Space Fantasy

Countdown: At long last, an extraterrestrial civilization reached out and made the First Contact. The end of their message showed humankind how to access a mysterious game. But as people figure out this mysterious game, the countdown timer ticks away. And no one can say exactly what will happen when Earth's safety is no longer guaranteed.

A hot, stinking, dumpster fire. And most days I don't know if the legionnaires are putting out the flames, or fanning them into an inferno. A hostile force ambushes Victory Company during a reconnaissance-in-force deep inside enemy territory. Stranded behind enemy lines, a sergeant must lead a band of survivors against merciless insurgents on a deadly alien world somewhere along the galaxy's edge. With no room for error, the Republic's elite fighting force must struggle to survive under siege while waiting on a rescue that might never come.

Sergeant Richard Stavos was a Technomancer, capable of creating stronger than normal mental links with nanites. But that alone wasn't enough to keep him alive. Not when the Ka Empire wages wars across the galaxy. Death was supposed to be his release...an end to the constant fighting that plagued his life. But gifted beings like Richard are assets, and almost a decade after his death, the Ka overlords bring him back from the grave as a "reward" for his good service.

Max Tyco is a truck driver on the road more days than he's home. Events are about to transpire that will lead this everyday Joe on an adventure of a lifetime. Things like traveling through space, starships, alien monsters, and blasters have all been daydreams...until now. The Rowki is a fraternity of intergalactic guardians tasked with keeping the balance between the light and the darkness. A call for help from the oldest galaxy in the universe and the central planet in that galaxy will uncover an ancient secret that could mean the end of the universe as we know it.

Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion. Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family.

Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth unveils a solar system of swordplay, cut-throat politics, and lesbian necromancers. Her characters leap out of the audio, as skillfully animated as arcane revenants. The result is a heart-pounding epic science fantasy. Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse.

Captain Kyle Roberts has commanded the carrier Avalon through the most vicious battles of the war against the Terran Commonwealth - but with Avalon in for repair, his political enemies deny him a new ship. Unwilling to accept a desk, he takes command of a covert operation using a captured Commonwealth warship to strike at the very heart of their enemy, drawing away the reinforcements that could destroy the Alliance's recent gains.

Captain James Decker has lived a life of hunting, killing, and earning credits. To some, it hasn’t amounted to much, but to him, it’s led to him captaining the SC Fortune, a space cruiser with a competent crew that he’s grown fond of. After accepting a bounty hunting mission with a beautiful blonde woman as the mark, Decker finds himself soon without a ship and a crew. But as luck would have it, this same mission gives him back what he lost: a new ship and a new crew.

Includes books one and two in the Sleeping Gods series: Endeavor and Erebus.

The Majority always gets what it wants. Thomas Hill just wishes it didn't want him. There's no way to escape a galactic mob of mind readers, no way for him to blend in with his foster family and other average Americans. Because Thomas invented a way to save his own life. His custom medicine halts the progress of his degenerative neuromuscular disease. Newscasters proclaim him the next Einstein, but mere humans have no idea his bioengineered processing capacity rivals that of a supercomputer. They just think he's smart. However, there are other bioengineered supergeniuses in the Majority.

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.

Two hundred years ago, aliens invaded Earth. A violent war followed. The enemy won. Some of us escaped, most of us didn’t. On Proxima they flourished - the invasion forgotten. On Earth we floundered - the horror began. Their world is advanced, peaceful, and secure. Our world is broken, savage, and overrun. A new invasion is coming. A hunger that has swallowed half the universe. They don’t care which planet we live on. They want to end us all. But where there is life, there is hope. And where there is hope, there are heroes. This time, vengeance will be ours.

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.

In 2059, two vastly different groups of people portrayed by the compelling trio of Brendan Fraser (Academy Award winner), Luke Kirby (Emmy Award winner), and Vanessa Sears (Dora Award winner) undergo cryonic suspension. While their bodies are frozen, their minds, still active and awake, are uploaded into a massive quantum computer. The first group are all astronauts, about to leave Earth on a one-way interstellar colonization mission. The second group consists of convicted murderers and volunteers who elect to serve their sentences in a virtual-reality prison.

Zero, Nyx, and the other Pathfinder colonists have adjusted to life on Kaguya. But Earth has built much faster starships-the Dreamcatcher arrives 10 years early, and the Stargazer arrives so early it actually got there before the Pathfinder did! Now the Stargazer is a lost shipwreck, and the race is on to find it, and who should show up looking for it but Nyx's dangerous family: Big Mama, Jim, and Kratt. Nyx and Zero will face kidnappers, pirates, shipwrecks, warlords, dragons, and maybe a new ally or two on their way to save the day once again.

The Alliance has toppled the tyrannical empire. It should be a time for celebration, but not for fighter pilot Captain Alisa Marchenko. After barely surviving a crash in the final battle for freedom, she's stranded on a dustball of a planet, billions of miles from her young daughter. She has no money or resources, and there are no transports heading to Perun, her former home and the last imperial stronghold. But she has a plan.

A Rain of Fire: The dark forces of the Neo Hegemony strike, sweeping across the worlds of the Arcadian sector and crushing all in their path. One system stands against the onslaught: the Kingdom of New Avalon. But the men and women of their expeditionary forces are trapped behind enemy lines on a besieged planet. This box set also features Titan's Vengeance and A Relentless Fury.

We hide in shadows. Our planet is lost. We are the last humans, and we must go home. Two thousand years ago, aliens destroyed Earth. Our fleets shattered. Billions died. The last humans fled a burning planet, heading to the stars. Today we are still refugees. Hungry. Afraid. Our enemies hunt us everywhere. So we hide. On distant asteroids. In rundown space stations. In deep caves on frozen worlds. And we dream. Of green hills. Blue skies. Golden fields. We dream of Earth. And for the first time, we have hope.

The Interbeing League had been formed to make contact with new intelligent races in the galaxy and offer them membership. But when the League encountered the Hokas, furry creatures strongly resembling the teddy bears of Earth, the league's agent, Alexander Jones, could have been excused for wishing he had a simpler assignment than making sense out of the Hokas - such as singlehandedly stopping an interstellar war.

Hazard King had always wanted to be an Imperial Fleet officer, just like his father. But he’s a Prince of the Realm, which make things a bit more… complicated. And when Hazard’s parents tell him that they don’t trust his older brother and want Hazard to be the Crown Prince—the heir to the throne—things go from bad to worse. Just when it seems they can’t get any worse, the Empress is attacked.