On Basilisk Station


David Weber - 1992
    Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station. The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens. Parliament isn't sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling, the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called "Republic" of Haven is Up to Something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn't work to police the entire star system.But the people out to get her have made one mistake.They've made her mad!

Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000


L. Ron Hubbard - 1982
    Earth has been dominated for 1,000 years by an alien invader—and man is an endangered species. From the handful of surviving humans a courageous leader emerges—Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, who challenges the invincible might of the alien Psychlo empire in a battle of epic scale, danger and intrigue with the fate of the Earth and of the universe in the tenuous balance.

The Way of the Apprentice


Jude Watson - 2001
    Destined for conflict.Fourteen-year-old Anakin Skywalker is strong in the ways of the Force. His lightsaber skills are exceptional, and his piloting is legendary. He should be an ideal Jedi apprentice. And yet, there is so much he still has to learn.It is up to Obi-Wan Kenobi to teach him these things. But on a mission to a planet threatened by toxic disaster, Obi-Wan and Anakin are separated. Anakin and three other apprentices—one of them his rival—must work together in order to survive. Anakin's instincts are clear…but are they right?Anakin Skywalker's destiny will determine the future of a galaxy. These are the events that form his fate

Heir to the Jedi


Kevin Hearne - 2015
    . . .   A thrilling new adventure set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, and—for the first time ever—written entirely from Luke Skywalker’s first-person point of view.

Terms of Enlistment


Marko Kloos - 2013
    For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements, where you're restricted to two thousand calories of badly flavored soy every day:You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service.With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth. But as he starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that the good food and decent health care come at a steep price…and that the settled galaxy holds far greater dangers than military bureaucrats or the gangs that rule the slums.

Soldier for the Empire


William C. Dietz - 1997
    But he wouldn't forfeit his father's life, and that's what the Empire has taken. Kyle is willing to do anything to avenge his father's death -- anything from selling classified information to a suicide run. And that's just what the Rebel Alliance has in mind for him. Soldier for the Empire is the first in a series of graphic-story albums featuring characters and situations based on the popular Star Wars: Dark Forces interactive games. Like Dark Horse's first graphic- story album, Aliens: Tribes, this novella-length prose story is accentuated by 25 full-page, painted illustrations.

Sundiver


David Brin - 1980
    Did some cryptic patron race begin the job long ago, then abandon us? Or did we leap all by ourselves? That question burns, yet a greater mystery looms ahead, in the furnace of a star. Under the caverns of Mercury, Expedition Sundiver prepares for the most momentous voyage in our history – into the boiling inferno of the sun, seeking our destiny in the cosmic order of life.

Dauntless


Jack Campbell - 2006
    Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he has been heroically idealized, beyond belief...Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild. Revered for his heroic "last stand" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead. But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics.Appalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty. And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war. But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic "Black Jack" legend...

The Reality Dysfunction


Peter F. Hamilton - 1996
    Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems. And throughout inhabited space the Confederation Navy keeps the peace. A true golden age is within our grasp.But now something has gone catastrophically wrong. On a primitive colony planet a renegade criminal's chance encounter with an utterly alien entity unleashes the most primal of all our fears. An extinct race which inhabited the galaxy aeons ago called it "The Reality Dysfunction." It is the nightmare which has prowled beside us since the beginning of history.

Consider Phlebas


Iain M. Banks - 1987
    Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

Star Wars: Before the Awakening


Greg Rucka - 2015
    A companion piece to the "Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens" character novels, Star Wars: Before the Awakening is an anthology book that focuses on the lives of Rey, Finn, and Poe before the events of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Cordelia's Honor


Lois McMaster Bujold - 1996
    Discovering deception within deception, treachery within treachery, she was forced into a separate peace with her chief opponent, Lord Aral Vorkosigan - he who was called "The Butcher of Komarr" - and would consequently become an outcast on her own planet and the Lady Vorkosigan on his. Sick of combat and betrayal, she was ready to settle down to a quiet life, interrupted only by the occasional ceremonial appearances required of the Lady Vorkosigan. But when the Emperor died, Aral suddenly became guardian of the infant heir to the imperial throne of Barrayar - and the target of high-tech assassins in a dynastic civil war that was reminiscent of earth's Middle Ages, but fought with up-to-the minute biowar technology. Neither Aral nor Cordelia guessed the part that their cell-damaged unborn son would play in Barrayar's bloody legacy. This edition includes an author's afterword, and a chronology of the events in the Vorkosigan Saga series. Cover art by Gary Ruddell.

The Gap Into Conflict: The Real Story


Stephen R. Donaldson - 1990
    Donaldson returns with this exciting and long-awaited new series that takes us into a stunningly imagined future to tell a timeless story of adventure and the implacable conflict of good and evil within each of us.Angus Thermopyle was an ore pirate and a murderer; even the most disreputable asteroid pilots of Delta Sector stayed locked out of his way.  Those who didn't ended up in the lockup--or dead.  But when Thermopyle arrived at Mallory's Bar & Sleep with a gorgeous woman by his side the regulars had to take notice.  Her name was Morn Hyland, and she had been a police officer--until she met up with Thermopyle.But one person in Mallory's Bar wasn't intimidated.  Nick Succorso had his own reputation as a bold pirate and he had a sleek frigate fitted for deep space.  Everyone knew that Thermopyle and Succorso were on a collision course.  What nobody expected was how quickly it would be over--or how devastating victory would be.  It was common enough example of rivalry and revenge--or so everyone thought.  The REAL story was something entirely different.In The Real Story, Stephen R. Donaldson takes us to a remarkably detailed world of faster-than-light travel, politics, betrayal, and a shadowy presence just outside our view to tell the fiercest, most profound story he has ever written.

Leviathan Wakes


James S.A. Corey - 2011
    When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.

Triplanetary


E.E. "Doc" Smith - 1948
    The Arisians, using advanced mental technology, have foreseen the invasion of their galaxy by the corrupt and evil Eddorians, so they begin a breeding program on every planet in their universe. Their goal...to produce super warriors who can hold off the invading Eddorians.