For no crime on his record, the young officer had been identity wiped, and his innumerable, now-forgotten enemies were still tracking him across the galaxy.

    Enterprise, Commander William Riker and ship's counselor Deanna Troi had a tempestuous love affair on her home planet of Betazed. Now, their passions have cooled and they serve together as friends. Yet the memories of that time linger and Riker and Troi remain "Imzadi"—a powerful Betazoid term that describes the enduring bond they still share. During delicate negotiations with an aggressive race called the Sindareen, Deanna Troi mysteriously falls ill... and dies. But her death is only the beginning of the adventure for Commander Riker—an adventure that will take him across time, pit him against one of his closest friends, and force him to choose between Starfleet's strictest rule and the one he calls "Imzadi."

     ALIEN Tristol lives in exile. But he’s built a life for himself aboard a human space station. He’s even begun to understand the complex nuances of human courting rituals. Detective Hastion is finally flirting back! MURDER Except that Tristol’s beloved space station is unexpectedly contacted by the galoi – a xenophobic species with five genders, purple skin, and serious attitude. They need the help of a human detective because there’s a murderer aboard their spaceship. Murder is so rare, the galoi don’t even have a word for it. Tristol knows this because he is galoi. ROMANCE Which means that he and Detective Hastion are on the case… together. Delicate Sensibilities? Contains men who love other men in graphic detail, regardless of gender, biology, or skin color... and lots of emotively sexy tentacle hair. New York Times best selling author Gail Carriger (writing as G.L. Carriger) brings you a light-hearted romantic cozy mystery featuring an adorable lavender alien and his human crush.

    "Confused today," read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know—what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don’t seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead. She remembers the bomb that killed President Kennedy in 1963, and she remembers Kennedy in 1964, declining to run again after the nuclear exchange that took out Miami and Kiev.Her childhood, her years at Oxford during the Second World War—those were solid things. But after that, did she marry Mark or not? Did her friends all call her Trish, or Pat? Had she been a housewife who escaped a terrible marriage after her children were grown, or a successful travel writer with homes in Britain and Italy? And the moon outside her window: does it host a benign research station, or a command post bristling with nuclear missiles?Two lives, two worlds, two versions of modern history. Each with their loves and losses, their sorrows and triumphs. My Real Children is the tale of both of Patricia Cowan's lives...and of how every life means the entire world.

    Mensah and follows the events in Exit Strategy.Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory was originally given free to readers who pre-ordered Martha’s Murderbot novel, Network Effect.

    Preserve the knowledge.Survive at all costs.Take them to the stars.Over 99 identical generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices and sacrificing countless lives. Her turn comes at the dawn of the age of rocketry. Her mission: to lure Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, and secure the future of the space race. But Mia’s family is not the only group pushing the levers of history: an even more ruthless enemy lurks behind the scenes.A darkly satirical first contact thriller, as seen through the eyes of the women who make progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them...

    Enemy Rix are machine-augmented humans who worship AI compound minds. Separated by light years, bound by an unlikely love, Zai and pacifist senator Nara Oxham face the Rix and hold the fate of the empire.

    Once they were human; now they are unkin, transformed by the ancient machine-code language of reality itself. They seek The Book of All Hours, the mythical tome within which the blueprint for all reality is transcribed, which has been lost somewhere in the Vellum - the vast realm of eternity upon which our world is a mere scratch.The Vellum, where the unkin are gathering for war.The Vellum, where a fallen angel and a renegade devil are about to settle an age-old feud.The Vellum, where the past, present, and future will collide with ancient worlds and myths.And the Vellum will burn. . . .

    It all depended on the survival of the last of the entities known as Calebians.But the Caleban was dying - subjected to systematic torture by the richest, most wicked woman in the Galaxy. Unless she could be stopped, the end was only a few days away, or hours - or even minutes!

    Revisions from the author's notes are included, allowing a deeper view into her world and a better understanding of her work. The Nebula Award–winning short story Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death, the Hugo Award–winning novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In, and the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novella Houston, Houston, Do You Read? are included.The stories of Alice Sheldon, who wrote as James Tiptree Jr. ( Up the Walls of the World ) until her death in 1987, have been heretofore available mostly in out-of-print collections. Thus the 18 accomplished stories here will be welcomed by new readers and old fans. ''The Screwfly Solution'' describes a chilling, elegant answer to the population problem. In ''Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death,'' the title tells the tale--species survival insured by imprinted drives--but the story's force is in its exquisite, lyrical prose and its suggestion that personal uniqueness is possible even within biological imperatives. ''The Girl Who Was Plugged In'' is a future boy-meets-girl story with a twist unexpected by the players. ''The Women Men Don't See '' displays Tiptree's keen insight and ability to depict singularity within the ordinary. In Hugo and Nebula award-winning ''Houston, Houston, Do You Read?'' astronauts flying by the sun slip forward 500 years and encounter a culture that successfully questions gender roles in ours.ContentsIntroduction by Michael SwanwickThe Last Flight of Doctor Ain (1969)The Screwfly Solution (1977)And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side (1972)The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973)The Man Who Walked Home (1972)And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways (1972)The Women Men Don’t See (1973)Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1976)With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)A Momentary Taste of Being (1975)We Who Stole the Dream (1978)Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1974)Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death (1973)On the Last Afternoon (1972)She Waits for All Men Born (1976)Slow Music (1980)And So On, and So On (1971)

    On a South Asian-settled university planet, tensions are rising, and as they reach the brink of interstellar war, life (and sex) continues. Humans, aliens, and modified humans gather at the University of All Worlds in search of knowledge... and self-knowledge... but the first bomb has fallen and the fate of this multicultural, multispecies mecca is in question. Some people will seek solace in physical contact, some will look for spiritual answers, while others will find their strength in community, family, and love. Some will rush home to make love to their wife. Or wives. Or husbands. Or indeterminate gender human and/or alien partners. Others will be forced to decide where they stand -- what is worth fighting for, or maybe even worth dying for.In The Stars Change, author Mary Anne Mohanraj presents a multi-layered, thought-provoking, and far-reaching work on sexuality and the connections between people--whether male or female, human or alien. The Stars Change is part space opera, part literary mosaic of story, poem, and art.It is fitting that a book that emphasizes the power of community was funded through Kickstarter. Begun as a project entitled "Demi Monde," The Stars Change is the result of the money raised by supporters that went to pay for not only the art and illustrations in the book, but the author's time, allowing her to focus on writing for that crucial interval.From Smashwords, Publisher Description

    This makes life difficult for Matt as he maneuvers the marriage question with his lover and how best to "come out" to his traditional Chinese parents.This story is also included in Some of the Best From Tor.com, 2013 Edition: A Tor.Com Original

    When she awoke, it was dead.In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth’s population—killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant—the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power—and the strong who possess it.A few women like her survived, though they are scarce. Even fewer are safe from the clans of men, who, driven by fear, seek to control those remaining. To preserve her freedom, she dons men’s clothing, goes by false names, and avoids as many people as possible. But as the world continues to grapple with its terrible circumstances, she’ll discover a role greater than chasing a pale imitation of independence.After all, if humanity is to be reborn, someone must be its guide.

    They called him Charlie. He had big eyes, abundant body hair and fairly long nostrils. His skeletal body was found clad in a bright red spacesuit, hidden in a rocky grave. They didn't know who he was, how he got there, or what had killed him. All they knew was that his corpse was 50,000 years old; and that meant that this man had somehow lived long before he ever could have existed!

    Zahra knew every detail of the plan. House of Wisdom, a massive exploration vessel, had been abandoned by the government of Earth a decade earlier, when a deadly virus broke out and killed everyone on board in a matter of hours. But now it could belong to her people if they were bold enough to take it. All they needed to do was kidnap Jaswinder Bhattacharya—the sole survivor of the tragedy, and the last person whose genetic signature would allow entry to the spaceship. But what Zahra and her crew could not know was what waited for them on the ship—a terrifying secret buried by the government. A threat to all of humanity that lay sleeping alongside the orbiting dead. And then they woke it up.