Space Opera First Contact

Thomas Baldwin has been appointed captain of the state-of-the-art cruise ship Constantine, named after his heroic grandfather. When their first diplomatic mission turns deadly, all signs point to the return of a former adversary, one the Concord claims to have defeated five decades earlier. No one has seen Baldwin's commander, Treena Starling, since her previous ship was destroyed in a gruesome battle, leaving her the sole survivor. Can her secret help them rescue one of their crew members from captivity at the enemy's hands?

It is 2246, 10 years prior to the Battle at the Binary Stars, and an aggressive contagion is ravaging the food supplies of the remote Federation colony Tarsus IV and the 8,000 people who call it home. Distress signals have been sent, but any meaningful assistance is weeks away. Lieutenant Commander Gabriel Lorca and a small team assigned to a Starfleet monitoring outpost are caught up in the escalating crisis, and bear witness as the colony's governor, Adrian Kodos, employs an unimaginable solution in order to prevent mass starvation.

Ariock Dovanack never asked to be a hero, let alone a demigod. But when a prophecy deemed him "The One," he dutifully amassed thousands of messianic followers in the sun-starved civilization beneath the Torth Empire's capital. Now, destined to lead the cave-dwelling Alashani people into the light of other worlds, he and a small army must first annihilate the formidable telepaths who guard the city's spaceport. By Ariock's side is Thomas Hill. A Torth/human hybrid, Thomas may be physically vulnerable, but he's also a telepathic supergenius.

The planet Vok is holding its first free elections after years of oppressive military rule. Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise have been dispatched by Starfleet to serve as impartial observers, but remaining neutral proves a challenge, as Kirk confronts a tangled web of scandal, conspiracy, and assassination plots - with the stability of an entire sector at stake. To make matters worse, Dr. Leonard McCoy has vanished while on a mission of mercy to Braco, a nearby planet only a system away.

Earth seceded from its suzerains' state and declared independence. Naturally, such a bold move did not go unnoticed by its powerful neighbors in space, who had aggressive plans for the inhabitable yet overly self-reliant planet. With black clouds gathering and the term of safety growing ever shorter, positive lines of the probable future for Earth's humanity and its allies were nowhere to be seen despite all Gnat the Devourer's efforts and unique abilities.

Survivors are fleeing Earth, into a hostile galaxy where alien intelligence and weaponry rule. Can a deserted planet offer refuge? Or will the genetically engineered Alicians finish the job started on Eden? While Blake fends off attacks, Micah seeks allies, but his plan backfires, and humanity finds itself on trial for its very right to exist.

The surviving Méridiens have returned to Confederation space, aided by their recently discovered cousins, the New Terrans. They expect a celebration after their 71-year absence. Instead, they're shocked to find the silver ships have destroyed half the Confederation. The Méridiens are fleeing in advance of the horde of alien ships. But Alex Racine and his crew didn't come this far to run away from humanity's enemy.

2425. The civil war between the United States of North America and the Pan-European Confederation is over. But before a new era of peace on Earth can begin, humankind must martial its interstellar forces as one fleet to engage in a war against an alien entity in Omega Centauri. Without provocation, it destroyed a Confederation science facility inhabited by 12,000 people, and it must be neutralized before it sets its sights on Earth.

On the planet Jijo, peace is upended when the starship Streaker arrives, bringing with it knowledge of a two-billion-year-old fleet and hordes of followers eager to exploit its power. Publishers Weekly hails Brin's "extraordinary capacity to handle a wide-ranging narrative and to create ... complex alien races."

The final volume of the Uplift trilogy by Hugo and Nebula Award winner David Brin, Heaven’s Reach brings readers back to the planet Jijo one last time. The starship Streaker is still on the run with its dangerous cargo of ancient artifacts when the prophesied Time of Changes rocks the galaxy. As each race battles for control and chaos reigns, the truth about the Five Galaxies and The Progenitors finally comes to light.

The BSR crew have worked hard, getting the Slow Boatmen settled. They deserve a little time off at home in the Holler. Just kicking back, watching the world go by. Their shepherd has other ideas, of course.

With Alexis Cromwell shot in the back by her XO and the fleet in ruins, the Humans have run back to New Warsaw to lick their wounds, but the Merc Guild now knows the location of their hidden base, and they are in hot pursuit. Led by the New Era, a dreadnought built for the sole purpose of destroying humanity, they are an unstoppable force.

Fergus Ferguson, repo-man, has one job: find the spacecraft Venetia's Sword and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. Finding Gilger in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a gas-giant harvesting colony called Cernee, was easy. The hard part will be getting past a field of space mines, hacking into the Sword's compromised AI, and fighting a crew of hostile enemies to take control of the ship. But when a cable car explosion launches Cernee into a civil war, Fergus finds himself caught in the crosshairs.

In the far future, humankind has made contact with numerous other species - and has helped to form the ConSentiency to govern between the species. After suffering under a tyrannous pure democracy that had the power to create laws so fast that no thought could be given to the effects, the sentients of the galaxy found a need for the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab) to slow the wheels of government, thereby preventing it from legislating recklessly.

The Empire has set its sights on its next target: human Terrans. As effective allies of the Priminae, the denizens of Earth have proven themselves enemies to the Empire, and now the Imperial forces know more about the Terran home world than ever before.

Defy the inevitable. Such is the stance of Confederation captain Eric Weston and the crew of the starship Odysseus, patrolling the outer limits of Priminae space, anticipating the Empire's next attacks. Connected with the Terran FTL tech—the transition drive—humanity might stand a chance against the overwhelming forces. Until the entire planetary system goes dark. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Odysseus arrives to find the Empire securing critical intelligence from Priminae ships.

The McCormacks have a starship, and now, they need a safe place to start harvesting the technology. They’re starting with a place in the Cook Islands, but to succeed, they have to avoid spies, figure out how to manufacture the new technology using Earth-based tools, and then introduce it without getting into too much trouble with the governments and big corporations of Earth.

Michael Poole finds himself in a very strange landscape.... This is the centre of the Galaxy. And in a history without war with the humans, the Xeelee have had time to built an immense structure here. The Xeelee Belt has a radius 10,000 times Earth's orbital distance. It is a light-year in circumference. If it was set in the solar system, it would be out in the Oort Cloud, among the comets - but circling the sun. If it was at rest, it would have a surface area equivalent to about 30 billion Earths. But it is not at rest: it rotates at near light speed.

The sisters’ leader, Miriamal, and three mining chairpersons investigate an unexplored wormhole for possible economic expansion. Aboard the Dominance, they exit the wormhole and are stunned to find the nearby system inhabited. More troubling, technologically advanced warships hold station above the system’s exoplanet. SADEs witness the hasty return of the Dominance and the cessation of messages between Miriamal and Lisa Dyehouse. The Truth Matters partners race against time to save Samuel, and they’re not above leveraging an unreliable criminal hacker.

2187. Earth is cold, dead and divided. The rich hide away while the rest will do anything to survive. Humanity have only one hope: crossing hostile alien territory to reach a habitable planet. Jinnifer Blue is on the run. An expert pilot, she apprehends criminals on behalf of the government and keeps her illegal genetic modifications a closely guarded secret. But when a particularly dangerous job goes south, Jinn is left stranded on a prison ship with one of the most ruthless criminals in the galaxy.