Austin Rush

As the cosmos reels, the precarious balance of BuyMort is on the brink of collapse. The Sleem have fallen, leaving a power vacuum that echoes across the multiverse. New threats loom as the Church initiates a desperate crusade, not just for dominance but for survival. Facing them? Tyson Dawes, the Windowpuncher, Warlord of Nu-Earth, and CEO of Silken Sands. Meeting the relics of the Church with relics of his own, tricking, baiting, and battling the tremendous power of the Beholders, some say he has gone too far.

With Arizona united under the corporate auspices of Silken Sands, Dearth Local is in retreat—and Tyson has earned himself some nice R and R. Or so he thought. Now, just a month after Day 1, mysterious beasts are plaguing his land. A powerful armada tears through the sea. An angry Beholder threatens his workers. And a powerful tsunami has signaled the arrival of an even more powerful affiliate. A singular monster that assimilates its workers into the ever-growing hivemind that is its corporate structure, Kraken threatens not just to end Tyson and his fledgling affiliate.

After unwittingly becoming the CEO of the growing Silken Sands Affiliate, Tyson finds himself in an increasingly dangerous Arizonan desert, the protector of a growing community of Nu-Earth humans faced with the very real possibility of total corporate annihilation. Dearth wants their land, and they will not take no for an answer. But behind Tyson stand a growing band of capable administrators and heroes, and a community of people who believe in him. He is their leader. They trust in him, even if he doesn't trust in himself.

A human diplomat creates an interstellar incident when he kills an alien diplomat in a most unusual way. To avoid war, Earth's government must find an equally unusual object: A type of sheep ("The Android's Dream"), used in the alien race's coronation ceremony. To find the sheep, the government turns to Harry Creek, ex-cop, war hero and hacker extraordinaire.

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps", robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real, and the crowds love it. Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character—and they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat.

In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself.