While the cell is sparse and cold, at least this one has a bed. The figure resting there is too thin; too still, the prominent bones the result of long starvation, the stillness the product of too much anguish and abuse. He watches, though. An anxious, intelligent mind still occupies this frail and failing body, one that watches and wonders about the new guard occupying his cell each night.

Tansy Adams’ greatest love is her family’s bookstore, passed down from her late father. But when it comes to actual romance… Tansy can’t get past the first chapter. Tired of her stepfamily’s questions about her love life, Tansy invents Gemma, a fake girlfriend inspired by the stunning cover model on a bestselling book. They’ll never actually meet, so what’s the harm in a little fib? Yet when real-life Gemma crosses Tansy’s path, her white lie nearly implodes.

Before Ness, before Corny, before Leopold and Heckle and Mac, there was just Shax and Verin and a newly stolen, er, acquired cargo ship. Join Shax on his first adventure in space in which a pampered demon prince has a lot to learn. When a steel trap of celestial and infernal politics threatens to close around them, Shax and Verin flee Earth’s system in a stolen ship, leaving everything behind. It’s an elegantly simple plan, with a new ship and a new life as carefree brigands.

Small-town woodworker Ava Collins and big city doctor Bex Leone both love Christmas. Some might go so far as to call them obsessed. They love Christmas music, Christmas food, Christmas carols, and Christmas movies. When the two women meet over a Thanksgiving dinner, it seems for a second they might have finally found their mistletoe match, but their initial connection goes wildly awry when they realize their versions of what constitutes an ideal Christmas differ as drastically as the places they choose to spend their holidays.

Is there anything worse than your I-don’t-do-commitment ex finally getting married? Not according to Scottie Templeton. Factor in living with her grandma, her rattletrap car, and never-ending job struggles, and Scottie’s stressed.

Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv, the orc barbarian, cashes out of the warrior’s life with one final score. A forgotten legend, a fabled artifact, and an unreasonable amount of hope lead her to the streets of Thune, where she plans to open the first coffee shop the city has ever seen. However, her dreams of a fresh start filling mugs instead of swinging swords are hardly a sure bet. Old frenemies and Thune’s shady underbelly may just upset her plans. To finally build something that will last, Viv will need some new partners, and a different kind of resolve.

Few people know the name Vesper Quill. To most folks, I’m just a lowly lab rat who designs brewmakers and other household appliances in the research-and-development lab at the powerful Kent Corp. But when I point out a design flaw and a safety hazard in the new line of Kent Corp spaceships, everyone knows who I am—and wants to eliminate me. I might be a seer with a photographic memory, but I don’t see the trouble headed my way until it’s too late. Suddenly, I’m surrounded by enemies and fighting for my life.

After the Final War, after the appearance of the Bug aliens and their enforced peace, Shining Smith is still alive, still doing business from the old scrapyard bequeathed to her by her father. But Shining is now something more than human. And the scrapyard is no longer just a scrapyard, but a place full of secrets. This life she has built, while empty, is predictable and safe. Until the only friend left from her previous life shows up, dead, in the back of a scrapped Tesla warplane. Clutched in her cold fingers is a note to Shining - warning her of a coming attack.

Annette Marie presents Book One in the Guild Codex: Warped series. Make sure to check out the companion series, The Guild Codex: Spellbound and The Guild Codex: Demonized, available now.

On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih Tzu named Beast, and is a perfect neighbor, whose biggest problem should be what to serve her guests for breakfast. But Dina is...different: Her broom is a deadly weapon; her Inn is magic and thinks for itself. Meant to be a lodging for otherworldly visitors, the only permanent guest is a retired Galactic aristocrat who can’t leave the grounds because she’s responsible for the deaths of millions and someone might shoot her on sight.

