John Abbott is all in.

He’s up to his eyeballs in debt to pay for school, and he’s just moved his small family forty light-years from Earth for a plum job with the wealthy interstellar corporation, The Sarovar Company. John’s first assignment is to discreetly investigate possible corruption at the remote Arrowhawk Station, where Company traders buy the famous Sarovari Weave from the three-sided, crablike Weavers.

John finds evidence of theft and worse, but when the guilty parties realize he’s getting close, they come after him and his family. Can John catch the thieves and end their corrupt trade? Can he head off a war between the Company and the Weavers? Can he make a life for his family in this remote wilderness without corrupting himself?

With no way back to Earth, the only direction for John Abbott and his family to go is forward—into danger.

Simeon was a shell-person—the brain who ran Space Station SSS-900 on the fringes of human space. But things hadn’t been going too well lately, and he was more than a little discontented. Though normally he enjoyed his work, these days it seemed boring. To make matters worse, his long-time partner had just retired and he was having a hard time adjusting to his newly assigned brawn—a strong-willed woman named Channa Hap who seemed to feel it her duty to keep him in line. He’s buried himself in his favorite pastime—wargaming.

Simeon’s hobby would find unexpected uses when the brutal Kolnari attack the nearby colony planet Bethel. Sheltering the colony’s refugees brought “the city” an invitation to serious trouble with Kolnari pirates. And only Simeon and Channa working together can save the city.

For more than fifty years, the Terran Republic and the Terran League have been killing one another. The death toll has climbed ever higher, year after year, with no end in sight. But the members of the Five Hundred, the social elite of the Republic’s Heart Worlds, don’t care.

Rear Admiral Terrence Murphy is a Heart Worlder. His family is part of the Five Hundred. His wife is the daughter of one of the Five Hundred’s wealthiest, most powerful industrialists. His sons and his daughter can easily avoid military service, and political power is his for the taking. There is no end to how high he can rise in the Republic’s power structure.

All he has to do is successfully complete a risk-free military “governorship” in the backwater Fringe System of New Dublin without rocking the boat. But the people sending him to New Dublin have miscalculated, because Terrence Murphy is a man who believes in honor. Who believes in duty—in common decency and responsibility. Who believes there are dark and dangerous secrets behind the façade of what “everyone knows.”

Terrence Murphy intends to meet those responsibilities, to unearth those secrets, and he doesn’t much care what the Five Hundred want. He intends to put a stop to the killing.

Terrence Murphy is coming for whoever has orchestrated fifty-six years of bloodshed and slaughter, and Hell itself is coming with him.

Everyone has a different war. For some in the UN Peacekeeping mission to Grainne, the struggle is just to survive. For others, it’s to remain sane, or keep one’s friends and comrades physically and mentally intact. When the rules of engagement are in constant flux, and orders are unclear or based on false information, just getting back inside the fence can be an accomplishment.

For the rebels of the Freehold of Grainne, they must form an organized force from the shattered remnants of their military, and from grimly determined, but underequipped and outnumbered insurgents. Their war is for their very way of life. They’ll do everything and anything to stop this invasion, using whatever means are available. They mean to make the enemy suffer. Quod vulnera curare potes. “Because physical wounds heal.”

Daslakh is an AI with a problem. Its favorite human, a young man named Zee, is in love with a woman who never existed—and he will scour the Solar System to find her. But in the Tenth Millennium, a billion worlds circle the Sun—everything from terraformed planets to artificial habitats, home to a quadrillion beings.

Daslakh’s nicely settled life gets more complicated when Zee helps a woman named Adya escape a gang of crooks. This gets the pair caught up in the hunt for the Godel Trigger, a legendary weapon left over from an ancient war between humans and machines—which could spell the end of civilization.

In their search, they face a criminal cat and her henchmen, a paranoid supermind with a giant laser, the greatest thief in history, and a woman who might actually be Zee’s lost love.

It’s up to Daslakh to save civilization, keep Zee’s love life on the right track—and make sure that nobody discovers the real secret of the Godel Trigger.

Robosoldiers. They take many forms, from disembodied AI to humanlike androids and more. But at their cores beat the cybernetic hearts of warriors! In these stories of hard military SF you will journey to the battlefields of tomorrow with the veterans who have been there and the researchers developing the next phase of battle and get a glimpse into the future of warfare.

New stories from David Drake, Richard Fox, Weston Ochse, Martin L. Shoemaker, T.C. McCarthy, Brad R. Torgersen, and more!

Within a military that prides teamwork, strength in numbers, and camaraderie, the sniper is the outlier. The loner. The specialist whose talent can mean the difference between mission success and disaster—and often between life and death. Kyle Monroe is one member of this exclusive fraternity. Wade Curtis is another. From Pakistan to the tunnels beneath the ruins of Vlad the Impaler’s castle in Romania to the jungles of Indonesia, Monroe and Curtis are the best at what they do: eliminating their nation’s enemies from a distance with one well-placed bullet to the head.

