New Adventures

What holds a community, a civilization, or a world together? Shared values? Mutual interests? Perhaps something less definable, like an ineffable source of unity? Or is it blood and terror, and primal drives that force the pack to close in and bare their fangs? Such questions may be more suited to philosophers, but the DEMC and its mercenaries are the ones who will be doling out the answers.

When an experimental shuttlecraft fails, Captain Christopher Pike suspects a mechanical malfunction—only to discover the very principles on which Starfleet bases its technology have simply stopped functioning. He and his crewmates are forced to abandon ship in a dangerous maneuver that scatters their party across the strangest new world they’ve ever encountered.

In these five tales, Sherlock Holmes is shown at the height of his powers: he co-operates with a young Winston Churchill in the famed Siege of Sydney Street, helps defeat a plan for a German invasion outlined in the Zimmerman Telegram, establishes a link between two missing lighthouse keepers and the royal treasures of King John, contends with a supernatural curse places upon an eccentric aristocrat, and discovers a lost epic of Lord Byron.

While Spartans get all the glory, no soldier - not even the legendary Master Chief - wins a war on his own. Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck and his team of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODSTs) played a major role in saving the Earth from all-out invasion at the end of the Covenant War - acts of bravery and ingenuity that did not go unnoticed by the United Nations Space Command.

Two years after an attack brought down the electrical grid across the United States, the recovery effort is well underway. A new network of armored trains carry supplies and industrial equipment crucial to rebuilding the country. But along the rails, one area of America is still mired in darkness, violence, and danger. Some call it the Badlands. Others the Wild West. The government simply refers to it as the New Frontier.

Earth has fallen under the influence of the Fermion Party, whose members believe humanity’s future lies in the metaverse, a simulated environment to which people can upload their consciousness to become immortal. As a simulant, one cannot get sick, grow old, or die. Human beings have no business risking their lives in the betaverse, where injury and illness can kill them. And those who wish to explore beyond the solar system blaspheme what the Fermions believe is the natural order.

The enemies they are about to be pitted against make their endeavors so far look like a cake walk. Killer bugs and government conspiracies are old hat. Armies of mutants spreading like a plague, a host of life-snuffing cyborgs that won’t stop “cleaning,” and fierce competition between the various factions. Let’s just say that when this is over, the DEMC are going to need some serious R&R…assuming they make it through this in one piece. Survival was never a given, but the DEMC have just the give-‘em-hell attitude needed to see this job through.

Our trio of madcap mercenaries have brought peace to Mugh-9, but it turns out that peace is bad for business. What is a merc to do but head out into the galaxy and find some work? There’s always someone in need of a steady hand, a strong arm, and a propensity toward violence, right? Our trio hit the jackpot when they are approached by a representative from a crumbling regime.

The young cats who set off on a quest many moons ago have returned with a chilling message: The Clans must move to a new home or risk extermination. But the dangers waiting for them beyond their borders are impossible to predict, and the cats have no idea where to go. What they need is a sign from StarClan....

Moons have passed since six cats set out on a journey to save their Clans. Now, they are traveling home again, but on their way through the mountains, they meet a tribe of wild cats with a secret...and their own mysterious prophecy to fulfill. In the forest, Firestar and Leafpaw watch ThunderClan’s world crumbling around them. Will the questing cats make it back in time to save the Clans, or will they be too late?

Shortly after moving to Salem, Massachusetts, Max Dennison finds himself in hot water when he accidentally releases a coven of witches from the afterlife. Max, his sister, and his new friends must find a way to stop the witches from carrying out their evil plan. Twenty-five years later, Max and Allison's 17-year-old daughter, Poppy, finds herself face-to-face with the Sanderson sisters in all their sinister glory. When Halloween celebrations don't quite go as planned, it's a race against time as Poppy and her friends fight to save her family and all of Salem from the witches' latest vile scheme.

Listeners return to the world of Severian, now the Autarch of Urth, as he leaves the planet on one of the huge spaceships of the alien Hierodules to travel across time and space to face his greatest test, to become the legendary New Sun or die. The strange, rich, original spaceship scenes give way to travels in time, wherein Severian revisits times and places which fill in parts of the background of the four-volume work, that will thrill and intrigue particularly listeners who enjoyed the earlier books.

The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the center of the world. Humans and mutants and arcane races brood in the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the river is sluggish with unnatural effluent and foundries pound into the night. For a thousand years, the Parliament and its brutal militias have ruled over a vast economy of workers and artists, spies and soldiers, magicians, crooks, and junkies. Now a stranger has arrived, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand. And something unthinkable is released.

As the Jedi and the Republic focus on internal struggles, a new threat surfaces beyond the farthest reaches of the Outer Rim. An enemy appears from outside known space, bearing weapons and technology unlike anything New Republic scientists have ever seen. Suddenly, Luke, Mara, Leia, Han Solo, and Chewbacca, along with their children, are thrust again into battle. But this time, all their courage, sacrifice, and even the power of the Force itself, may not be enough.

It is a time of wars and revolutions, conflict and intrigue. New Crobuzon is being ripped apart from without and within. War with the shadowy city-state of Tesh and rioting on the streets at home are pushing the teeming city to the brink. A mysterious masked figure spurs strange rebellion, while treachery and violence incubate in unexpected places. In desperation, a small group of renegades escapes from the city and crosses strange and alien continents in the search for a lost hope.

As shadows of the past continue to plague the forest, Brambleclaw is haunted by a dark figure on a dangerous quest for revenge and must struggle to remain true to his Clan. A sinister path is unfolding, and the time is coming for certain warriors to make the choices that will determine their destinies...and the destiny of all the Clans.

New territory brings new troubles for the fierce cats of the warrior Clans, and former allies are acting strangely hostile. As divisions between the Clans grow deeper, Firestar’s daughters face troubling decisions. The choices they make now could affect ThunderClan for generations to come...and with an unexpected enemy preparing to attack, their courage and strength will be needed more than ever if the Clan is to survive.

While the DEMC haven’t gone native, they’re finding that their particular brand of varied vector violence is appreciated in the Bast Station populace. Deck by deck, meter by meter, they are leading the efforts at reclamation. Remarkably, they’ve found the rough-and-ready inhabitants of the station rallying around them. That’s before other mercenaries come to Coil Cove, drawn by the DEMC’s success. The more the merrier, right? Except these newcomers threaten to throw the hard-won balance into chaos.

Here, McLaren captures a new spirit of a relevant Christianity, where traditional divisions and doctrinal differences give way to a focus on God and the story of God's love for this world. If you are searching for a deeper life with God - one that moves beyond the rhetoric of denominational and theological categories - this delightful and inspiring fictional tale will provide a picture of what it could mean to recapture a joyful spiritual life.

As the Congo erupts in violent rebellion in 1964, old faces and new find themselves swept into a maelstrom of danger as the United States becomes more and more deeply involved. Husbands and wives, generals, colonels, and cocksure privates find that there is now not only a new breed of soldier, but a new breed of war - sudden, savage, played by no rules ever known before. To learn it, the men of the brotherhood must risk everything, but when the summons comes, they are ready to answer the call....