Military Opera

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

After two brutal, bloody struggles for their very existence against implacable alien foes, humanity is victorious, but not at peace. As distrust and accusations consume the political discourse between the two major factions, the Eastern Star Alliance military has already begun executing small raiding missions into United Terran Federation space. The Federation fleet, still reeling from the last war, is in no shape to try and protect its own borders.

Sergeant Richard Stavos was a Technomancer, capable of creating stronger than normal mental links with nanites. But that alone wasn't enough to keep him alive. Not when the Ka Empire wages wars across the galaxy. Death was supposed to be his release...an end to the constant fighting that plagued his life. But gifted beings like Richard are assets, and almost a decade after his death, the Ka overlords bring him back from the grave as a "reward" for his good service.

The revelations Mark Tudor unearthed on Tactus Ares were profound. The Piraxians fell victim to the aggressive, expansionist Eridani Federation. That same confederacy funded and facilitated the Lyrae. They made Stillness. And the Guild was complicit. How does one bring exposure to something the galaxy at large would rather forget? And how does an honorable man remove corruption when its gravity consumes all? A plan is hatched in secret.

Humans expanded into space...only to find a universe populated with multiple alien species bent on their destruction. Thus was the Colonial Union formed, to help protect us from a hostile universe. The Colonial Union used the Earth and its excess population for colonists and soldiers. It was a good arrangement...for the Colonial Union. Then the Earth said: no more.

High Commander Farsight, fresh from his victory against the Imperium over the Damocles Gulf, looks to his borders and finds his old enemies—the savage and warlike orks—threatening to ravage the heart of the T’au Empire. Farsight’s obsessive crusade soon sees him locked in an escalating conflict with the greenskins, yet the hero of the Fire Caste will stop at nothing until their infestation is purged.

Of all the Emperor’s immortal sons, the primarchs, it is Konrad Curze whose legend is the darkest. Born in the shadows of Nostramo, a world of murderers, thieves and worse, is it any surprise that he became the figure of dread known only as the Night Haunter? Heed now the tragic story of the creature Konrad Curze, master of the Night Lords Legion, of how he became a monster and a weapon of terror. He who once served the Imperium saw the truth in a maddening universe and the hypocrisy of a loveless father, and embraced the only thing that made any sense - darkness.

For Van and his crew, danger is no longer just among the stars. On earth, the Fafnir has drawn the attention of the most dangerous predator known to humanity—Bureaucrats. Between human enemies and alien allies, Van finds himself on the edge of a powerful change in his career. From the depths of his family history, an old enemy returns with plans for power at any cost. Just as his grandfather did fifty years earlier, Van will meet and challenge the threat of an ancient empire that spans deserts, stars, and time.

Across the six-planet expanse of the Gaia System, the Earthlike Gretia struggles to stabilize in the wake of an interplanetary war. Amid an uneasy alliance to maintain economies, resources, and populations, Aden Robertson reemerges. After devoting fifteen years of his life to the reviled losing side, with the blood of half a million casualties on his hands, Aden is looking for a way to move on. He’s not the only one. A naval officer has borne witness to inconceivable attacks on a salvaged fleet. A sergeant with the occupation forces is treading increasingly hostile ground.

The star cluster is awash with the blood of those whose lives have been spent by two men maneuvering fleets like pieces across a chessboard. Only one man can come out on top: Thatcher or Moll.

The people of Earth now know that the human Colonial Union has kept them ignorant of the dangerous universe around them. For generations the CU had defended humanity against hostile aliens, deliberately keeping Earth an ignorant backwater and a source of military recruits. Now the CU’s secrets are known to all. Other alien races have come on the scene and formed a new alliance - an alliance against the Colonial Union. And they’ve invited the people of Earth to join them. For a shaken and betrayed Earth, the choice isn't obvious or easy.

The shrine world of Divinatus Prime has become lost to the light of the Astronomican, and no ship can piece its veil. Only the Lord of Death himself, Blood Angels Chief Librarian Mephiston, has any hope of discerning the fate of this once pious world. After enacting a powerful blood ritual, Mephiston and an honour guard of his fellow Blood Angels reach the stricken shrine world to find it seized by religious civil war. Each faction fights for dominance of a potent artefact, the Blade Petrific, said to be wrought by the Emperor Himself.

The former warship Trouble Dog and her crew of misfits is called upon by the House of Reclamation to investigate a distress call from the human starship the Lucy's Ghost. Her crew abandon their crippled ship and seek refuge aboard an abandoned, slower-than-light generation ship launched 10,000 years before by an alien race. However, the enormous ship contains deadly secrets of its own.

Sometimes it seems a Jedi’s work is never done, and Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker know this only too well. Despite the bond they share in the Force, the Jedi Master and his wife are still learning the ropes of being a couple after three years of marriage—and struggling to find time together between the constant demands of duty. But all that will change when they’re united on an unexpected mission: They must pool their exceptional skills to combat an insidious enemy and salvage a part of Jedi history. Whatever may await, the Skywalkers will not face it alone.

Xenocide is the third installment of the Ender series. On Lusitania, Ender found a world where humans and pequeninos and the Hive Queen could all live together; where three very different intelligent species could find common ground at last. Or so he thought. But Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus which kills all humans it infects, but which the pequeninos require in order to transform into adults.

Celebrate the lasting impact of Return of the Jedi with this exciting reimagining of the timeless Star Wars film featuring new perspectives from forty contributors.

With war clouds gathering and harassment increasing, the stars of Continental opera, many of whom are Jewish, face dark futures under the boot heel of the Nazis. What can two middle-aged British spinsters do about such matters? They can form a secret cabal right under Hitler’s nose and get to work saving lives. The sisters conspire to bring together worldwide opera aficionados and insiders in an international operation to rescue Jews in the opera from the horrific fate that everyone intuits is coming.

One man's epic story of loyalty, perseverance, and hope in a galaxy at war. Now in a single volume. Alliance Navy Commander Grayson Stone is patrolling a nearby space station when a mysterious starship appears. It emerges from a storm of fire, its shields impenetrable, its weapons overwhelming, attacking without provocation and annihilating everything in its path.

The People's Republic of Haven made a tiny mistake when it announced the execution of Honor Harrington. It seemed safe enough. After all, she was already dead. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Now Honor has escaped from the prison planet called Hell and returned to the Manticoran Alliance with a few friends. Almost half a million of them, to be precise including some who know what really happened when the Committee of Public Safety seized power in the PRH.

One hundred years before Ender's Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. Earth Afire by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston is the story of the First Formic War. Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but just barely. Not soon enough to convince skeptical governments that there was a threat. They didn't believe that until space stations and ships and colonies went up in sudden flame. And when that happened, only Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police could move fast enough to meet the threat.