Captain Felix Duval and the crew of the Temerarious quietly patrol a remote Mentak Coalition colony system where nothing ever happens. But when they answer a distress call from a moon under attack, that peaceful existence is torn apart. They rescue a scientist, Thales, who's developing revolutionary technology to create new wormholes. He just needs a few things to make it fully operational...and now, ordered to aid the scientist, the Temerarious is targeted by two rival black-ops teams intent on reacquiring Thales.

Intergalactic civilization emerges from its war-torn ruins for the first time in generations to explore the galaxy, in this stunning new anthology from the bestselling world of Twilight Imperium.

The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.

Once a student of alchemy with the dark scholars of the Technic League, Alaeron fled their arcane order when his conscience got the better of him, taking with him a few strange devices of unknown function. Now in hiding in a distant city, he's happy to use his skills creating minor potions and wonders - at least until the back-alley rescue of an adventurer named Jaya lands him in trouble with a powerful crime lord.

When the leader of the ruthless Technic League calls in a favor, the mild-mannered alchemist Alaeron has no choice but to face a life he thought he'd left behind long ago. Accompanied by his only friend, a street-savvy thief named Skiver, Alaeron must head north into Numeria, a land where brilliant and evil arcanists rule over the local barbarian tribes with technology looted from a crashed spaceship.

The sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, Shadrapar is a museum, a midden, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity. Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new is Stefan Advani: rebel, outlaw, prisoner, survivor.

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

There's a reason We Are Legion was named Audible's Best Science Fiction Book of 2016: Its irresistibly irreverent wit! Bob Johansson has just sold his software company for a small fortune and is looking forward to a life of leisure. The first item on his to-do list: Spending his newfound windfall. On an urge to splurge, he signs up to have his head cryogenically preserved in case of death. Then he gets himself killed crossing the street. Waking up 117 years later, Bob discovers his mind has been uploaded into a sentient space probe with the ability to replicate itself.

This audiobook brings together 13 uproarious short stories and one novella, focused on Ciaphas Cain, Hero of the Imperium. His stories are celebrated as heroic propaganda pieces, but he’s simply trying to stay alive in a hostile galaxy.

When the baroness of Forthyn's daughter disappears, she calls on the legendary orc hero Durik to find her. Durik enlists his old questing partners - the dwarf alchemist Ulma Grimstone and roguish Logan Lashley - in the hopes of reliving their glory days. Together they journey to fear-struck Fallowhearth. There, instead of clues, they uncover necromancy: graveyards emptied of corpses, with trails of footprints leading into sinister Blind Muir Forest.... But the forest holds more than just the walking dead.

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.

On the streets of Boston, the world is divided into the ordinary Usuals, and the paranormal Unorthodox. And in the Department of Unorthodox Affairs, the Auditors are the magical elite, government-sanctioned witches with spells at their command and all the power and prestige that comes with it. Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby is…not one of those witches.

It started as a simple heist. It went to hell from there. On a space station orbiting a pale blue sun, a package changes hands. Data too sensitive to transmit will be exposed for one brief moment. The client is paying a crazy sum - if the job is clean. That’s not going to happen. Instead, the galaxy’s unluckiest crew of outlaws will have to put all their resources into salvaging what they can from the job. Even if it’s only avoiding blame for the fallout.

Equipped with the entirety of human knowledge, a sentient ship is launched on a last-ditch journey to find a new home for civilization. Trillions of miles. Tens of thousands of years. In the space between, the AI has plenty of time to think about life, the vastness of the universe, everything it was meant to do, and—with a perspective created but not limited by humans—what it should do.

Lifelong friends, they went their separate ways. Now they are together again, though each holds secrets from the others in his heart. They speak of a world shadowed with rumors of war. They speak of tales of strange monsters, creatures of myth, creatures of legend. They do not speak of their secrets. Not then. Not until a chance encounter with a beautiful, sorrowful woman, who bears a magical crystal staff, draws the companions deeper into the shadows, forever changing their lives and shaping the fate of the world.

When the Colony on Hayden's world went black, a team was sent to investigate. It was supposed to be a training mission: skip in, find out the Casimir Transmitter had gone dead, report back and wait for resupply from the Fleet. By the time the only surviving member of the team made landfall, it was spectacularly clear that this wasn't a training mission.

The first book in an action–packed new SF adventure series. Vulcan is a factory planet, centuries old, Company run, ugly as sin, and unfeeling as death. Vulcan breeds just two types of native: complacent or tough. Sten is tough. When his family is killed in a mysterious accident, Sten rebels, harassing the Company from the metal world’s endless maze-like warrens. He could end up just another burnt–out Delinquent. But people like Sten never give up.

The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.

