. .Captain Pausert thought his luck had finally turned—but he did not yet realize it was a turn for the worse. On second thought, make that a turn for the disastrous*.Unlucky in love, unsuccessful in business, he thought he had finally made good with his battered starship Venture, cruising around the fringes of the Empire and successfully selling off odd-ball cargoes which no one else had been able to sell. He was all set to return home, where his true love was faithfully waiting for him ... he hoped.But then he made the fatal mistake of freeing three slave children from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to part with them). They were just trying to be helpful, but those three adorable little girls quickly made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancee, his home planet, the Empire, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango—and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space.And all because those harmless-looking little girls were in fact three of the notorious and universally feared Witches of Karres.

    Naiad, the home world, is a frozen ball, but the colonists persevere and expand through wormholes to remote systems.Navigating the time-space anomalies requires Axis-ships. The expensive vessels are constructed by corporations, and remote worlds are claimed by the companies for their valuable ores and gases.The corporations and Naiads are at odds with each other, and their lives are made more complicated by the arrival of strangers in an alien ship.To understand the nature of the unusual vessel coasting toward Beta Two, the director of operations orders the kidnapping of specialists from other mining worlds. Entire families are scooped up, but two siblings, Escher and Allie, evade capture.Hiding deep below the domes’ surfaces, the siblings are befriended by the orphans of miners. The young mickies don’t possess identification chips or cids, which would identify them as citizens.The gang of mickies and the siblings strike a deal to help each other. Each group is determined to reach Naiad. The mickies seek citizen status and freedom, and Escher and Allie want help rescuing their parents.The beleaguered group’s hastily derived plans bury them in criminal complications. When all appears lost, a second alien vessel exits the dark. The hull is similar to the ship at Beta Two, and these strangers seek their enemies.

    He knows he's a thug. He has no problem with that realization. In his view the galaxy has given him a gift: a mutation that allows him to withstand great deals of physical trauma. He puts his abilities to the best use possible and that isn't by being a scientist. Besides, the space station Belvaille doesn't need scientists. It is not, generally, a thinking person's locale. It is the remotest habitation in the entire Colmarian Confederation. There is literally no reason to be there. Unless you are a criminal. Because of its location, Belvaille is populated with nothing but crooks. Every day is a series of power struggles between the crime bosses. Hank is an intrinsic part of this community as a premier gang negotiator. Not because he is eloquent or brilliant or an expert combatant, but because if you shoot him in the face he keeps on talking. Hank believes he has it pretty good until a beautiful and mysterious blue woman enters his life with a compelling job offer. Hank and Belvaille, so long out of public scrutiny, suddenly find themselves at the epicenter of the galaxy with a lot of very unwelcome attention.

    Peter Serafinowicz's Questions and Answers is a showcase for the razor wit and joyful nonsense of one of Britain's cleverest comedians, firing back genuinely funny instant replies to a stream of questions from the general public. This book collects together several hundred jokes from Peter's store of one-liners in a stylish, faux-Victorian, gifty hardback, just in time for Christmas. 'Peter Serafinowicz is hilarious' David Walliams' 'It's funny, but Peter Serafinowicz is the kind of funny person that funny people find funny' Simon Pegg 'Peter Serafinowicz is one of the funniest women in the world' Derren Brown

    A policy with Stranger & Stranger can cover all of your interdimensional insurance needs. Rated "Number One in Customer Satisfaction" for three years running, no claim is too big or too weird for Tom Stranger to handle.But now Tom faces his greatest challenge yet. Despite being assigned the wrong—and woefully inadequate—intern, Tom must still provide quality customer service to multiple alternate Earths, all while battling tentacle monsters, legions of the damned, an evil call center in Nebraska, and his archnemesis, Jeff Conundrum. Armed with his Combat Wombat and a sense of fair play, can Tom survive? And will Jimmy the Intern ever discover his inner insurance agent?It's time to kick ass and adjust claims.Adam Baldwin (Firefly, Chuck) performs Larry Correia's madcap interdimensional tale of underwriting and space travel, where the only thing scarier than tentacle monsters is a high deductible.

    Contending daily with the mechanical failures of their haggard spaceship and the best efforts of bounty hunters to collect the growing price on their heads, this crew of cutthroats, buccaneers and scofflaws use wits, weapons and wisecracks to make off with as much booty as they can, with the forces of law and order never more than one step behind.The only impediment between them and a quiet criminal career is their blowhard of a captain. Ace pilot, megalomaniac and complete moron, Captain Nemo leads his motley crew with bluster and bravado through planetary blockades, space station shootouts and rowdy barroom brawls, hell-bent on becoming the most fearsome dread pirate this galaxy’s ever seen. A bidding war between three of the galaxy’s least forgiving crime lords could very possibly be his worst idea to date, but when it comes to The Unconstant Lover and her captain, the line between brilliance and insanity might just have disappeared.

     “A gripping, intimate story, profoundly human and relentlessly surprising.” —Felicity Jennings In 1968, Charlotte Vance was one of the few women employed by the National Security Agency in Washington, D.C. She put in long hours and was working when a fire started in her home. Her daughters and husband were killed. For fifty years, she has felt responsible for their deaths. In 2018, when a former colleague from the NSA mentions a top secret government agency that is experimenting with time travel, she decides to apply. She discovers that TEMPUS has many secrets. The scientists are mind-bendingly strange and brilliant. She must endure grueling physical, emotional and psychological tests. She fears her age and weak heart might disqualify her. After a difficult time travel journey, Charlotte learns a shocking truth: TEMPUS has hidden motives for sending her. She struggles to change the tragedy of her personal past while also struggling to stop TEMPUS from violently altering history.

    Most days, she's got other things on her mind. Like hiding her identity among the hundreds of alien species roaming the corridors of Watertower Station. Or making sure her adoptive mother doesn't casually eviscerate one of their neighbors. Again.And most days, she can almost accept that she'll never know the truth--that she'll never know why humanity was deemed too dangerous to exist. Or whether she really is--impossibly--the lone survivor of a species destroyed a millennium ago. That is, until an encounter with a bounty hunter and a miles-long kinetic projectile leaves her life and her perspective shattered.Thrown into the universe at the helm of a stolen ship--with the dubious assistance of a rebellious spacesuit, an android death enthusiast on his sixtieth lifetime, and a ball of fluff with an IQ in the thousands--Sarya begins to uncover an impossible truth. What if humanity's death and her own existence are simply two moves in a demented cosmic game, one played out by vast alien intellects? Stranger still, what if these mad gods are offering Sarya a seat at their table--and a second chance for humanity?The Last Human is a sneakily brilliant, gleefully oddball space-opera debut--a masterful play on perspective, intelligence, and free will, wrapped in a rollicking journey through a strange and crowded galaxy.

    Please take care of her. But beware. This is a dangerous baby. At Lily’s annual Christmas costume party, a variety of strange events take place that lead Jo and Lily out of California forever—and into the mysterious, strange, fantastical world of Eldritch City. There, Jo learns the scandalous truth about who she is, and she and Lily join the Order of Odd-Fish, a collection of knights who research useless information. Glamorous cockroach butlers, pointless quests, obsolete weapons, and bizarre festivals fill their days, but two villains are controlling their fate. Jo is inching closer and closer to the day when her destiny is fulfilled, and no one in Eldritch City will ever be the same.From the Hardcover edition.

    Nor does he anticipate falling in love with Holmes and having his sexual needs attended to in a way he had only previously dreamed about.Accompanying Holmes to an ill-omened house in south London, Watson is startled to find a dead man whose face is contorted in a rictus of horror. There is no mark of violence on the body yet a single word is written on the wall in blood. Dr Watson is as baffled as the police, but Holmes’ brilliant analytical skills soon uncover a trail of murder, revenge and lost love…Along with Holmes, Watson throws himself into finding the killer, but also finds himself. As Watson reveals more of his desires to his lover, Holmes does his utmost to make sure those desires are met. In a heady time where Watson is thrust into a horrifying murder case, the love he feels for Holmes, and the sexual experiences they share, help him to remain level-headed until the killer is caught.

    Alternate cover edition for B01MU10N5THow can one unwilling human save the galaxy? Can Mark stay alive, defeat a psychopathic reptile whose armies are set to overwhelm all the free civilizations in the galaxy? And will he get the girl of his dreams? Maybe not, but he’ll have a damn good try! And how did he become allied to the most powerful race in the universe?

    This fast-paced, character-driven novel will immerse you in the world of US Marines in lethal powered armor, trapped aboard the ghostly ruins of a starship buried miles underground. Somewhere amid the twisted, frozen decks, these elite Marines will find themselves wrapped in an ancient mystery and a life-or-death battle to see who will become... the DOMINANT SPECIES.

    The discovery of a clean energy source ended the world’s reliance on fossil fuels overnight, and years after the resulting wars, a new discovery puts the tenuous world peace at risk; that of faster than light travel. With humanity on the verge of travelling to new solar systems and all the humanitarian and scientific possibilities involved, a discovery by the reconnaissance team turns everything upside down. Join the small team of the reconnaissance mission who fight friend and foe to complete their mission objectives – no matter where it leads them or what the personal cost.

    But Alan’s new job proves to be anything but boring when his co-workers start turning up dead. The mysterious megacorporation Amalgamated Synergy has taken a deadly interest in Alan and his three roommates, and the hapless quartet are woefully unequipped to deal with the psychotic secretaries, murderous middle managers, and villainous vice-presidents hunting them down. Their investigation leads them deep into Amalgamated Synergy’s headquarters, but can Alan and his friends stay alive long enough to discover who – or what – waits for them on the top floor?

     Normally Jeremiah Brown would not begrudge such luckless animals their windfall, but the man was his uncle, and the fortune was supposed to be his inheritance. Furthermore, having already purchased a ticket for a luxury space-cruise "on expectation" of said inheritance, Jeremiah can no longer pay for said ticket. And furthermore still, he is already on said cruise. Having defaulted on his ticket, Jeremiah must work as a concierge for the remainder of the trip. Since he has never worked a day in his life, even an ordinary job would be sure to prove challenging. But this will be no ordinary job... World Enough (And Time) is a sci-fi comedy of manners and errors. If you enjoy the work of Douglas Adams—or have always longed to read something inspired by P.G. Wodehouse or Kingsley Amis but set on, you know, a spaceship zipping through the void at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light—you should check it out.