Growing up on modern day Earth, I had no idea I’d been selected from birth to help a dying race save their population. So when a starship abducts me for a royal wedding with galactic consequences, my only option is to help its crew of beautiful officers complete their mission. The catch? I have to protect my gorgeous bride and new allies from an alluring enemy who wants my immunity to a fertility-killing plague for herself, even if it means I have to take command.

When I see the delicate human female collared and enslaved by the smuggler I'm about to swindle, I do what any male would do. I take her from him. It's what I do best, after all. Now Fran's mine, and I'm never giving her up. On board my spaceship, she'll be safe. She'll wear my clothes, eat my food, and sleep in my bed. I'll keep her safe from a galaxy that wishes her harm. But my sweet Fran wants nothing more than to return to Earth. How can I take her home when she holds my heart in her dainty, five-fingered hands?

The people of my planet are under a devastating genetic curse. To treat the disease’s effects, we’ve turned to cultivating a rare flower. That’s my occupation: raising and studying this flower. That’s precisely what I’m doing the daycycle that an alien drops into our research plot, approaches our plant….

Born on an abandoned colony barely held together by sealant tape and hope, Aurora Sato is at the very bottom of the social pecking order. Hard work and brains got her into a coveted spot in the quadrant's top university. But her new supervisor is a woman who's not about to let an upstart like Aurora get anything close to a break. And her home colony is dying. Aurora's research project is their last hope, but only if she can complete it in time. One night out is all she'll allow herself. One night to forget her troubles. She never expects to meet a man who dazzles all her senses.

The Arrisans conquered Earth in a day. They smashed into our helpless planet like a wrecking ball, and overnight, everything changed. That’s what our history books say. The truth is, I’ve never seen an Arrisan face-to-face. But when my lone medical ship is attacked by ruthless pirates, the nightmare that hunts them down is no hero. Cloaked in assassin’s gray, metal scythes fused to his wrist-bones, he is the grim reaper of the conquerors. The Arrisan elite special forces. A blade.

Herself a biologist, Julie E. Czerneda has earned a reputation in science fiction circles for her ability to create beautifully crafted, imaginative, yet believably realized alien races. In Survival, the first novel in her new series, Species Imperative, she draws upon this talent to build races, characters, and a universe which will draw listeners into a magnificent tale of interstellar intrigue, as an Earth scientist is caught up in a terrifying interspecies conflict.

The seemingly endless war with the Grutex has caused many inconveniences for Amanda, but none of those have been as bad as losing the funding for the project she is working on, which is supposed to help save humanity. When she foolishly risks her life to continue her research, Amanda is thrown into the path of an alien, the likes of which she has never seen, who claims she is his mate. The problem is, he isn’t the only one making that claim.

Senior co-administrator of the Norcoast Salmon Research Facility, Dr. Mackenzie Connor was a biologist who studied the spawning habits of salmon. Then, last season, just as she and Dr. Emily Mamani were starting their research, they were interrupted by the arrival of Brymm, the first Dhryn to set foot on Earth. And suddenly everything changed for Mac, Emily, Brymn, the human race, and all the member races of the Interspecies Union. Base was attacked, Em was kidnapped by the mysterious Ro, and Mac and brymn had to flee for their lives to the Dhryn home world.

Burned by an ex, the last thing Evie wants is a husband, especially a seven-foot-tall, green-skinned alien. But when she applies to the Extraterrestrial Matchmaking Service on a dare, she's paired with Vork and sent to Crakair as a mail-order bride. Vork is big and dangerous, and he hits all her buttons. Passion sparks between them, but does she dare trust this sexy alien with her heart?

I won’t be forced into alien servitude. I’ve spent my life mucking out the houses of the rich and famous. I know what they’re really like. They think they can take whatever they want. I learned that the hard way.

Award-winning author Katie MacAlister has published dozens of acclaimed novels. When Captain Octavia Pye discovers people not wearing proper 19th-century fashions aboard her Victorian airship, she wonders if they’re pirates. The reality is—they’re actually from an alternate universe.