When humanity reaches for the stars, our probes are destroyed. They crash into an incredibly advanced piece of technology: a massive force-field. Unknown beings have placed a barrier around our star and planets, enclosing us within. We’re locked inside a Great Sphere. Was this invisible obstacle built to imprison us - or to protect us? No one knows the truth, but it soon becomes clear the barrier has leaks. Aliens infiltrate and try to sabotage our efforts to escape our cage.

The Imperium; a million worlds, trillions upon trillions of humans and aliens, an empire that dominates half the galaxy... an empire that is falling into chaos, revolution and civil war. Only a handful of people are struggling to keep the Imperium together, knowing that the brutality of its rule is infinitively preferable to the chaos of its fall. This is their story. Mariko and her sister were independent shippers and ace pilots, until they ran afoul of the law on a minor planet and ended up jailed and enslaved.

One starship will either save Earth or destroy her. A century ago our star erupted, destroying Earth's wormhole network and closing off trade with her colonized planets. After being out of contact with the younger worlds for so many years, humanity is shocked when a huge ship appears at the edge of the solar system. Our outdated navy investigates, both curious and fearful. What they learn from the massive vessel shocks the planet.

They're all gone. We remember them like yesterday: pieces of our stolen heritage. Things like NASA. Football. Parades and pies. Good things, comfortable things. We remember a time when we were alone in the universe, safe and oblivious. But it's all gone now. We called them the Telestines, and in the face of their ruthless invasion we were powerless. By 2040, all the world's governments and militaries had fallen, and the remnants of humanity exiled to the solar system. We looked down on our blue planet, so close to our birthplace, so close to our home.

Fleet of Worlds takes a closer look at Human-Puppeteer (Citizen) relations and the events leading up to Niven's first Ringworld novel. Kirsten Quinn-Kovacks is among the best and brightest of her people. She gratefully serves the gentle race that rescued her ancestors from a dying starship, gave them a world, and nurtures them still. If only the Citizens knew where Kirsten's people came from.

The Hundred Worlds have withstood invasion by the relentless Hok for decades. The human worlds are strong, but the Hok have the resources of a thousand planets behind them, and their fleets attack in endless waves. The long war has transformed the Hundred Worlds into heavily fortified star systems. Their economies are geared for military output, and they raise specialized soldiers to save our species. Assault Captain Derek Straker is one such man among many.

On June 30, 1908, an object fell from the sky, releasing more energy than a thousand Hiroshima bombs. A Siberian forest was flattened, but the strike left no significant crater. The anomaly came to be known as the Tunguska Event, and scientists have never agreed whether it was the largest meteor strike in recorded history - or something else. Alien artifacts have been uncovered since the 1908 event, and a new star drive is discovered.

No one knows the true motives of Kees vaan Loo-Macklin. He's a mastermind criminal who gave up his place at the head of the dark underworld to become a legitimate member of Evenwaith's cities. But soon he was reaching out to powerful enemies - the slimy aliens called the Nuel. Loo-Macklin negotiates an illusory peace agreement and gains precious alien secrets in the process. Is he after peace, power or pure evil? With enemy starships beginning to amass, we won't have to wait long to find out.

Contains books one, two and three of the action-packed space opera Ascension series. They’ve been watching us for hundreds of years. Now they need our help. Earth is not safe. Zack is good at finding things, but when he discovers a global conspiracy, life as he knows it is over. Kept secret for 60 years, the discovery of an alien signal forces an unlikely team to investigate a mysterious structure discovered in the furthest reaches of the solar system. Join the crew of the Athena, Earth’s most advanced spaceship on the ultimate journey beyond our wildest imagining.

The Earth died when aliens rained thermonuclear warheads on her cities and sprayed the surface with a bio-terminator. A deadly poison drifted to every corner of the planet, threatening the last survivors with annihilation. For a soldier like Creed, there is only one way to keep breathing untainted air. He must bury his hatred of the extraterrestrials and join the Jelk Corporation as an assault trooper, leaving the planet for outer space. In return for his and other people's services, the corporation will house the last humans for as long as the assault troopers keep winning.

The plot by the Galactic Union’s Mercenary Guild against the Four Horsemen has culminated in an invasion of Earth. Faced with an overwhelming force, the human mercs had no choice. They’ve fled, leaving Sansar Enkh to go to the Mercenary Guild headquarters on Capital Planet to stand trial for humanity. On the run, Jim Cartwright and Nigel Shirazi have travelled to the Winged Hussars’ secret base of New Warsaw, in an effort to convince Alexis Cromwell to join the fight, while the other mercenaries who escaped the fall of Earth have gone to the perceived safe haven of Karma.

Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars. Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war - and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.