Space Adventure Fantasy

A thrilling space opera adventure with the mystery and action of Indiana Jones. Hudson Powell had always been a drifter, but after his father died he vowed to turn his life around. He quit freelancing as a starship pilot and joined the Relic Guardian Force as a 38-year-old rookie. That was a big mistake. The RGF police the alien wrecks that have been found on every portal world discovered in the last century. They make sure the relic hunters pay taxes on the priceless alien tech they scavenge from the hulks. The snag is that the RGF is corrupt.

Generations ago, nine ships headed into the unknown to explore a distant star called LQ Pyx. Eons later, the convoy has returned to LQ Pyx to begin work on the Web, the alien megastructure that covers the star. Is it a Dyson Sphere, designed to power a civilization as everyone believes - or something far more sinister? Meanwhile, Planet United's littlest convoy, long thought to be lost, reemerges in a different sector of deep space. What they discover holds the answers to unlocking the Web's greater purpose.

He shattered her past. Now he’s her only future. Smuggler Lira Varn lives by one rule: trust no one. Especially not Vex Krelges, the ruthless Vorex mercenary who sold her out and left her for dead. For eighteen months, she has survived in the galaxy’s grimiest corners, but her latest job, a data drive worth a fortune, has put a Syndicate bounty on her head. Stranded and hunted on the lawless Maelstrom Station, Lira comes face to face with the ghost from her past. Vex is back, as handsome and dangerous as ever, and he wants the same prize she does. Forced into a volatile alliance, they ...

In the near future, an elderly English widow is stirred from her mundane existence by surreal omens and visitations. Centuries later, the space freighter Nova Swing takes on an illegal alien artifact as cargo, with consequences beyond reckoning. While on a distant planet, a nameless policewoman tries to bring order to an event zone where ordinary physics do not apply, only to find herself caught up in something even stranger and more sublime....

When the UN invaded the Freehold of Grainne, the intent was simple: Force a noncompliant star nation back into the collective. What the politicians hadn't accounted for was that the Freehold had spent 200 years as the haven for every independent, rebellious, self-reliant adventurer in human space. Its military are scattered remnants, its bases smoking ruins, its cities occupied. But Grainne and its space habitats have resources beyond measure.

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.

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.

What could be better than space adventures? Captain Surgeon knows the answer to this question - space piracy! Loot, pillage, plunder, and sell all the lucre - that's the motto of the Galactogon pirates, and Surgeon is doing his best to join their number. But what is to be done when the enigmatic Uldans do not want to leave our swashbuckler in peace and keep laying new mysteries in his path, distracting him from his main goal?

When Brad Mendoza and Jessica Lin discover a traitor among their closest friends, they’re devastated. But they’re also on a mission to rescue a duke’s little sister, so they don’t have time to deal with it right now. Until that mission proves to be anything but what they expected, and they find themselves caught between royalty, their sworn enemy, and a particularly annoying 17-year-old with visions of revolution. Now, the traitor in their midst might prove to be their only hope to get out this alive!

He stole my freedom. I stole his heart. But in this game of power and obsession, only one of us can truly win… Adriana I was just another ghost in the cyber-world, a hacker-for-hire playing a dangerous game. Stealing from Rhydor Valtheris, the most feared crime lord in the galaxy, should have been my biggest payday—until I got caught. Now, I’m shackled on his ship, at his mercy, and he doesn’t plan to let me go. He wants to break me, own me, make me submit. But I’m no man’s plaything. I’ll fight him, resist him, even if every dark promise in his amber eyes makes my body betray...

Cal Carver, petty-criminal turned space adventurer, is on a suicide mission—and he really hates suicide missions. But this time, it's to save his best buddy, Splurt, who has been taken prisoner by the the elderly assassin, Lady Vajazzle, and the evil Zertex corporation.

Three against the stars! A sky pirate armed with superior weapons of his own invention.... First contact with an alien race dangerous enough to threaten the safety of two planets.... The arrival of an unseen dark sun whose attendant marauders aimed at the very end of civilization in this Solar System.... These were the three challenges that tested the skill and minds of the brilliant team of scientist-astronauts Arcot, Wade, and Morey.

On the lost colony planet of Croatoan, the job of the police force is to keep the peace, even if it means turning a blind eye to all varieties of crimes. DCI Lutero Cade knows how to play the game – but when it comes to murder, he is more than willing to rock the boat. Now, with a serial killer on the loose, Cade knows he’s about to do a whole lot of boat rocking.

A highly acclaimed author, M. John Harrison is well known for his reality-bending tales. In this sci-fi noir, the physics-defying Saudade Event Site is a place to find strange landscapes and seemingly impossible physical phenomena - perfect for tourism. Into this environment comes Vic Serotonin, a "travel agent" whose newest client is a mysterious woman with a hidden agenda.

Carter Ash wakes up with no memories in a virtual basic training. All the recruits will die within the next six weeks. Lucky for them, they’ve all got three lives. He’s assigned to a squad with his goofy friend and another captivating cadet, Iris. They have to keep each other alive as long as possible because when they die, they get assigned their permanent character class. And everyone in the squad wants a valuable class, ideally the kind where you don’t get killed immediately.

Kael will never open his heart again after losing his Drakonian mate. He also doesn’t know how to deal with his grief or his nine-year-old daughter, who has retreated deep within herself. If he doesn’t find help soon, he will lose the only person left in his life. Kael didn’t think he could love again, but meeting the kind, caring and beautiful nanny gives life to emotions he thought dead. Years after losing her mother, Sarah Meericino still hasn’t emotionally healed and leaves Earth to find a new start. When learning her new ward is a little girl who has lost her mother too, Sarah ...

Earth has been nothing but bad luck for Mia Ambrose. So when the opportunity arises for her to be a nanny on a different planet, she jumps on it. But she should’ve researched her new employer a bit more. When he turns out to be a strict, super hot and stuffy military commander, she wonders if her bad luck followed her. Tharon is the highest-ranking commander in the Tor’vian military. And he has no idea how to take care of his children, a set of eight-year-old twins. Help comes in the form of hiring a nanny from the planet Earth. Mia isn’t exactly what he expected in a nanny. She’s ...

The xenos came to devour. Three worlds they invaded before the Solaran Fleet ground them to a halt. The aftermath spared no one in the Empire. Refugees flooded the core, trade routes crumbled, and economies collapsed. Homeworlds were lost, lives shattered.

When Lieutenant Iari hears screams in the night, she expects to interrupt a robbery or break up a fight. Instead she discovers a murder with an impossible suspect: a riev, one of the battle-mecha decommissioned after the end of the last conflict, repurposed for manual labor. Riev don't kill people. And yet, clearly, one has. Iari sets out to find it.

The war is over, and Will Kaufman is finally back home. He brings with him the technological and medical wonders of the galaxy. When an alien corporate syndicate decides to set up operations on Mars, Earth begins to wonder if the gifts they've been brought are worth the cost of potential subjugation. Earth was spared a war against the Imperium… but it just might find itself at the center of a new conflict unless humanity's only Void Drifter can stop it.