Includes three complete military thriller novels: The Scope of Justice, Targets of Opportunity, and Confirmed Kill.

NEW ENTRY IN THE WITCHES OF KARRES SERIES BY NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR ERIC FLINT & DAVE FREER

Captain Pausert just can’t catch a break!

First, he became the mortal enemy of his fiancée, his home planet, the Empire—and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space. All because he helped rescue three slave children from their masters. Of course, these three young women were the universally feared Witches of Karres—but how was he to know that?!

And after he defeated the Worm World (with the help of the witches, of course), the Empress herself had sent him on a secret mission to stop a nanite plague that was raging across the galaxy. But an enemy had somehow convinced the Imperial Fleet that he was actually a wanted criminal, so after a battle leaving his ship in urgent need of repairs, Pausert and the witches of Karres joined an interstellar traveling circus in order to save the galaxy.

Now Pausert and the witches of Karres roam the spaceways again, this time dealing with a slaver-culture that somehow makes slaves happy to be in servitude, and a quest for a long-lost alien pet, during which the youngest witch, The Leewit, begins to come to her full powers as a healer—and of course generates chaos in her wake.

For Pausert, it’s all in a day’s work. But would it be too much to ask for a vacation?

The world has been brought to its knees by the “zombie virus.” Nations have fallen, cities have been overrun by the infected, and the human race has come perilously close to extinction. But with the first winter come and gone, the infected have been reduced to not much more than a background nuisance, and survivors around the world are taking stock and vowing to rebuild and rise up stronger, better, and unafraid.

All-new stories from New York Times best-selling author John Ringo’s “Black Tide Rising” series:

Kevin J. Anderson
Brendon DuBois
Jody Lynn Nye
Michael Z. Williamson
Kacey Ezell
Mike Massa
Christoper L. Smith
Lydia Sherrer
Jason Cordova
Brian Trent
Patrick Vanner
Jamie Ibson

Marshall Hunter only wanted to fly: the faster, the higher, the better. But a life of rescuing wayward spacefarers and derelict satellites in the cislunar cruiser U.S.S. Borman is far from the adventure he’d imagined. But his fortunes change when a billionaire couple goes missing on their way to a near-Earth asteroid. Out of contact and on a course that will eventually send them crashing into Mars, the nuclear-powered Borman is dispatched on an audacious, high-speed interplanetary run to bring the couple home. As they approach the asteroid, however, the Borman itself becomes hopelessly disabled.

With the Borman suddenly out of commission and far beyond reach, cislunar space begins falling into chaos as critical satellites fail and valuable lunar mineral shipments begin disappearing in transit. Nothing is as it seems, and Marshall Hunter and the rest of the crew suspect none of it is by coincidence.

Selei City is the capital of the Imerialte and one of the most desired locales in all of the Skolian Empire. But its thin veneer of civilization is cracked when a series of brutal crimes implicates those in political power in a vast conspiracy. Three prominent scientists have lost their lives to a serial killer—and notes at the scenes of the crimes lead to a connection to the Royalist political party.

Major Bhaajan, former military officer turned private detective, is called back to Selei City to solve the crime. Bhaaj and her crew of Undercity Dust Knights plunge into the Byzantine world of Imperial politics—a jigsaw world where none of the pieces seem to fit. As the assassination plot becomes more and more convoluted, Bhaaj is kidnapped, threatened with death, and must fight for her life against the growing number of people threatened by her investigation. Bhaaj has faced all this and more, but now she must deal with something far deadlier—interstellar politics.

In this alternate history of the American frontier and the Jacksonian era, a small change takes place in the Battle of the Horseshoe Bend during the War of 1812. What results is a cascade of new developments that becomes an avalanche. In our world, Ensign Sam Houston, just turned 21, led the charge on the creek barricade in that battle and almost died from a terrible wound that took him a year to recover from. In this world, his wound is minor, so he is able to continue fighting the British—and develop his close relationship with Andrew Jackson much sooner.

Along with a radical Scots-Irish immigrant in the U.S. Army, Patrick Driscoll—one of “the Men of ’98”—Houston organizes a defense of the U.S. Capitol that prevents the British from destroying it and makes him a national hero. He and Driscoll then play a central role in the defense of New Orleans under Jackson’s command. They change the course of that battle in ways that will, over time, transform the relationship between the United States, the Indian tribes of the south, and the slaves brought over from Africa

Jon of Dun Add has created a civilization where before there had only been isolated pockets of humanity in a shattered cosmos.

Young knight Pal is one of the most respected members of Lord Jon’s Hall of Champions. But Pal’s greatest talent lies not on the field of battle, though he’s no slouch there. He is also a Maker, one who can repair the tools the Ancients had left—sometimes. Moreover, he has learned to use his warrior dog’s ability to predict motion better than any human could, an ability that has saved his skin and won the day more than once.

Now, Pal will need all his talent—as a fighter, as a Maker, and as a Champion—to deal with the monsters the Waste throws at him—and to deal with his fellow humans. For there are those who would destroy Dun Add and Lord Jon’s vision of a humanity united in peace from within . . .

