But Ankari Markovich needs a few archaeological samples for her latest business venture, a venture that might prove lucrative enough to move her family off the impoverished planet where she grew up. Unfortunately, she has no sooner collected her samples than she’s captured by a band of brawny mercenaries. The captain might be handsome, but he’s intent on turning her over to some finance lord who has, for reasons unknown, put a bounty on her head, a ridiculously large one at that. If she can’t figure out a way to escape before she’s delivered to the lord’s home world, she could be forced into a life of indentured servitude—or worse.Captain Viktor Mandrake doesn’t usually take on piddling bounty hunting gigs, but when his intelligence officer informs him of a criminal on a nearby planet, he decides it wouldn’t hurt to take a shuttle down to collect the woman. But Ankari Markovich is trouble from the start, nearly eluding his elite forces, then fighting and tricking his people left and right. He finds himself admiring her spirit, but according to her warrant, she’s a criminal. The safest thing is to keep her in the brig and ignore her until she can be handed off to the man who wants her.But the situation grows more complicated when other bounty hunters show up, wanting to claim Ankari for themselves. Thanks to this woman, Viktor’s ship is in danger, his crew members are going missing, and he’s fighting enemies he never asked for in a jungle in the middle of a hurricane. He’s either going to strangle Ankari… or fall in love. Either scenario could get him killed.Mercenary Instinct is a full-length, stand-alone novel of 90,000 words. It is part of the “Mandrake Company” series of science fiction romance stories and is recommended for readers who enjoy space-based adventure (such as Firefly) and steamy love stories (in the style of Linnea Sinclair).

    Only one ship survived.It only survived because it found a vast swath of alien planets, all terraformed, all utterly abandoned. Alien megastructures cold and lifeless. Alien vehicles left in panicked lines, sealed from the inside, no corpses within. Empty space stations, with no one to run them but the dust. Resources everywhere, ripe for the taking.But Fortune is different. Of all the planets colonized by humans after the chaos of Migration, this single, jungle-infested colony on the very edge of the known universe holds the key to the alien collapse…and to humanity’s survival. Everywhere else, advanced alien ruins mar every surface, every planetoid, every debris ring and asteroid, but of the creatures that made them, there is no sign. On Fortune, something survives…Unfortunately for humanity, while time is running out, a rebellion is brewing, one that could save our species—or consign it to dust like the aliens that came before us. Now, seven hundred years after our first brush with extinction, the fate of the human race once again rests on the shoulders of a few: a seven-year-old sociopath and her combat-gifted big sister, a man who’s dreamed of the future, an infamous smuggler, and a Coalition pilot sworn to destroy the rebel cause.This time, however, the stakes are higher. For lurking on Fortune is a secret.An epic, post-apocalyptic science fiction adventure that will make you hold your breath, cry, curse the powers that be, and in the end question what, exactly, it means to be human. *FOR CURRENT FANS OF THE OUTER BOUNDS SERIES: This is the THIRD edition of Outer Bounds 1: Fortune's Rising. To celebrate the return of the Outer Bounds' series to its creator, Sara King added a bonus 17,500 word novella to this edition detailing Anna's rescue of Milar from the Nephyrs, as well as some fantastic book-derived art by bestselling graphic artist Lance MacCarty. It also has timeline fixes and minor edits to better synch it with the rest of the series. Plus it just looks cooler.

    As a newly commissioned officer in the Celostian Navy, his goal was to serve well until the day he could retire. Then disaster strikes on his first cruise aboard the CNS Wolfhound, and he will have to display all the courage, skill and determination he has in order to keep the remaining crew members out of danger. Because if he does not, the only ones to tell the tale will be prisoners of war—if there are any left at all.

    First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army.The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-- and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine--and what he will become is far stranger.

    A new commander. His ship catapults uncontrolled through space. Now the aliens want him and his ship dead. Anderson Cross and Kate Flynn are in the crosshairs of the alien invasion. Their ship bears the hatred of an entire species.  It will take all they can give to survive. It will take even more to win. The enemy has more ships and better technology.It’s life or death for them.For their ship and crew.For all of humanity.It’s the human fleet vs. the aliens in run-and-gun battles for survival. Can Cross and Flynn rise above his mistake and slow the alien advance? There’s only one way to find out. Get it now. If you loved Old Man’s War and the Honor Harrington series, you’ll love the five-book Chaos Shift Cycle. It is a powerful new addition to the military sci-fi adventure tradition of David Weber, John Scalzi, and Robert Heinlein. It is perfect for fans of Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica. The Chaos Shift Cycle:Book 1: TrespassersBook 2: DefendersBook 3: ProtectorsBook 4: Deliverers Book 5: Victors (coming March 2018)

    China has been devastated by the Formic's initial efforts to eradicate Earth life forms and prepare the ground for their own settlement. The Scouring of China struck fear into the other nations of the planet; that fear blossomed into drastic action when scientists determined that the single ship that wreaked such damage was merely a scout ship.There is a mothership out beyond the Solar System's Kuiper Belt, and it's heading into the system, unstoppable by any weapons that Earth can muster.Earth has been reorganized for defense. There is now a Hegemon, a planetary official responsible for keeping all the formerly warring nations in line. There's a Polemarch, responsible for organizing all the military forces of the planet into the new International Fleet. But there is an enemy within, an enemy as old as human warfare: ambition and politics. Greed and self-interest. Will Bingwen, Mazer Rackam, Victor Delgado and Lem Juke be able to divert those very human enemies in time to create a weapon that can effectively defend humanity in the inexorable Second Formic War?

    Nathan will tell you in his own words about the life and death struggles he encounters on his journey. He will tell you about the humor, peril and pain of his galactic education. Even with the help of an eccentric A.I. and the most unlikely of allies, he still finds it easy to lose his humanity to the horrors and injustice of a galaxy no one could have possibly imagined.

    For a thousand years, it has felt stifled by Michael's strictures, the rules they must follow on pain of death. As the first and most powerful vampire in existence, he has the power to keep the power struggles under the radar from the rest of humanity. Unfortunately that is changing.Someone has found the serum to make intelligent nosferatu, a type of vampire little better than blood sucking beasts who can change the power struggle significantly. Michael thought this serum safely lost in the bombing of Japan in 1945.The third effort to overturn Michael's decrees is about to take place, the problem is Michael is tired. After a thousand years of fighting and keeping the peace with his Family, the Unforsaken and the known supernaturals he is world weary and ready to sleep a final time.He needs to find a way to bring another to take his place, someone with the will and desire to make a difference. He finds Bethany Anne.The daughter of a General, she excels were others fear to go. She accepts the offer but doesn't realize she won't be transformed like any other vampire in history, even Michael. The problem? Even he didn't realize exactly how he was transformed and it completely throws the understanding of vampires and why they were created out the window.When she wakes up, nothing is going to go like she thought. The UnkownWorld is going to change, it just doesn't know whose beat they will dance to, yet.

    Had I known how often I’d be expected to die over the next several millennia, I might have made a stronger effort to stay dead. The year actually started off rather nice. I finished my PhD in high energy physics and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in the United States Air Force. My first posting after the promotion was to the Lunar One Air Base where I worked with my father, Dr. Robert Kimbridge on “The Project.” “The Project” was our name for a VASIMR Ion Drive interplanetary space craft that used Thorium LFTR reactors for both shielding and power. Capable of a sustained point one G of acceleration, our prototype was expected to make the Mars run in less than a week. By the end of November the ESX Arizona was ready for her first trial runs and I was her pilot. History has an odd way of repeating itself.

    150 years later, planet Darien hosts humans at peace with indigenous scholarly Uvovo. Buried on the forest moon are secrets of an epic battle between ancient races. In a galactic war, what will Uvovo choose, when their nature is revealed, and the enemy comes?

    Without warning. Without mercy. We were not prepared. Hundreds of millions perished. Dozens of cities burned. We nearly lost everything. Then, the aliens abruptly left. We rebuilt. We armed ourselves. We swore: never again. But the aliens never came back. Until now. With overwhelming force the aliens have returned, striking deep into our territory, sending Earth into a panic. Our new technology is useless. Our new ships burn like straw. All our careful preparations are wasted. Now, only one man, one crew, and the oldest starship in the fleet stand between the Earth and certain destruction: ISS CONSTITUTION

    Power outages plague key cities and military bases, causing wide spread panic and chaos. Only the Space Agency seems to have a grasp on the situation but with all their combined resources, they’re baffled. Captain Warren Miller races to join his colleagues in the Agency headquarters, hoping to convince his superiors to launch their latest space craft, the battlecruiser Leviathan, which may be able to defy this intruder. In the absence of communication, he hopes a little intimidation might bring about a conversation. But then smaller objects descend upon the Earth, grabbing up people from all over the globe. Captain Miller never makes it back to base, forcing the Agency to scramble for a response. With the weight of an expectant world beating down on them and the alien threat looming above, they have no choice but to engage the enemy or simply witness history in the making.

    it's personal. The scum hiding deep inside the Reach out along galaxy's edge thought they could kill her and not pay the price. For years these hardened killers have run roughshod over the lawless worlds where Republic justice is never as fast as the blaster in your hand and where double-crosses and death are a part of every deal. They thought this time would be no different. They were wrong. This time, the Guild sent the legendary bounty hunter Tyrus Rechs. As the infamous Rechs pursues the men who murdered his colleague, he's hell-bent on justice, heedless of the trail of destruction he leaves across ruined worlds and fantastic gambling meccas alike. Because for Rechs, this isn't just another Guild contract... it's personal.

    Earth-Mars relations couldn’t be worse, and her brother is captured during the raid. Breaking rules of secrecy and no contact, Jess finds an ally in Pavel, nephew to a government official, but their friendship only makes more agonizing the choice before her: Save her brother or save her planet?

    He's a dead man walking until his doctor gives him a way out. If he's willing to give up his entire life, he can travel for eight hundred years in stasis to planet Epigog 31 to receive treatment. With no other options available, he agrees.Once there, he discovers that aliens exist and they are allies with humanity. But there's a catch to receiving treatment: while his body heals, he must act as muscle for the aliens.His conscious mind is uploaded into a mechanical battle unit and he is sent to train for warfare.He will travel the galaxy, meet numerous aliens, and make friends along the way. But everything is not as it seems, and Jack's mech is far more unique than he realizes.