinktown, Joe Pikeman only ever wanted to escape. The Galactic Guard offered that escape, with the promise of regular meals to boot. Now Joe is a full Guardsman, with his own ship and a snide partner bot who hates humans almost as much as he hates other bots. To the pirates he hunts, Joe is known as the Butcher. His bloody reputation has landed him in the center of a sweeping conspiracy that threatens to stamp out the galaxy’s last surviving human settlements.

More than two decades have passed since the events chronicled in The Butlerian Jihad. The crusade against thinking robots has ground on for years, but the forces led by Serena Butler and Irbis Ginjo have made only slight gains; the human worlds grow weary of war, of the bloody, inconclusive swing from victory to defeat. Get ready for Dune: The Machine Crusade.

Restored to her former state of health (and determination) Lady Cecelia goes in search of fresh bloodstock - she's had enough of politics. But once again she manages to put herself - and Heris Serrano - at the point where lightning will strike. This time it's invasion from the neighboring empire: The Benignity of the Compassionate Hand. Heris is only a civilian now, with a space yacht - what can she do in the face of a full-scale fleet of warships? But she is also a Serrano - born to lead.

Men of Tanith...do you want to live forever? On the forge world of Urdesh, the massed forces of the Imperial Crusade engage in a final bloody battle with the Archenemy commander known as the Anarch and his elite warriors - the barbaric Sons of Sek. A victory for either side will decide more than just the fate of Urdesh...it will determine the outcome of the entire Sabbat Worlds Crusade.

Persephone Station, a seemingly backwater planet that has largely been ignored by the United Republic of Worlds, becomes the focus for the Serrao-Orlov Corporation as the planet has a few secrets the corporation wants to exploit. Rosie, owner of Monk's Bar, serves members of a rather exclusive criminal class and those who seek to employ them. Angel, ex-marine and head of a semi-organized band of beneficent criminals, wayward assassins, and washed-up mercenaries with a penchant for doing the honorable thing, is asked to perform a job for Rosie.

Neal Asher takes on first contact, Polity style. This original novel recounts the first contact between the aggressive Prador aliens, and the Polity Collective as it is forced to retool its society to a war footing. The overwhelming brute force of the Prador dreadnaughts causes several worlds and space stations to be overrun. Prador Moon follows the initial Polity defeats, to the first draws, and culminates in what might be the first Polity victory, told from the point of view of two unlikely heroes.