Decades ago, the Visitors descended on Earth. They claimed to bring peace and prosperity. Their real goal was the total subjugation of humankind. But humanity did not give up its only home without a fight. After a devastating war, the Visitors were driven back to Mars. Their millions of willing human collaborators were left behind. The task of hunting down these former alien collaborators and bringing them to justice falls to Federal Recovery Agents like Nathan Foster.

Now, Nathan Foster is tasked with bringing to justice Emmogene Anderson. As a teenager, Emmogene was experimented on by the Visitors and implated with a device that allows her to control other people. With her is her obsessive ex-lover, who was also a former commando of the Visitors’ forces. It’s an easy enough job—but Emmogene has been implanted with something else, something much more important.

Nathan and Ben must decide what is right in a largely lawless world— and the fate of the planet hangs in the balance.

CONCLUSION TO THE GROUNDBREAKING QUEENDOM OF SOL SERIES

Once the Queendom of Sol was a glowing monument to humankind’s loftiest dreams. Ageless and immortal, its citizens lived in peaceful splendor. But as Sol buckled under the swell of an immorbid population, space itself literally ran out. . . .

Conrad Mursk has returned to Sol on the crippled starship Newhope. His crew are the frozen refugees of a failed colony known as Barnard’s Star. A thousand years older, Mursk finds Sol on the brink of rebellion, while a fanatic necro cult is reviving death itself. Now Mursk and his lover, Captain Xiomara “Xmary” Li Weng, are sent on a final, desperate mission by King Bruno de Towaji—one of the greatest terraformers of the ages—to literally crush the moon. If they succeed, they’ll save billions of lost souls. If they fail, they’ll strand humanity between death and something unimaginably worse. . . .

A Russian ICBM site is attacked just north of the Ukraine border. The nuclear warheads are missing! A Special Operations and Intelligence Community Task Force is rapidly put together to respond, but where it should deploy is unclear. A fire ravages a cosmonaut training facility in which five spacesuits disappear. And the Task Force finds a cache of detailed schematics of highly complex rocketry systems. The Task Force reaches out to Dr. Amy Sue Harrington of the Missiles and Space Intelligence Center in Huntsville, Alabama. To Dr. Harrington, it all adds up to the unthinkable: someone—someone extremely well funded—is taking aim at the International Space Station.

But Colonel Vladimir Lytokov and his team of mercenaries aren’t planning to bring the ISS crashing to Earth. They’re taking the fight to orbit, boarding the station and hijacking it. As the ISS traces its path across the heavens, Lytokov rains down destruction from above, effectively holding the entire globe hostage.

A search for a missing woman exposes a conspiracy that could threaten an entire planet.

Cassandra Blake, an employee for the Ascension Planetary Holdings Group—the largest and most powerful corporation in Nova Columbia—has gone missing. And her sister wants to know why. When questions need answering on Nova Columbia, Detective Ezekiel “Easy” Novak is the man folks turn to. But what begins as a routine missing person case quickly turns into something much bigger and more sinister, with implications that could affect the entire planet. It seems Cassandra wasn’t just investigating her employer. She had uncovered a secret effort to excavate and exploit an ancient alien artifact known only as The Seraph. Soon, Easy finds himself trying to unravel a conspiracy that may implicate not only Ascension but the highest echelons of the Terran Confederation itself.

The chaos god Asag has been quiet since the destruction of the City of Monsters, but Monster Hunter International knows that he is still out there, somewhere—plotting, waiting for his chance to unravel reality.

When Owen and the MHI team discover that one of Isaac Newton’s Ward Stones is being auctioned off by Reptoids who live deep beneath Atlanta, they decide to steal the magical superweapon and use it to destroy Asag once and for all. But before the stone can be handed off, it is stolen by a mysterious thief with ties to MHI and the Vatican’s Secret Guard.

It’s a race against time, the Secret Guard, a spectral bounty hunter, and a whole bunch of monsters to acquire the Ward Stone and use it against Asag. For as dangerous as the chaos god is, there is something much older—and infinitely more evil—awakening deep in the jungles of South America.

The year is 2072. At the lunar farside radio observatory, an old-school radio broadcast is detected, similar to those broadcast on Earth in the 1940s, but in an unknown language, coming from an impossible source, and originating at an equally impossible location—Proxima Centauri. While the nations of Earth debate making first contact, they learn that the Proximans are facing an extinction-level disaster, forcing a decision: will Earth send a ship on a multiyear trip to provide aid?

Interstellar travel is not easy, and by traveling at the speeds required to arrive before disaster strikes at Proxima, humans will learn firsthand the effects of Einstein’s Special Relativity and be forced to ponder the ultimate of questions: “Are we alone in the universe?” and “What does it mean to be human?”

