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In this issue: a pope on the run, a drastic change to save the world, and the future of mindreading! All that, plus the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award grand prize story and new short fiction from Catherine Asaro and Frank Chadwick.
   September 2017
eARCs

book cover Mayday for a Pope!

It’s spring in Burgundy. The flowers are out and so are the cardinals! That is, the cardinals of Pope Urban’s renegade papacy, now on the run from the Vatican’s would-be usurper Borja. Fortunately, Urban has help from those indomitable modern West Virginians thrown back in time during the Ring of Fire cataclysm. Urban and his peace initiative are not merely at risk from Borja’s assassins. There is another, deadlier team of professional killers in town, directed by the man who almost killed the pope before: lethal Spanish mastermind Pedro Dolor. Dolor hasn’t come to confess murder—he’s come to commit a cardinal sin. Several of them, in fact!

Get 1636: The Vatican Sanctions eARC here.





What Would You Change to Save the World?

How about everything? Literally. Everything you are, right down to your age, gender, and, eventually, your personality, too. Stephen Russ is living a regular American nerdy guy’s life in his early 30s. Working, hanging out, gaming, having the occasional romance. He is unusually brave and decent. But those traits just haven’t come to the fore so far in his life. Then a child's desperate scream leads him to battle faceless winged things that almost kill him. The choice has arrived: continue normal existence, or . . . become Princess Holy Aura, the first of the five Apocalypse Maidens. The world needs Princess Holy Aura again!

Get Princess Holy Aura eARC here.


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The Year's Best Military and Adventure SF Readers' Choice Award


Baen Books is pleased to announce the winners of the third annual Year's Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction Readers' Choice Award. Congratulations to Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, who took home the prize for their short story “Wise Child.” They received a plaque and $500. Readers chose “Wise Child” as the best military and adventure sf story of the year, from the table of contents of The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, Volume 3.

Read more here.


New Fiction and Nonfiction at Baen.com


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Test Your Mettle

For the first time ever, a group of Marines is planning to assault an enemy space elevator downstation from orbit. If they succeed, they’ll make it into the history books. If they fail . . . well, better not to think about it. It’s up to Captain J. C. Merderet to make sure they don’t fail. It should be just like the drills—right? An all new story from the author of Chain of Command.

Read “What We're Made Of” by Frank Chadwick here.




Up from the Undercity

Before she was a private investigator walking the mean streets of the City of Cries. Before she was a military officer with Imperial Space Command. Major Bhaajan was a teenager in the slum known as the Undercity. Above, the City of Cries is little more than a dream. But in order to survive in the Undercity, Bhaajan will have to survive a nightmare. A new novella in Catherine Asaro’s Major Bhaajan series, with latest entry The Bronze Skies out now.

Read “Children of Dust” here.



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Baen Fantasy Adventure Award Winner

Teresa Kowalczyk is a Blue Widow. As a member of the Order of the Blue Cross, she wields a King's Blade against all supernatural threats. She's good at her calling—if unorthodox. But when the Mother Superior tasks her with returning to her hometown, a place she has not visited since leaving seven years ago, Teresa finds that there are horrors far more dangerous than any monster. Now, she'll have to face her own past and prove herself worthy of her title.

Read the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award grand prize-winning story “The Blue Widow” here.



Reading Thoughts

What if there was a way to peek inside someone else’s head? Being able to read another person’s thoughts is a dream that has long interested humankind. While we may be a long way from true telepathy, scientific research is bringing us ever closer to a true machine-mind interface. Dr. Robert E. Hampson, Ph.D. discusses the history and possible future of looking into the mind of another in this month’s free nonfiction essay.

Read “Seeing Inside Your Head: From MRI to Telepathy?” by Dr. Robert E. Hampson here.



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Don’t Touch that Dial: It’s the Baen Free Radio Hour


Coming soon to the Baen Free Radio Hour: Eric Flint and Alistair Kimble discuss their new urban fantasy novel Iron Angels. Plus, Michael Z. Williamson and the contributors to Forged in Blood talk swords, spaceships, and the Freehold universe in which the anthology is set.

Listen to the Baen Free Radio Hour now.


Baen Ebook Releases


1636: The Vatican Sanctions - HALF
by Eric Flint & Charles E. Gannon


Pope Urban is on the run from the Vatican’s would-be usurper Borja. Fortunately, Urban has help from those indomitable modern West Virginians thrown back in time during the Ring of Fire cataclysm.

