The aliens tested humans on an individual basis for miner rentals. Do well on your pilot test, get a spaceship, sign up with a corp, and you can mine the belt. For a puddle-jumper pilot like me, yeah, I was so interested I became obsessed. When I finally tested, I performed above and beyond, being offered a contract for some better than a miner - Earth's First Starfighter.

Charlie Travers figures his life can’t get much worse. He lives over a pizza restaurant, he’s lost his girlfriend, and has no prospects for a career. Then, he’s abducted by an alien robot and taken across the galaxy. When he wakes up, he finds himself stranded thousands of light-years away, and about to be killed by space pirates.

This is the warning delivered to Will Ryder by the alien spaceship that crash-landed in his backyard. But there is hope. With the ship's AI guiding him, Will must rebuild the craft in his barn and take to the stars to prevent the cataclysmic invasion.

For centuries, mankind has searched for nonhuman civilizations in the cosmos. These lost alien societies have finally been discovered—but they were destroyed long ago. Devin Starn starts off as a lowly rock rat aboard Borag, a mining ship working the dangerous end of the asteroid belt. Slowly, he gains prestige and purpose. When an alien base is uncovered, however, he must risk everything to protect his ship and her crew. What wiped out all the civilizations that came before humanity?

Knocking at death’s door. Bargaining for a second chance. Seems like a heck of a way to find out about an alien invasion.... Vietnam vet Albert Jenkins is battling a bulging waistline and a passion for drink. So when a towering pile of scrap rocket parts falls and crushes the stubborn curmudgeon, he thinks it’s finally the end. But just as he’s about to take one final breath, a snarky alien parasite offers him a deal: His life in return for sharing his body.

Convicted of a minor traffic violation, Rev Pelletier is conscripted into the Perseus Union Marine Corps...for up to a 30-year term of service. Anxious to get back to his civilian life and job, Rev opts for a shorter term as a Marine Raider taking the fight to the enemy. But with extremely high mortality rates, can he and his friends survive until their term of service is over?

Michael Freeman is a disabled veteran who had just been fired from his mind-numbing cubicle job, which allowed his opportunistic girlfriend to dump him. Now, he only wants to spend some time at his grandfather's mountain cabin so he can unwind, away from the drudgery of daily life and with a cold beer in his hands. Standing in his way is an ancient spaceship with an emotional AI, nanites that have invaded his body, an international crime syndicate, a suicidal FBI agent on a vigilante mission, terrorists . . . and that's just the beginning.

We were fighting on the wrong side of a war we couldn't win. And that was the good news. The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon come ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There go the good old days, when humans only got killed by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits. When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved.

Get ready to experience two more origin stories in the Backyard Starship universe.

A secret buried in the Antarctic. A puzzle unsolved for thousands of years. And a Brooklyn-born master gunnery sergeant who's royally pissed that he has to babysit the researchers sent to figure it all out. But when Patrick "Wic" Finnegan finally sees what the team has uncovered, he can't believe his eyes, nor is he prepared for the violence to come. Soon, the portal opens and unleashes a storm of unbridled fury upon humanity.

Cole Riker is a Slip Runner. A contractor tasked with finding alien salvage in exchange for credits. For an ex-smuggler like Cole, there’s a catch: Don’t break the terms of parole. That means doing things by the book. Find salvage, turn it in, get paid. But everything changes when a retrieval mission lands him in a previously unknown sector. There, he finds the material he’s been sent to recover, along with something more. A brand-new form of ancient alien life.

A company of Army Rangers is sent on an interstellar colony ship to secure a foothold on a dangerous, alien planet through violence of action. Leaving behind a warring Earth flung headfirst into a conflict of mutual assured destruction, the Rangers and the accompanying crew of first colonists are guided on a 40-year journey by an unprecedented artificial intelligence. But when they emerge from the frigid embrace of cryosleep, they awake to a nightmare, finding themselves greeted by the same ruthless enemy that brought about the ruin of Earth.

The mission is simple. Escort an emissary to an intergalactic peace summit. Try not to get in the way. Lt. Magnus and his 79th Recon Team have certainly handled worse, after all. But when an explosion rocks the tower and sends everyone into a panic, Magnus and his asset find themselves cut off from the rest of the team. Worse still, a dying alien chieftain gives them a priceless drive of intel, marking them for death. The mission has officially changed. With enemies on all sides, Magnus must do everything in his power to protect the emissary and escape the tower.

When a high-value scientist is taken hostage inside the galaxy's most dangerous prison, Halek Cain is the only man for the job. The last remaining survivor of the Reaper program, Hal is an unstoppable force of fuel and madness. A veteran amputee-turned-cyborg, he has a history of violence and a talent for killing that is unmatched by any soldier. With the promise of freedom as his only incentive, he'll stop at nothing to earn back his life from the people who made him, imprisoned him, and were too afraid to let him die.

When leading archeologist Dr. Hank Murphy discovers an alien artifact on the Moon, corporate interests are quick to get involved. Murphy just wants to understand what this thing is and how it works. After months of research, he finally manages to locate the power source. The gate is soon activated...and Murphy is pulled through. Moments later, he finds himself in a war-torn corner of the galaxy where strangers like him are called Orphans...and they are considered extremely dangerous. Somehow altered by the experience, the archeologist now has enhanced strength, speed, and agility.