Formed from cold steel and superpowered computing brains, these gigantic tanks with the firepower of an entire army have been the decisive factors in interplanetary battle. But are humans worthy of the extraordinary instruments of war that they have created? Are the Worldbreakers the greatest protector of human liberty, or its worst threat? For, while these Worldbreakers very definitely have minds of their own, the question remains: within their iron and superluminal quantum breasts, does there lie a faithful heart? Stories of world breakers and world makers in the great tradition of Keith Laumer’s Bolos from David Weber, Larry Correia, Wen Spencer, and more!

A COMING-OF-AGE STORY LIKE NO OTHER: CHAIM CAAN, AN OBSERVANT ORTHODOX JEW, FINDS HE MUST MAKE SENSE OF HIS PLACE IN THE WORLD WHEN HE DISCOVERS HE HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A VAMPIRE

Chaim Caan was just out for a night of fun, blowing off some steam the way a young man will. After the better part of a year spent in COVID lockdowns, he was ready to let his hair down at a night club. But the fascinating young woman who he encountered that night left him with something to remember her by: she turned Chaim into a vampire.

Soon, Chaim finds himself thrust into a weird underground world of mysti-cism and enchantment as he navigates life as the newly undead, trying to reconcile his beliefs as an Orthodox Jew with the new reality that has been thrust upon him.

He is forced to deal with a lot of change: to his body, to his mind, to his perceptions, to his relationships, and even to his world. He finds himself in parts of the world he had never dreamed of being in, and he finds himself doing things that he had never envisioned being a part of his life.

And if he can come to terms with these changes, this mild-mannered young man might just find himself a hero.

A BIOTECH RACE AGAINST TIME TO DEVELOP MILITARY-GRADE DRAGONS

Genetic engineer Noah Parker has at last landed the job he’s long coveted: director of dragon design for the Build-A-Dragon Company. With a combination of genetic engineering and a cryptic device known as the Redwood Codex, he and his team can produce living, breath-ing dragons made-to-order. But sales of dragons have plummeted, and the Build-A-Dragon Company will have to find new revenue streams if it hopes to stay in business. A contract to develop dragons for the U.S. military promises a much-needed lifeline. Yet the specs are more chal-lenging than anything Noah has ever designed. Worse, he learns that a shadow company headed by former CEO Robert Greaves has stolen the dragon-making technology to make a competing bid. Noah’s dragons will face off against those of his old adversary. It’s a head-to-head design competition, with the ethical future of domesticated dragons hanging in the balance.

THE NOVEL THAT INTRODUCED US TODETECTIVE ISHMAEL JONES—A MAN WHO PREFERS TO LIVE IN THE SHADOWS. Book one of the Ishmael Jones mysteries.

Ishmael Jones is used to keeping a low profile, living under the radar and on the dark side of the road. He makes his living solving mysteries and uncovering dark secrets some would prefer stay hidden.

But when he’s invited by his employer—a man known only as “The Colonel”—to spend Christmas at the Colonel’s sprawling country house, Ishmael Jones decides to come in from the dark for some holiday cheer.

Jones arrives at the remote Belancourt Manor in the midst of a blizzard only to discover that the Colonel has gone missing. It soon becomes clear that the guests are harboring dark secrets—and that it will be up to Ishmael Jones to stop a savage killer.

A locked-room, country house mystery with a supernatural twist as only Simon R. Green could write it.

THE CROWN OF SLAVES SAGA CONTINUES. ADVENTURE AND INTRIGUE IN HONOR HARRINGTON’S STAR KINGDOM FROM NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHORS DAVID WEBER AND ERIC FLINT.

The Solarian League lies in defeat, crushed by the Grand Alliance of Manticore, Haven, and Grayson.

Obedient to the Alliance's surrender demands, the League is writing a new Constitution, to prevent the reemergence of out-of-control bureaucrats, like the "Mandarins" who led it to disaster. Frontier Security has been disbanded, the outer worlds have regained control of their own economic destinies, and multiple star systems will soon secede from the League entirely.

Yet the League is—and will remain—the largest, most economically powerful human star nation in existence, and despite the overwhelming evidence that their unelected political leaders were the driving force behind the war, many League citizens deeply resent the fashion in which their star nation—the Solarian League—has been humbled. And those who most resent the Grand Alliance continue to blame Manticore for the nuclear bombardment of the planet Mesa after its surrender. They refuse to accept that the League—and the members of the Grand Alliance—could have been manipulated by a deeply hidden interstellar conspiracy called the Mesan Alignment. The Alignment is only an invention of the Grand Alliance, no more than a mask, a cover, for its own horrific Eridani Violations.

Those Solarians will never accept the "war guilt" of the League, because they know the Grand Alliance was just as bad. Because they deeply resent the way in which the Grand Alliance pretends to be the innocent "good guys." And in the fullness of time, those Solarians will seek vengeance upon their enemies.

Not all Solarians feel that way, but even some of those who accept that there was an interstellar conspiracy cherish doubts about its origins. But it is still out there, and now defeated Solarians and agents of the victorious Alliance must join forces to find it. Even if they don't believe in it, it believes in them.

They must find it and identify it, to prove to revanchist Solarians that there was a conspiracy.