Nötchka Uumian, solo-scavenger and pilot, only came to Bandalier for business. But when her first ever heat cycle hits, she has two choices: Get off the planet or find somewhere safe to ride out the heatburns. Determined to never end up mated and trapped in a kitchen, she heads into the Droid district. You can’t mate if the other person isn’t an organic, right?

I left the Earth to get away from my controlling ex, and I refuse to fall into another man's arms...not even an amazingly masculine alien that awakens an uncontrollable attraction within me. Bask is the definition of alpha male and my opposite in every way. He comes from an alien species full of domineering males, and I'm not interested. I can't deny that I'm hot for him, but I'm not willing to be his submissive little female. When our ship crashes, he goes into protector mode. He thinks I'm a helpless human. I might not have the power to summon fire at my fingertips, but I'm not weak.

Every year, Jathan One-Moon faces increasing pressure that he marry and have children. What Jathan really wants is a male mate that can enjoy both playful sex and his more dominant nature. To tame his stress, Jathan orders a male escort from Spice 'n' Solace, the premier male brothel in the Galactic Alliance - and is thrilled to be sent a man whose air of innocence and obvious desire for Jathan arouse him like never before.

Higgens has the best job in the galaxy. Except for the fact that he’s technically a janitor on a galactic mining vessel. When he discovers an unknown alien species, his world gets turned upside down. He will have to find unlikely allies if he is going to save his new friend and help her build a new home. The Mimic and the Space Engineer boxed set contains the first three books in the Space Shifter Chronicles. If you like fast-paced space adventures with engaging, and quirky, characters, you will love Higgens, Mimic, and their adventures in space.

Space ship travel when you've been kidnapped sucks. I don't get a pillow, there's no snacks, and worst of all—the whole ship crashes. Except, it doesn't crash on Earth, or even Mars. Nope, I'm in a whole new galaxy on a foreign planet and some body-builder-looking blue horned aliens with lots of piercings have decided I'm their new play thing. And not in a good way. Until one alien decides he's not going to share, and maybe I have a concussion from the crash, because I'm all about the possessive way he protects me. But there's no way he'll fight his whole clan for me . . . right?

Space travel just isn't what it used to be. With the invention of quantum teleportation, space heroes aren't needed anymore. When one particularly unlucky ex-adventurer masquerades as famous pilot and hate figure Jacques McKeown, he's sucked into an ever-deepening corporate and political intrigue. Between space pirates, adorable deadly creatures, and a missing fortune in royalties, saving the universe was never this difficult!

Centuries in the past, mankind fought a seemingly unbeatable adversary from sector to sector across the Spiral Arm until the war ground to a standstill and the Enemy withdrew. Believing that they had won, the citizens of the galaxy rebuilt. The Inner Worlds, which had escaped the worst of the war's ravages, became even more insular, while the Rim worlds adopted a free and easy way with law and order. Now, hundreds of years after their withdrawal, the Enemy is back - and this time they'll be satisfied with nothing less than the extinction of the galaxy.

Hunting for big bad wolves was never part of Agent Cooper Dayton's plan, but a werewolf attack lands him in the carefully guarded Bureau of Special Investigations. A new case comes with a new partner: ruggedly sexy werewolf Oliver Park. Park is an agent of The Trust, a werewolf oversight organization working to ease escalating tensions with the BSI. But as far as Cooper's concerned, it's failing. As they investigate a series of mysterious deaths unlike anything they've seen, every bone in Cooper's body is suspicious of his new partner....

After a decade of piloting interstellar patrol ships, former captain Chasidah Bergren, onetime pride of the Sixth Fleet, finds herself court-martialed for a crime she didn't commit and shipped off to a remote prison planet from which no one ever escapes. But when she kills a brutal guard in an act of self-defense, someone even more dangerous emerges from the shadows. Gabriel Sullivan alpha mercenary, smuggler, and rogue is supposed to be dead.