Charlie Travers figures his life can’t get much worse. He lives over a pizza restaurant, he’s lost his girlfriend, and has no prospects for a career. Then, he’s abducted by an alien robot and taken across the galaxy. When he wakes up, he finds himself stranded thousands of light-years away, and about to be killed by space pirates.

Incorporated into the mighty Jakarien Empire, Earths endless wars, hunger, and disease faded into historical footnotes. But peace and prosperity came with a cost. The Imperiums aggressive expansion requiring an inexhaustible supply of pilots, aliens from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, having endured the brutality of Star Corps' orbiting officer evaluation school, gather at SCB Slatereach vying for the right to be called a Hunter of the Imperium. Sam Becket, a human, is one such alien.

Two centuries after the Confederation staved off an invasion by the robotic Locusts, Captain Jack Romanoff faces mandatory retirement from an ever-shrinking navy. Actions speak louder than words. The Confederation doesn’t think the Locusts are coming back. But what if the politicians are wrong?

Mitch's mediocre life has just taken a turn for the worse, so his buddy tries to cheer him up by showing him a secret starship. Unfortunately, everything goes south when hostile aliens arrive. In an effort to save his buddy and the starship from the aliens, Mitch does the obvious thing: he accidentally warps hundreds of light-years away. Marooned in a distant star cluster, Mitch is forced to deal with a snarky teenage AI, a rogue auto-pilot, and a beautiful alien soldier who's ready to steal his ship at any moment—so she can fight an oppressive military faction, of course.

Humanity thought they were the only intelligent life in the universe. They were wrong. An alien spacecraft has crashed on Earth. A group of scientists want to establish contact with the aliens. A hostile government wants to nuke the crash site. Special Forces Major Joe Hunt is caught in the middle. With time running out to establish a peaceful relationship with the aliens, Joe must battle his instincts and unexpected forces that threaten the very future of humanity. Regardless of what happens, Earth risks being dragged into a galactic civil war it's not ready for. Minus Epsilon is classic ...

Since being dishonorably discharged from the Star Corps, pilot John MacAlister has struggled to make ends meet with less-than-legal cargo runs across the cosmos. He’s desperate to get his life back, but every time John thinks he’s found that “one last job,” some new disaster lands him back at square one.

When a platoon of tall boys learns their sergeant's brother is MIA, they go into a city wracked with centuries of war to find him. By the end of the fight, they will learn of a massive government coverup by the highest officers in the expeditionary fleet, an alien invasion, new portal technology, and an AI uprising that may or may not be benevolent. All they must do to put things right is save humanity.

Escaping wrongful imprisonment wasn't something Connor had in mind, but being put into stasis aboard Earth's first interstellar colony ship was something he couldn't have prepared for. For 300,000 colonists, the new colony brings the promise of a fresh start...a second chance. Connor might be the wrong man for the colony, but he's the right man to see that it survives what's coming.

Get ready to experience two more origin stories in the Backyard Starship universe.

She’s lost her ship, lost her job, lost her reputation, and is on the run from the law. Jez is a damn good pilot, and she’s always worked alone. Until she got picked up for smuggling, that is. Now she’s an ex-con and ex-employed, and there are plenty of people with old scores to settle. So when a mysterious stranger in a battered pilot's coat comes to her with an offer that sounds too good to be true, she reluctantly agrees to listen. All she has to do is fly one little job.

This audiobook box set collects the first three installments of John Hindmarsh's epic Jack Foster Space Opera series: Violent Graduation, Rescue the Princess, and Jack's Planet. Join Jack and his team—ever increasing—in their epic adventures.

Titus Briggs is an Earth Defense soldier, a grunt, a decorated war hero—it's all he's ever known. So when a career-ending injury leaves him lying in a hospital bed, missing both legs, he struggles to accept his new reality. He can no longer walk, which means he can no longer fight. That is until a mysterious colonel arrives and offers Titus the opportunity to step into a new kind of war, a new kind of fight. To become a new kind of soldier. Mobile Combat Suits—MOCOMS—represent the next stage in human warfare. They enable soldiers to fight like never before.

Cole Riker is a Slip Runner. A contractor tasked with finding alien salvage in exchange for credits. For an ex-smuggler like Cole, there’s a catch: Don’t break the terms of parole. That means doing things by the book. Find salvage, turn it in, get paid. But everything changes when a retrieval mission lands him in a previously unknown sector. There, he finds the material he’s been sent to recover, along with something more. A brand-new form of ancient alien life.

On the run and out of chances, he guides his ship and crew into the heart of a relic older than the galaxy itself - and find himself on the edge of an eternal war he never knew existed. The relic is a mech, lost to history and forgotten by all who remain. Built by an ancient race to be the ultimate weapon, the machine is capable of unspeakable destruction, and its discovery could unhinge the balance of power throughout known space.

When Gunnar McConnell inherits a treasure map after his uncle's death, he goes on the hunt of his life and can't believe what he finds. There isn't just gold on those mountains, but the secret of a lifetime—a starship that can take him to worlds unknown, and a universe full of life.