And they must find it and destroy it to end its evil once and for all.

The Crown of Slaves Honorverse Series:
Crown of Slaves
Torch of Freedom
Cauldron of Ghosts

A 17th-century alchemist confronts modern science with unintended and amusing results. Another sparkling addition to the multiple New York Times best-selling Ring of Fire alternate history series created by Eric Flint.

SCIENCE AND MEDICINE VS. FLIM-FLAMMERY

Thomas "the Great Stoner" Stone once performed miraculous surgery upon Phillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz, the World’s Greatest Alchemist, using his bare hands, no anesthesia, producing no pain, and leaving no scar. It would have been wonderful if it was real.

But Dr. Tom Stone, the face of modern medicine, has been engaging in fake treatments—bringing all modern medicine into question. Phillip, who has learned a thing or two about actual science from those up-time elopers from Grantville, West Virginia, decides to go to Padua and turn his problems into Tom Stone's problems.

Meanwhile, the wily Bernardo Ponzi has assembled a team to support his evangelical touring roadshow featuring a light show, faith healing and yet more psychic surgery. Now Gribbleflotz and Stone are on a collision course with the Magnificent Ponzi, who has moved beyond showmanlike fakery to causing actual harm to many people. It’s time for Gribbleflotz and Stone to resolve their differences, debunk one of history’s greatest bunko artists, and save the reputation of modern science and medicine from ruin!

NEW STORIES IN THE GRAND SPACE FANTASY TRADITION!

SCIENCE FICTION? FANTASY? IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR BOTH?

The distant future—like the distant past—is a place of myths, of legends, and of great heroes. Cyborg knights battle extraterrestrial demons to rescue a peaceful village. A young girl unlocks an ancient power to protect her world from offworld colonists. Here are stories not where magic is science, but with magic and science. Not knights and castles, but knights and starships. Wizards and ray guns. Swords and planets.

In D.J. Butler’s “Power and Prestige,” a pair of two-bit mercenaries are hired to solve a murder in a labyrinth beneath a crumbling city at the end of time. A young knight must face down an alien menace and awaken the power within in R.R. Virdi’s “A Knight Luminary,” and in “Saving the Emperor” Simon R. Green takes us deep into the Imperial City of Virimonde . . . and offers a glimpse at how the Deathstalker clan rose to power and fame.

Enjoy tales from Tim Akers, Jessica Cluess, L.J. Hachmeister, Susan R. Matthews, T.C. McCarthy, Jody Lynn Nye, and Tom Toner; a new world from Warhammer 40,000 author Peter Fehervari; and a new chapter in the Sun Eater saga from Christopher Ruocchio.

Contributors:
Tim Akers
D.J. Butler
Jessica Cluess
Hinkley Correia
Peter Fehervari
Simon R. Green
L.J. Hachmeister
Susan R. Matthews
T.C. McCarthy
Jody Lynn Nye
Christopher Ruocchio
Tom Toner
R.R. Virdi

A NEW KENCYRATH NOVEL!

Jamethiel Knorth, Priest’s Bane and Dream-Weaver, has returned victori-ous from Tai-tastigon, but trouble dogs the Kencyrath.

There is intrigue among the Highborn. The Randir and his allies want the larger houses to decide for all nine, which would strip the Highlordship from the Knorth. At Omiroth, a senile king struggles against his venal son-in-law—but if neither of these can rule, the next in line is a mother-dominated child. Kindrie Soul-Walker is captured and thrown in a secret dungeon, a political prisoner. And a Kendar administrator, dissatisfied with the use that Jame is making of the gates, schemes against her, and then against her house and her brother, Torisen Black Lord, Highlord of the Kencyrath.

ALTERNATE HISTORY FROM A MASTER

The relocation of the southern Indian tribes to Oklahoma engineered by Sam Houston following the War of 1812 also swept up many black inhabitants of North America. Many of the states in the USA—free as well as slaveholding—have passed laws ordering the expulsion of black freed-men. Having nowhere else to go, they joined the migration of the southern Indian tribes and settled in Arkansas. What results by 1824 is a hybrid nation of Indians, black people, and a number of white settlers as well.

The situation is intolerable for the slaveholding states, which find a cham-pion in Speaker of the House Henry Clay, whose longstanding ambition to become President of the United States looks to be coming to fruition. But Sam Houston and his friends and allies—the freedman Charles Ball, a former gunner for the US Navy and now a general in the Arkansas army, and the Irish revolutionary Patrick Driscol—are building a power-ful army of their own in Arkansas.

The crisis is brought to a head by the election of 1824. The war that follows will be a bloody crisis of conscience, politics, economics, and military action, drawing in players from as far away as England. And for such men as outgoing president James Monroe, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, charismatic war hero Andrew Jackson, and the violent abolitionist John Brown, it is a time to change history itself.

The assassinated Shah Jahan lies entombed beside his beloved wife in the Taj Mahal, while their progeny drag the Mughal Empire into a three-sided struggle over the succession to the Peacock Throne.

