Deep within the Congo, a team of scientists prepares for the greatest event in the history of humanity, making first contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species. Only the jungle is no place for doubts. Could first contact be our last?

Noah Harris and Ashley Flynn are field agents for a powerful organization tasked with protecting humanity from the misuse of game-changing technology. But when they discover hidden portals that link Earth to numerous planets, they are thrust into a maze of deception and intrigue they can't begin to understand....one that not only has them battling for their very lives, but that will decide the fate of worlds. Because, inexplicably, each of the planets contain human civilizations, and the rulers of our nearest portal neighbor have come up with a brilliant, twisted plan to conquer ours.

Litany of the Long Sun contains the full texts of Nightside the Long Sun and Lake of the Long Sun that together make up the first half of The Book of the Long Sun. This great work is set on a huge generation starship in the same future as the classic Book of the New Sun (also available in two volumes from Orb).

When you’re out in the black wilds of space you might encounter warring pirate factions, rogue planets, or even find yourself on the wrong side of the Royal Union, the ruling government of the Triumph galaxy. Unfortunately for Halstaan Cross, it's all three.

AD 2150: Chris Randall just lost his job as a bodyguard. That night, after picking up his wife, Bree, from her shift at a local casino, he breaks the bad news. Moments later, thunder cracks the sky, but there’s no lightning. Flaming debris rain across the valley, and a dark mass goes sailing out of the clouds, headed straight for LA. It’s not one of the Union’s starships, because they can’t defy gravity like that. But then, what is it? The answer chills both Chris and Bree to their cores: It’s an invasion.

Jeff Dolan always wanted to be an astronaut. After helping a private space company build a ship that can travel to Saturn's largest moon in five months, he gets his chance. Shortly after launch, a devastating malfunction forces Jeff and the crew to make a choice: continue to Titan or go back home. As the truth about their mission unravels, one thing is clear: Someone on Earth knew about the system flaw and covered it up. Yet surviving the journey isn't the crew's only concern. Even if they make it to Titan, they will face another problem: Something is already there.

At the start of the 22nd century, the starship Acheron is in orbit around WISE 5571, only, unbeknownst to the crew, the ship has been overrun by telepathic extraterrestrials. How do you fight an enemy that distorts everything you see? What do you do when you can't trust your own senses, let alone anyone around you?

Hello World represents a decade of science fiction by author Peter Cawdron. This collection of 16 short stories and novellas, including four previously unpublished stories, will take you out of this world.

Mankind has long dreamed of reaching out to live on other planets, and with the establishment of the Mars Endeavour colony, that dream has become reality. The fledgling colony consists of 120 scientists, astronauts, medical staff, and engineers. Buried deep underground, they're protected from the harsh radiation that sterilizes the surface of the planet. The colony is prepared for every eventuality except one - what happens when disaster strikes Earth?

Tunguska, Roswell, the Bermuda Triangle, the Mary Celeste... For hundreds of years, the danger posed by colliding worlds has been ignored as a crackpot theory, until now, and now it's too late.

Dr. Tyson Klein is a quantum physicist who has dedicated his entire life to his research. At CERN, he analyses data generated by the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator. Now, Ty believes he's found a pattern in its output. It looks like an organised data stream, being broadcast over what he calls a quantum radio. Could it be a signal from another universe? A message sent from the future? Or something else entirely?

Jack Kernigan is having a bad day...a bad year...a bad life. After being booted out of MIT, he’s back in his Ohio hometown, working for the family business, facing a life of mediocrity. Then one day, out on a delivery, his truck hits...something. Something big...something furry...something invisible. And, it turns out, something not of this Earth. Fate can play funny tricks. Which is why Jack suddenly finds himself the planet’s best hope to unravel a conspiracy of galactic proportions that could spell the end of the human race.

After a rough break up, Wyatt moves to New York City, eager to prove himself while working on Wall Street. When he’s asked to visit the father of his ex-girlfriend, a billionaire tycoon, his fate is sealed. The revolutionary company, Nu-En, launches a radical innovation, an energy that will allow every person on the planet access to power. Only it doesn’t perform as anticipated. Harnessing the ocean has consequences, and highly dangerous creatures emerge from the depths. Soon, the Earth is fracturing, and the world will never be the same.

Colton Beck has six months to live. He works for the Angor near Los Angeles, aware that any day could be his last. The Angor arrived twenty years ago, resolved to help mankind survive, but not everyone believes their motives are honorable. When the Angor offer humanity a colony world, Colton is determined to see another planet before his final breath. He's been diagnosed with Xeno, a rare disorder that surfaced with the Angor's arrival, but he won't let this stop him.

Geophysicist Jack Greer believes he may finally have found the resting place of the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. A few miles off the Yucatán coast, Jack and a team of scientists tow an aging drilling platform over the impact crater with the aim of securing a sample. But buried deep beneath the earth lies a shocking discovery that threatens to shatter everything we think we know about our species.

Deep within the Congo, a team of scientists prepares for the greatest event in the history of humanity, making first contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species. Only the jungle is no place for doubts. Could first contact be our last?