Princess Holy Aura - HALF
Ryk E. Spoor


Stephen Russ is living a regular American nerdy guy’s life in his early 30s. Then a child's desperate scream leads him to battle faceless winged things that almost kill him. The choice has arrived: continue normal existence, or . . . become Princess Holy Aura, the first of the five Apocalypse Maidens.



Fleet Insurgent
- HALF
Susan R. Matthews

Collected for the first time, here is the complete Under Jurisdiction corpus falling outside of Matthews' celebrated novels: these are the stories of Andrej Kosciusko’s “few good men” who will one day bring down the totalitarian star empire, the Jurisdiction—if only they can escape being ground down under the very oppression they fight.

Shadow of Victory
David Weber

The Mesan Alignment has a plan remake the galaxy and genetically improve the human race—its way. Until recently, things have gone as scheduled. But even the best laid plans can have unintended consequences, and one of those consequences may just be the dawn of a new bright day of freedom for oppressed star nations everywhere.

Alliance of Shadows
Larry Correia & Mike Kupari

Mercenary Michael Valentine is in Europe with a small team of his Exodus personnel trying to track down the evil and highly dangerous Katarina Montalban. The team is on their own, with few friends, few resources—and racing against the clock. Both Valentine and Lorenzo will have to risk some dangerous alliances if they’re to succeed.

Combat Command: Slammers Down! - HALF
Todd Johnson

Combat Command. You decide the fate of words! You are Gasper Newlin, a junk loader in the Hillgrove Production Complex. Suddenly fate lands you between rebel and government forces. A split-second decision will determine your loyalty—and plunge you into the heat of battle.

Get the December ebooks bundle here

*This Baen Ebooks subscription bundle will dissolve on December 5, 2017. After that date, these books will be available for individual sale only.*


Wordfire Press

The Blood Prize
Kevin J. Anderson

Based on the popular “Colt the Outlander” series from Heavy Metal magazine, created by the Aradio Brothers. Colt is a rough, tough bounty hunter on the bleak planet Neb-6, with big guns and two beautiful women as his partners. When one of them gets kidnapped by a slaving ring, nothing is going to get into Colt’s way!  Move over, Mad Max!


The Jupiter Game
Todd J. McCaffrey

The first encounter with aliens just outside of Jupiter orbit was not quite what humanity expected. First contact is always a challenge when dealing with an incomprehensible species . . . but why do the aliens like Howdy Doody so much? A witty space adventure by the New York Times best-selling author of Dragonheart.


No Phule Like an Old Phule
Robert Asprin & Peter Heck

Book 5 in the hilarious military SF spoof featuring the misfits of Phule’s Company. Phule is hosting a group of big-game hunters who think they can bag a dinosaur on Zenobia.  Needless to say, dinosaurs are not a native species.  But cold, hard facts never stopped a Phule…


The Silver Ship and the Sea
Brenda Cooper

Winner of the Endeavour Award. Prisoners of a war they barely remember, Fremont’s Children must find a way to survive in a world that abhors their very nature. Or they must discover a way to leave it . . .


Joanna Crusader
Hilary Benford

An epic novel of the Crusades. Joanna Plantagenet accompanies her brother Richard the Lionheart on the Third Crusade—the only woman to visit Saracen-held Jerusalem. When she returns to France, Joanna learns that her renowned brother has been captured and held hostage, and with Richard’s wife Berengaria, she must work for his release. Sequel to Sister of the Lionheart.


Jaguar
Bill Ransom

Author’s preferred edition. A gritty cyber-war story. An injured future soldier in a coma uses his mind to continue the war in a dream universe where he has remarkable powers as Jaguar, something more than human.


Get the September Wordfire Press Bundle here

Event Horizon

Three Flags and Two Brothers
Holly E. Rees

Like so many American brothers of their generation, Gilbert and Holly Rees joined the war effort against Imperial Japan in the Pacific. Gil, the elder brother, served as a naval attack aircraft radio operator. Holly, the younger, completed his training just in time to hit the beach at Okinawa. He served for 38 days of fierce, almost continuous combat until a sniper-inflicted wound ended his service career. In prose, photographs, and illustration, Holly Rees details the little-examined point of view of a fresh replacement sent directly from training into combat with a veteran infantry unit.



Don’t forget to check out the Baen new book releases here. Enter the September Contest here. And for upcoming appearances by Baen authors and editors, check here.

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