The diplomatic and trade mission from the United States of Europe is openly siding with Princess Jahanara and her brother Dara Shikoh. The mission, made up largely of Americans transplanted in time by the Ring of Fire, is providing the siblings with technical assistance as they prepare to fight their rivals for the throne, Aurangzeb and Shah Shuja. Meanwhile, the Afghan adventurer Salim Gadh Yilmaz, confidant of two emperors—Shah Jahan and now his son Dara Shikoh—has been elevated to the position of general. He has great challenges to face, not the least of which is resisting the fierce and forbidden mutual attraction between himself and Princess Jahanara.

As the conflict deepens, the junior members of the mission are sent east to buy opium needed by the USE’s doctors. Their guide, merchant Jadu Das, has an agenda of his own, one entrusted to him by Jahanara: seek out her great uncle, Asaf Khan, and promise whatever is needed to bring his army over to Dara’s side.

The USE’s mission was sent to India in search of goods needed in Europe. But now they find that straightforward task has become enmeshed in a great civil war—for control of the Peacock Throne.

A NEW MASTERPIECE OF MACABRE HUMOR AND ACTION FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES, THE NATIONALLY BEST-SELLING NIGHTSIDE SERIES, THE DEATHSTALKER CHRONICLES, THE ISHMAEL JONES PARANORMAL MYSTERIES, AND MORE!

HYDE IN THE SHADOWS

Daniel Carter was a London cop who just wanted to do the right thing. But during a raid on an organ-selling chop shop, he is almost torn to pieces by monsters. And no one believes him. Hurt and crippled, his career over and his life in ruins, Daniel is suddenly presented with a chance at redemption. And revenge. It seems that more than two centuries ago, the monsters of the world disappeared—into the underworld of crime. Guildlike Clans now have control over all the dark and illegal trades, from the awful surgeries of the Frankenstein Clan, to the shadowy and seductive Vampire Clan, to the dreaded purveyors of drugs and death, the Clan of Mummies. And there’s always the Werewolf Clan, to keep order.

Only one force stands opposed to the monster Clans: the superstrong, extremely sexy, quick-witted Hydes! Now Daniel is just one sip of Dr. Jekyll’s Elixir away from joining their company. At Jekyll & Hyde Inc.

SPACE BATTLES AND GRIT FROM MASTER OF STARFARING ADVENTURE AND MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION DAVE BARA, AUTHOR OF THE LIGHTSHIP CHRONICLES SERIES.

REDEMPTION AT TRINITY

The Rim rebellion was glorious—and doomed from the start. Brilliant Rim Confederation Navy space ship captain Jared Clement scuttled his career and professional life by joining the rebels against the overwhelming force of the 5 Suns Alliance. The rebel cause was just. That didn’t matter. Ten years later, Clement regrets nothing, but would prefer to be left alone to his thoughts and drink. But a new chance to command a ship of incredible potential is thrust in his lap—humanity’s first truly faster-than-light vessel. The destination: Trinity, a newly discovered star system where strange signs of possible spacefarers may lead to humanity’s first alien encounter. Or to interstellar war. Humanity is on the brink of a new age, and everything depends on one crusty star ship captain, his gritty crew, and the Beauregard, a ship that was never meant to wage war turned into a weapon-bristling battleship that will either propel humanity to ultimate destruction—or into a new starfaring age of exploration and conflict. And along the way, a noble lost cause—one Captain Jared Clement—may finally get his revenge. And find his redemption.

THREE PENRIC AND DESDEMONA NOVELLAS IN THE WORLD OF THE FIVE GODS BY GRANDMASTER LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD

Penric and Desdemona are back in three novellas from Grand Master Lois McMaster Bujold.

“Masquerade in Lodi”
Bastard’s Eve is a night of celebration for most residents in the canal city of Lodi—but not for sorcerer Learned Penric and his Temple demon Desdemona, who find themselves caught up in the affairs of a shiplost madman, a dangerous ascendant demon, and a very unexpected saint of the fifth god.

“The Orphans of Raspay”
When the ship in which they are traveling is captured by Carpagamon island raiders, Temple sorcerer Penric and his resident demon Desdemona find their life complicated by two young orphans, Lencia and Seuka Corva, who are far from home and searching for their missing father. Pen and Des will need all their combined talents of mind and magic to unravel the mysteries of the sisters and escape from the pirate stronghold.

“The Physicians of Vilnoc”
When a mysterious plague breaks out in the army fort guarding Vilnoc, the port capital of the duchy of Orbas, Temple sorcerer Penric and his demon Desdemona are called upon by General Arisaydia to resurrect Penric’s medical skills and solve its lethal riddle. In the grueling days that follow, Pen will find that even his magic is not enough to meet the challenges without help from dedicated new colleagues—and the god of mischance.

Includes a new introduction, “outroduction,” and suggested reading order by Lois McMaster Bujold.

A RACE TO BUILD THE FIRST SPACE ELEVATOR IN AFRICA

New money, old tribes, and international megacorps race to build the first space elevator. With a little Dabare magic, it just might work!