Mankind has long dreamed of reaching out to live on other planets, and with the establishment of the Mars Endeavour colony, that dream has become reality. The fledgling colony consists of 120 scientists, astronauts, medical staff, and engineers. Buried deep underground, they're protected from the harsh radiation that sterilizes the surface of the planet. The colony is prepared for every eventuality except one - what happens when disaster strikes Earth?

At the start of the 22nd century, the starship Acheron is in orbit around WISE 5571, only, unbeknownst to the crew, the ship has been overrun by telepathic extraterrestrials. How do you fight an enemy that distorts everything you see? What do you do when you can't trust your own senses, let alone anyone around you?

In the depths of an ancient Egyptian tomb, archaeologists make a baffling discovery: the mummified body of a man clad in a space suit. Halfway around the globe, exobiologist Dr. Katherine Shepard and intelligence officer Colonel Devon Peters are summoned to the site of a downed UFO. To their amazement, they find one of the occupants alive. Even more shocking, he appears to be human. As Shepard and Peters delve deeper into the enigma, they expose a chilling truth: aliens have inhabited Earth far longer than anyone could have imagined, and they are not alone.

Hello World represents a decade of science fiction by author Peter Cawdron. This collection of 16 short stories and novellas, including four previously unpublished stories, will take you out of this world.

Fresh out of college with his Ship Engineer 3rd-Class certificate, Dave Walker’s only thought is to try to find a berth on a corporate ship plying the trade routes between the many habs, orbitals, and moons in the Solar System. The problem for Dave, however, isn't his straight C average; it's that his stepfather, a powerful Earth senator he’s never met, now wants him dead. Forced to take the first berth he can find, Dave ends up on the Iowa Hill, an old tramp freighter running with a minimal crew and nearing the end of its useful life.

Arriving home after a harrowing tour of duty on a hostile alien world, USC Sergeant Matt Reeves has just learned the enemy - an insidious humanoid species known as the Wraith - may be preparing to attack Earth again. With much of Earth still in ruins, and its military forces stretched beyond capacity fighting an interstellar war, there is no way mankind could survive another invasion. Enter The Emissary Program. Matt learns the USC have been secretly experimenting with time travel....

Ashley Kelly is your typical American teenager - or she would be if it wasn't for the cluster bomb that crippled her. Seven years after the invasion, over a hundred million Americans have been displaced by the war, with millions more dead. Ash has spent seven years learning to walk again, and she'll be damned if she's going to lie down for anyone, human or otherwise.

Daniel Rice is a government science investigator whose specialty is solving seemingly intractable problems through scientific inquiry. But Daniel's intellectual strength is sorely tested by the bizarre realities he finds in the quantum world. Extra dimensions of space trap the unwary, probability replaces cause and effect, and time isn't what anyone imagined. The other side of the mirror is a place full of dangers, but it's also somewhere a dedicated scientist can uncover secrets that connect humans with something greater.

On a serene night in 1953, Sally Mason, a dedicated wife and mother of two, drives a twisting road on her way home from night school. Suddenly, a mysterious bluish-white light descends over the road. Terrified, Sally slams on the brakes. After a flash of bright light nearly blinds her, she passes out, awakening to the persistent knock of a police officer on her car window. When she sees the officer and remembers her frightening experience, she screams and faints, and is rushed to the hospital.

The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city - intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began.

Lieutenant Kiera Markov is a scout platoon leader for a peacekeeping force on the remote planet of Tanara, where little has happened for decades, and the only mission is to keep the lithium flowing up the space elevator to feed the galaxy’s incessant demand. But when an unprecedented attack kills the entirety of the brigade’s leadership, the untested lieutenant suddenly finds herself in command.

Below the neon skies of Dayzone, where the lights never go out and night has been banished, lowly private eye John Nyquist takes on a teenage runaway case. His quest takes him from Dayzone into the permanent dark of Nocturna. As the vicious, seemingly invisible serial killer known only as Quicksilver haunts the streets, Nyquist starts to suspect that the runaway girl holds within her the key to the city's fate. In the end there's only one place left to search: the shadow-choked zone known as Dusk.

Earth is conquered. Sol is lost. One ship is tasked to free them. One Captain to save them all. When an alien armada destroys the United Earth Space Force and takes control of the human homeworld, newly reinstated Captain Annette Bond must take her experimental hyperspace cruiser Tornado into exile as Terra's only interstellar privateer. She has inferior technology, crude maps, and no concept of her enemy, but the seedy underbelly of galactic society welcomes her so long as she has prizes to sell and money to spend.

The Lords of Creation rule the Nine Worlds through its control of the ultra-advanced technology that has permitted the colonization of the entire solar System. More gods than men, the Lords of Creation have cheated Death itself. But although they rule the solar system with their god-like scientific knowledge, there are even more powerful forces to be feared lurking out in the dark depths of space. And when an unthinkably terrible enemy that rules a vast network of dead stars and planets comes to the Nine Worlds, it falls to them to stop it, though entire worlds may perish.