NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING SERIES CONTINUES!

First the Glatun came, and we learned we were not alone in the galaxy. Then the Horvath arrived, and we learned the galaxy was a dangerous place. But our alien enemies underestimated how dangerous we could be.

It’s been over fifteen years since New York Times best-selling author John Ringo’s Live Free or Die dropped us into a war we didn’t want and couldn’t win, or so it seemed. From that first volume through Citadel and The Hot Gate, he let us experience the triumph of the human spirit through our entrepreneurial creativity, native-born toughness, and sheer patriotic stubbornness. We marveled at gargantuan technological accomplishments so well imagined they seemed not only possible but inevitable, and equally larger-than-life characters that seemed just as remarkable and even more real.

Now, for the first time, John has permitted a select cadre of authors to write new stories in his Troy Rising universe. In this volume, you’ll find stories of espionage and subterfuge, daring and cleverness, courage and sacrifice, told with heart and humor and, above all, humanity, including an all new novella by John Ringo and stories by Adam Oyebanji, Mike Massa, Marisa Wolf, Michael Mersault, Casey Moores, Michael Gants, Karl K. Gallagher, Chris Kennedy, and Jason Cordova & Melissa Olthoff.

THE FATE OF THE WORLD IS IN HIS HANDS. SORRY ABOUT THAT.

A sword. A dragon. A lowlife.

Ortiz is a man without grand ambition or talent. He survives by being mildly useful and eminently disposable, destined to end up in a shallow grave. But on the day he’s digging that grave, he discovers a magic sword. Not just any magic sword, but the magic sword: A weapon that keeps away the apocalypse in the form of an all-devouring dragon.

He’s the last guy who should bear it, but where can a man surrounded by the worst people find a hero to rise to the challenge? And how can he give away a sword that keeps his mob boss from killing him, a dragon from stepping on him, and his girlfriend from leaving?

Trapped between the Waking and Dreaming Worlds, from shadowy streets to the golden halls of Avalon, against criminal thugs and living myths, he’ll need smarts and luck—things he’s always had in short supply— if he’s going to figure out how to claw his way up from the bottom rung of a lousy life.

And maybe keep the world from ending, if he has time.

A HARROWING SUPERNATURAL ADVENTURE, FULL OF COLOR, DRAMA, AND ROMANCE, AS ONLY TIM POWERS CAN DELIVER

PARIS, 1925

HARRY NOLAN is an expatriate American, making a meager living as an illustrator for a low-paying magazine, but his life is upended when he is assigned to illustrate an anonymous article about the death of a god—because a centuries-old French brotherhood, the sauteurs, are determined to suppress the story the article tells. The sauteurs have burned the magazine’s office and killed the editor, and Nolan has the only surviving copy of the article. The author turns out to be a local writer named ERNEST HEMINGWAY, who—at first—tries to distance himself from the article and its lethal consequences.

VIVI CHASTAIN is a rootless 19-year-old orphan who sustains herself by betting on horse races—aided by the spirit of the man she was in a previous life. But now that old identity is crowding her consciousness, threatening to push her own precarious identity into oblivion. It was her alcoholic occasional “stepfather” who told Hemingway the story about killing a god, and the sauteurs are now aware of the story—and of her.

The sauteurs maintain their identities past death through controlled reincarnation—when members die and are reborn, the brotherhood finds their newborn incarnations, kidnaps them, and raises them in special nurseries, where they can fully resume their previous lives. Vivi escaped from one of these nurseries when she was six years old, and so her previous identity has not yet consummated his possession of her. The sauteurs want that consummation to happen—soon.

GERTRUDE STEIN is the hub of literary and artistic Paris, and knows many of the city’s supernatural secrets. She has written a book that appears to be nonsense but which can be used to deflect the kind of psychic assault that threatens Vivi, and she becomes a Merlin-like mentor to Vivi and Nolan—

—who find themselves reluctantly thrown together as hunted fugitives. Their struggles to evade the murderous sauteurs and free Vivi from her increasingly intrusive previous self lead the pair to a mysterious hermit who lives in the towers of Notre Dame cathedral, and the haunted catacombs under Paris, and a confrontation with the Roman goddess Cybele in an other-worldly temple on an island in the Seine. In pursuit of a secret painting by PABLO PICASSO, they learn that the god whose death the Hemingway manuscript describes is Moloch, the child-devouring Phoenician god mentioned in the Bible—and that the sauteurs make sacrifices to Moloch to maintain their reincarnations.

From the narrow streets and rooftops of post-war Paris to, finally, a supernatural battle between gods in a remote village in Spain, Nolan and Vivi contend with forces natural and supernatural, enemies living and dead, and ultimately find themselves pitted against the god Moloch himself—at peril of their eternal souls.

The Mills of the Gods is a harrowing supernatural adventure, full of color, drama, and romance, as only Tim Powers could tell it.

Once a sheepfarmer's daughter, now a seasoned veteran, Paksenarrion has proven herself a fighter. Years with Duke Phelan's Company taught her weaponry, discipline, and how to react as part of a military unit.