The Sadous, an oil-rich West African family, are handed a plum contract as repayment for a decades-old favor that could make the next genera-tion even richer if the family doesn’t tear itself apart first. Two engineer daughters of the Sadou family, Pascaline and Maurie, upon whom the burden of success rests, have troubles of their own. One wants noth-ing more than to leave and make her own name as an engineering prodigy, while the other is troubled by fever dreams and snakes. Ethan Schmidt-Li is an ambitious megacorp executive with eyes on a big pro-motion—only to get more than he bargained for when put in charge of the company’s make-or-break project. These are some of the people that Tchami “Chummy” Fabrice has brought together to an ambitious end—constructing the world’s first space elevator in Africa and ensuring the space industry that it catapults will enrich the continent and all involved. They have the carbon nanofiber, prime land around Kilimanjaro, and a captured rock in orbit for the tether. The hard part will be getting all these different people working together long enough to see it built.

ONCE DEFECTED, NOW A LEADER, JARED CLEMENT MUST RISE TO THE OCCASION OR BE RESPONSIBLE FOR GENOCIDE

Jared Clement has returned to Trinity not as a mere ship captain, but as a 5 Suns Fleet Admiral. With his promotion comes increased responsibility that weighs heavy on his shoulders. Thirty thousand settlers are leaving the dying planets of the Rim, his home, and resettling next to the natives of the planet Bellus.

Clement is responsible for those lives and the lives of the natives, Trinity’s children, and for building a better future for them all. But when his migrant fleet arrives in the Trinity system, they are faced with enemies both old and new. Former Fleet Admiral Elara DeVore has escaped her exile on the planet Alphus and has vanished into parts unknown. Soon, however, Clement discovers she has a new fleet and a new ally, the Solar League from Earth. The Solar League has arrived with a massive fleet and plans on taking Trinity for itself, then forcing the 5 Suns to surrender. With just a small military fleet to accompany the migrants, Clement is faced with the almost impossible task of defending both his people and the natives from becoming slaves of the Solar League.

A NEW NOVEL OF ALTERNATE HISTORY FROM MASTER OF MILITARY SF TOM KRATMAN, JUSTIN WATSON, AND KACEY EZELL. As WWI comes to a close a German general, an escaped prisoner of war, and the crew of an airship converge to effect THE ROMANOV RESCUE. Can there be a world without communism?

Mankind's history is bound up in the fabric of fate, a strong cloth, tough and closely woven.

It is the beginning of 1918, the last year of the greatest war in human history, to date. All the belligerents stagger on their feet. Starvation is an ever present reality, while disease waits in the wings. In Russia, no longer a belligerent but, instead, rapidly descending into civil war and chaos, a lone family—Father, Mother, four beautiful young girls, and a brave but sickly boy—await their own fate, shivering and hungry in the dark, hoping and praying for salvation.

Their relatives in England have turned their backs. The guards set over them do little but torment them. They look Heavenward, but God doesn't answer. They know they're a threat to the new regime, a threat that will, in time, be eliminated.

But even the strongest fabric has flaws. An escaped prisoner of war, caught, injured, and punished, but still highly capable, might be one. An airship, returned and at loose ends after a failed mission to Africa might be another. A German general, taking a wrong turn on his nightly walk and suddenly coming face to face with the reality of the monster rising in the east, would be a third.

Follow, then, as the general gives the orders, the prisoner of war raises the men from among his fellows, and the airship launches itself forward, to contest fate, to tear the fabric of time, and to effect The Romanov Rescue.

ALL-NEW STORIES TAKE THE WILD, WILD WEST TO THE FINAL FRONTIER

An actual wagon train to space?

Gunslinging cowpokes riding in rickety rocketships?

What isn’t possible when you mix science fiction and Westerns?

The final frontier ain’t so final in these 12 tales of space exploration and adventure: each a timeless yarn told around the warm glow of a nuclear reactor just before it goes supernova. There’s a story for everyone who’s ever dreamed of traveling the stars.

From the lone stranger who flies into town to help a widow and her daughter to the alien rancher trying to pose as human, they are familiar, yet with completely new twists. Take the pair of mercenaries who sign on to stop a mining camp insurrection only to discover they might be on the wrong side of the revolution, or the prospector who finds the strike of a lifetime but ends up stranded on a barren moon without hope of rescue. And if that’s not enough to catch your fancy, then how about a cloned Doc Holliday making his way in a future where both sickness and gambling are ancient history?

Assembled inside are the biggest names in science fiction, taking you to the farthest reaches of the galaxy like they’ve never done before. Elizabeth Moon, Alan Dean Foster, Jane Lindskold, and Wil McCarthy are some of the exciting yarn-spinners inside. So get ready to hit the hyper-thrusters as you set course for adventure, mystery, romance, and two-lasergun slinging action!

