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.

Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a 14th story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer. It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit.

At a time when Humans were just starting to venture forth into the Galactic Union as mercenaries, Martin Quincy survived long enough to do something no one else had - he retired. There was only one problem: He got bored. After battling aliens for many years - killing aliens and getting paid - retirement didn’t suit him, and he decided to strap on the combat armor and go back to the stars. Along with his old friend Kal, Martin joined Cartwright’s Cavaliers, humanity’s best merc company. Life was exciting! But he got bored. Again.

Edited by Jamie Ibson and Chris Kennedy, We Dare is a collection of 15 all-new stories that explores the use of augmented humanity in the near future. From getting a new personality loaded with the skills you need for a mission to nanobots that keep you from being killed to creating an indestructible tank, anything is possible!

On the African savanna, the male lion is the lord who watches over his family, while the females of the clan do the real work. Joel “The Lyon” Lyons thought that owning a mercenary company would be similar—he could sit back and allow the Lyoness to run the Pride. Everything would go well, money from successfully completed contracts would flow like water into his bank accounts, and everything would be as easy as it had been for him when he’d owned a chain of highly successful restaurants.

Since time immemorial the Spires have sheltered humanity, towering for miles over the mist-shrouded surface of the world. Within their halls aristocratic houses have ruled for generations, developing scientific marvels, fostering trade alliances, and building fleets of airships to keep the peace. Captain Grimm commands the merchant ship Predator. Fiercely loyal to Spire Albion, he has taken their side in the cold war with Spire Aurora, disrupting the enemy's shipping lines by attacking their cargo vessels.

Lynn Raven may be the boss master of WarMonger 2050 with her online persona of "Larry the Snake", but when the CEO of Tsunami Entertainment personally asks her, as a favor, to beta test a new augmented-reality game, she has to face her greatest fear: going outside and dealing with, ugh, people.

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.

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life...he two things his neglectful mother couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he’d finally found the structure he’d always wanted so desperately. But life in the RMN isn’t exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of budgetary extinction.

The war between Almacia and the Empire of Kolakolvia is in its hundredth year. Casualties grow on both sides as the conflict leaves no corner of the world untouched. Illarion Glaskov’s quiet life on the fringes of the empire is thrown into chaos when an impossible tragedy strikes his village. When he is conscripted into the Tsarist military, he is sent to serve in The Wall - an elite regiment that pilots suits of armor made from the husks of dead golems.

Peacemakers. The Galactic Union’s most capable enforcers and resolute negotiators, their name alone elicits fear and awe among the Union’s citizenry. It is a time of upheaval throughout the Galactic Union. As the effects of the Omega War ripple outward, a Peacemaker falls silent at the outpost mining colony of Parmick. Sensing danger, the Peacemaker Guild dispatches two new graduates of the Academy to investigate and report. They are a new breed of Peacemaker, perfect for the clandestine infiltration mission.

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.

The world has Fallen, but life goes on.... Matthew Kade was a corporate assassin - one of the best agents Obsidian Corporation had. But then the bombs began falling, and the old world ended. Now he must navigate the new world he finds himself in, a world where the strongest survive, and the weaker do their bidding...or die. Kade was always one of the strongest, though, so when a rich man’s daughter goes missing, he turns to Kade to find her and bring her back. But she has already been gone three days, and in the Fallen World, that is an eternity.

Michael, a professor of particle physics, has discovered a way to pierce the veil of time and space, but in so doing, he’s unwittingly opened Pandora’s box. Is it possible to undo what a future version of yourself has done, or is the world doomed to the chaos that’s been loosed on the world?

On their way to fight in the Mexican-American War, a group of American soldiers are swept away to a strange and deadly alternate Earth in this thrilling new adventure set in the world of the New York Times best-selling Destroyermen series.