Now, though, Paks feels spurred to a solitary destiny. Against all odds she is accepted as a paladin-candidate by the fellowship of Gird. Years of study will follow, for a paladin must be versed in diplomacy and magic as well as the fighting arts. But before she is fully trained, Paks is called on her first mission: to seek out the fabled stronghold of Luap far to the west. The way is long, the dangers many—and not even the Marshal-General of Gird can say whether glory or ruin awaits.

Book two in David Weber and Richard Fox’s Ascent to Empire series.

HE NEVER WANTED TO BE A REBEL

The Five Hundred, the elite families who rule the Terran Federation, control its political power and its wealth, and they’ve grown steadily wealthier and more powerful, thanks to the war against the Terran League. War may be hard on the people who get caught in its path, but it’s very good for business, in the short term, and the Five Hundred own the shipyards that build the Navy’s ships. They own virtually all the industry that produces the weapons and matériel the war consumes so voraciously . . . and they’ve made damn sure someone else does the dying.

True, there are a few flies in the Five Hundred’s ointment.

There’s the growing hatred and resentment of the Fringe Worlds, whose children do eighty percent of the dying in the Five Hundred’s war. But the Five Hundred have made sure the Fringe knows what will happen to any system that goes ”out of compliance.”

There are the lunatic conspiracy nuts who insist that the alien Rishathan Sphere is secretly aiding the League’s military, but the Five Hundred have forced them to keep their mouths shut where it matters.

And then there’s Terrence Murphy, a man of honor who loves the Federation, who springs from the Five Hundred, yet knows it for what it is and is determined to speak for its victims. But the five hundred have dispatched ample force to deal with him and his handful of lunatic followers.

Unfortunately, the Fringe has paid enough of its children’s lives, and it no longer cares what may happen if it dares to defy the Five Hundred.

Worse, the lunatic conspiracy nuts were right, and the Rish have planned carefully for the Federation’s destruction.

And, worst of all, the Five Hundred have fatally underestimated Terrence Murphy.

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

Everyone could see it coming. But one man could do something about it. Oh, he couldn’t avert the nuclear holocaust, but a scientist in Austria, ruthlessly using billions of research dollars for his own purposes, set up an out for himself; he created a time machine, and filled a warehouse with low-tech survival gear. Too bad he didn’t get to use it himself.

Instead, a team of American grad students, led by their professor, is sent back to the late Roman Empire in the time of Marcus Aurelius. Even though they are experts in this time and place, they are about to realize that reading books and living experience are very different things.

If they can survive, they hope to remake the world into a better place. But that’s a big “if.”

By S. M. Stirling

Fifteen outstanding authors. Fifteen stories of augmented humanity!

All I need is an edge! As long as humans have competed with each other (for food, profit, and love), people have looked for ways to get an edge on the competition—how to be better, faster, and smarter than the opposition. With better science and technology, many things are now possible, and there will be many more in the future! Gene splicing will augment your abilities. Implants will make you smarter. Cybernetic systems will make you stronger.

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!

But just because we can augment humanity doesn’t necessarily mean we should, and there are cautionary tales inside as well. Along with the “good” that might be possible, there is also the potential for augmentation to be used for more…nefarious…ends. Will augmentation make better criminals? What happens when someone with implants has their mind taken over?

One thing is certain, though—people will dare to augment themselves to get an edge. Our authors dared to write these stories of augmented humanity; will you now dare to read them?

With stories by:
Christopher Woods
Kevin Steverson
J.F. Holmes
Quincy J. Allen
Jamie Ibson
Philip Wohlrab
Rob Howell
Luke R. J. Maynard
Jason Cordova
Jack Clemons
Kevin Ikenberry
Robert E. Hampson
Marisa Wolf
Kacey Ezell
Josh Hayes

Fifteen outstanding authors. Fifteen stories of rising from the ashes!

The apocalypse is coming! Scientists and science fiction novelists have long predicted various forms of the apocalypse, from plagues to wars to aliens. If there’s a way to end civilization, someone has probably prophesized it. Civilizations rise and civilizations fall…but are you ready for it to happen to you? How will you survive and thrive in the event of an apocalypse?

Edited by Jamie Ibson and Chris Kennedy, We Dare: Semper Paratus is a collection of 15 all-new stories that explore the apocalypse and what happens next—from surviving the fall to getting through those first perilous days, to learning how to adapt and survive in the new world survivors find themselves in.

What happens when the nations of Earth fall to a nuclear war, and you’re trapped between the combatants on Mars? What if you need to cross a continent to get to the only safe place? How do you survive living in a Fallen World?

One thing is certain—like every civilization before ours, at some point, ours will fall. Will you be ready when that happens? Our authors have dared to look at every type of apocalypse from nuclear war to shadow monsters to darkness falling, and they are ready for the end of the world…are you prepared as well?

With stories by:
Chris Kennedy
Jamie Ibson
Robert E. Hampson
Rob Howell
Kevin Steverson
Kevin Ikenberry
Jon R. Osborne
Christopher Woods
Marisa Wolf
Jason Cordova
Marie Whittaker
Brent Roeder
Christopher L. Smith
Kevin Fritz Fotovich
Philip Wohlrab