Featuring Elizabeth Moon, Alan Dean Foster, Jane Lindskold, Wil McCarthy, Gini Koch, Martin Shoemaker, Cat Rambo with J.R. Martin, Alastair Mayer, Alex Shvartsman, Patrick Swenson, and Michael L. Haspil. Edited by David Boop (Straight Outta Tombstone).

SOMETIMES A DARK PAST CAN HAUNT YOU—OTHER TIMES IT JUST MAY BE THE ONLY THING KEEPING YOU ALIVE

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, plying the routes that the corporations ignore and visiting the kinds of places that the folks on Earth pretend don’t exist.

Between the assassins, the criminals, and the pirates he needs to deal with, Dave is discovering that there are a lot of things out there that he still needs to learn.

But there’s one hard lesson he learned long ago that he’s being forced to remember: how to be ruthless.

ALL-NEW STORIES OF ANCIENT ALIEN ARTIFACTS FROM TOP NAMES IN SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

The universe is older and more alien than we can ever understand.

We were not alone. The farther we push into the universe, the more obvious it becomes. The signs are everywhere: canals and pyramids on Mars, old roads on the moons of Jupiter, ruined cities on worlds about the nearer stars. The galaxy once teemed with life—or so it seems. Which begs the question: what happened to it all?

These stories explore the ruins of lost civilizations, solve ancient mysteries . . . and awaken horrors from beyond the dawn of time.

Featuring stories by Orson Scottt Card, Griffin Barber, Adam Oyebanji, Jessica Maguire, and Patrick Chiles, and an all-new entry in the Sun Eater universe from editor Christopher Ruocchio. Join us for your next adventure to Worlds Long Lost!

IN A FOLLOW-UP TO GROUNDBREAKING A LONG TIME UNTIL NOW, MASTER OF MILITARY SF MICHAEL Z. WILLIAMSON SENDS EPOCH-DISPLACED SOLDIER SEAN ELLIOTT AND HIS CREW ON A RESCUE MISSION WITHIN THE FOLDS OF TIME ITSELF

SOLDIERS OUT OF TIME

Then: First Lieutenant Sean Elliott and nine other mixed-service U.S. soldiers on a convoy in Afghanistan suddenly found themselves and their MRAP vehicle thrown back to Earth’s Paleolithic Age. And they were not alone. Displaced Romans, Neolithic Europeans, and more showed up as well. Some would be allies. Some became deadly foes.

Now: Scientists from an almost unimaginably far future need the survivors’ advice and support to reconnoiter and ultimately recover other groups displaced in time. There's just one problem. Not all of those other groups want to be recovered or even understand where they are. Prehistory is an ugly place, fascinating to visit, but no place for a civilized person to live. But the future, gorgeous as it is, has a darker side that dampens the appeal. In the end, only inventiveness, grit, and a thirst for freedom from the fickle tides of time can keep Sean and the displaced Americans alive and on a path to finally find a place—and a time—to call home.

NEW EPIC FANTASY FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR CHARLES E. GANNON. A young man must face dangers from without and within—and question everything he believes to be true.

Since boyhood, Druadaen expected he’d ascend to the command of an elite legion and become the leader his father predicted he would be. However, fate had something different in store.

Assigned instead to a small group of outriders tasked with watching nearby kingdoms, Druadaen discovers that the world beyond his homeland is riddled with impossibilities. How do humanoid raiders, known as the Bent, suffer staggering losses and yet return as a vast horde every decade? How do multi-ton dragons fly? How have fossils formed in a world which sacrists insist has existed for only ten millennia?

Determined to solve these mysteries, Druadaen journeys into the dank warrens of the Bent, seeks out a dragon’s lair, and ventures into long-buried ruins in search of ancient scrolls. But, whereas legends tell of heroes who encounter their greatest perils during just such forays into the unknown, Druadaen’s most lethal enemies might lurk in even more unusual places:

The temples and council chambers of his own homeland.

A BRILLIANT BLEND OF MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION AND ARTHUR C. CLARKE-LEVEL SPECULATIVE WONDER BY A WORKING SPACE SCIENTIST!

NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT

Humanity has finally made it to the stars. Colony worlds thrive and there is general peace among the settled systems. Until now. Matte black ships of an advanced design appear in colonial systems. Their drives and weapons are not extremely advanced beyond their Terran counterparts—just superior enough to be utterly devastating. Colonies and their populations are obliterated. Once settled worlds are rendered radioactive wastelands. Earth herself lies defenseless before the marauding enemy.

DEFEND THE SKIES OF EARTH

Standing against the invasion are British Space Navy Captain Winslow Price and Anika Ahuja of the Indian Space Forces. Compatriots. Fierce competitors. Former lovers. They are the best of the best when it comes to military starship captains. Now they are on a quest that will plumb the scientific wells of existence itself, where the primordial knot of spacetime may be unraveling. Price and Ahuja are sworn to do whatever it takes to defend Earth and humanity from ultimate obliteration by an enemy that will not even speak its name. Even if it pushes each to the brink of life and death in battle. Even if it leads each beyond space and time—and to edge of ultimate possibility!

TAKE THE BATTLE TO THE STARS