Fiction Space Adventure

AD 3580. The Intersolar Commonwealth has spread through the galaxy to over a thousand star systems. It is a culture of rich diversity with a place for everyone. A powerful navy protects it from any hostile species that may lurk among the stars. For Commonwealth citizens, even death has been overcome.

At long last, an extraterrestrial civilization reached out and made the First Contact. However, no one on Earth took their communique for the genuine article. In a similar vein, very few people appreciated just how little time our new suzerains had promised to keep our planet safe. Regardless, the end of their message showed humankind how to access a mysterious game. The objective of this game is unclear. No one can say where its servers are located, and its inner workings are beyond comprehension.

Captain Ivan Vorpatril is happy with his relatively uneventful bachelor's life as a staff officer to a Barrayaran admiral. Cousin to imperial troubleshooter Miles Vorkosigan, Ivan is not far down the hereditary list for the emperorship. Thankfully, new heirs have directed that headache elsewhere, leaving Ivan to enjoy his life on Komarr, far from the Byzantine court politics of his home system. But when an old friend in Barrayaran intelligence asks Ivan to protect an attractive young woman who may be on the hit list of a criminal syndicate, his chivalrous nature takes over. It seems danger and adventure have once more found Captain Vorpatril.

Prince Roger is coming home, but home isn't what it was when he left. Traitors have murdered his brother and sister, his nieces and nephews. His mother, the empress, is still alive but in the hands of Roger's own biological father, who controls her through drugs and physical and psychological torture. A new heir to the throne has been conceived, and once the child is born his mother will no longer be necessary to the traitors' plans.

Months after Inara leaves Serenity, Mal and the crew finally learn the reason for her sudden departure: She is dying of a terminal illness. Expert Esau Weng is said to have developed a means to treat Inara’s condition, but he has been disgraced and incarcerated for life on a notorious Alliance prison planet. On Atata planet, inmates are abandoned with no guards and left to survive as best they can. What’s more, terraforming the planet did not take properly, so the world is a frozen wasteland. To save Inara, the Serenity crew must infiltrate the prison....

The year is 3326. Nigel Sheldon, one of the founders of the Commonwealth, receives a visit from the Raiel - self-appointed guardians of the Void, the enigmatic construct at the core of the galaxy that threatens the existence of all that lives. The Raiel convince Nigel to participate in a desperate scheme to infiltrate the Void. Once inside, Nigel discovers that humans are not the only life-forms to have been sucked into the Void. The humans trapped there are afflicted by an alien species of biological mimics.

The dwarfish, fetally damaged yet brilliant Miles Vorkosigan has more than his share of troubles. Having recently escaped an assassination plot whose tool was a brainwashed clone of himself, Miles has set the clone, Mark, free for a new chance at life. But when he decides to let his clone brother assume his secret identity and lead the Dendarii Free Mercenary on an unauthorized mission to liberate other clones from the outlaw planet of Jackson's Whole, things get really messy.

In her third audio outing, Hilda has been newly initiated into the Sparrow Scouts and now she's ready to earn some badges, and perhaps even make some human friends. Yet a dark, menacing creature is threatening Trolberg, and only our blue-haired heroine can get to the bottom of what it wants.

The first of the acclaimed Vatta's War books, the exciting military science fiction series that features a swashbuckling spaceship-captain heroine who mixes commerce with combat.

New York Times best-selling author Eric Flint’s 1632 presented listeners with a fascinating alternate history of the Thirty Years’ War, through the eyes of a West Virginia community tossed back in time to 17th-century Germany. Here, Flint teams up with acclaimed science fiction author David Weber to continue his epic tale. In 1633, the West Virginians attempt to use their modern-day knowledge to build a resistance against the forces of France, Spain, and England.

They are the Lost Legions. Famed warriors in the annals of military history, made famous when they struck out for the stars to fight a Savage invasion … never to return or be heard from again. Until new evidence is uncovered that a Lost Legion sleeps in the pocked craters of a distant mining world. Sergeant Carson Metzger, a replacement pilot for a Republic HARD HK-PP mech unit, is sent to act as security for the science team seeking to confirm the discovery of the fabled missing legion. But when the local miners object to the arrival of Republic forces, tensions simmer to an all-out boil.

January 1864: General Robert E. Lee faces defeat. The Army of Northern Virginia is ragged and ill-equipped. Gettysburg has broken the back of the Confederacy and decimated its manpower. Then, Andries Rhoodie, a strange man with an unplaceable accent, approaches Lee with an extraordinary offer. Rhoodie demonstrates an amazing rifle: its rate of fire is incredible, its lethal efficiency breathtaking - and Rhoodie guarantees unlimited quantities to the Confederates. The name of the weapon is the AK-47.

Komarr could be a garden with 1,000 more years' work, or an uninhabitable wasteland if the terraforming fails. Now, the solar mirror vital to the terraforming of the conquered planet has been shattered by a ship hurtling off course. The emperor of Barrayar sends his newest imperial auditor, Lord Miles Vorkosigan, to find out why.

For eons, Earth has been under observation by the Firstborn, beings almost as old as the universe itself. The Firstborn are unknown to humankind - until they act. In an instant, Earth is carved up and reassembled like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly the planet and every living thing on it no longer exist in a single timeline.

Colin MacIntyre's life as a NASA astronaut might not have been exciting, but at least it was orderly. Unfortunately, he's been tapped for greater things, and he isn't too sure he likes it. First he was kidnapped by an ancient, self-aware starship masquerading as Earth's moon. Then he was drafted as its captain to suppress a 5,000-year-old mutiny. And then he had to mobilize the planet against the attack of an eons-old ancient menace dedicated to the eradication of all intelligent life in the galaxy! It's hard to blame him for feeling a little stressed....

Tanis is looking forward to a long journey in stasis before arriving at the newly terraformed world of New Eden. New Life. New Start. Getting a berth on the Intrepid is her ticket out of the Sol System. But nothing proves easy for Major Tanis Richards. Nothing is at it seems. What should be a simple trip is fraught with danger and filled with adventure. An array of forces seek to stop the Intrepid - no matter the cost, or lives lost. From competing corporations, to stellar eco-terrorists, no one wants the Intrepid to arrive at New Eden.

For 40 years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia’s home. On this planet far away in space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden, and grown placidly old. And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days - until the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere new and strange and not of their choosing.

On the lost colony planet of Croatoan, the job of the police force is to keep the peace, even if it means turning a blind eye to all varieties of crimes. DCI Lutero Cade knows how to play the game – but when it comes to murder, he is more than willing to rock the boat. Now, with a serial killer on the loose, Cade knows he’s about to do a whole lot of boat rocking.

With a new game, Mass Effect Andromeda, set for release in 2017, the launch of a new series of Mass Effect novels is timely. The new game will take the story in a dramatic new direction and is set in a new region of space, with a new and deadly enemy.

Led by Admiral Naismith (a.k.a. Lord Miles Vorkosigan), the Dendarii Mercenaries have pulled off the daring interspace rescue of an entire Cetagandan POW camp. But they have made some deadly enemies, and Miles realizes he's in trouble again. First the Mercenaries' payroll doesn't arrive on time; then someone tries to murder him. Now Miles must juggle both his identities to unravel a plot against him, and to reveal an unexpected ally. Just who is trying to assassinate which of his personas, and why?