A wanderer, a man running from a dark and sinister past. A genetically-engineered warrior, a capable and accomplished killer, he is also a lost soul, a man who has fled to the deepest reaches of space seeking his true identity.The Far Stars. The farthest extent of human habitation in the galaxy, a sector of a hundred inhabited worlds, it is a dangerous expanse full of pirates, mercenaries, and cutthroats. The sector is a rough and rugged frontier, lying beyond the darkness of the great Void, and the only place in all the vastness of space where men live free of the brutal empire that rules the rest of mankind.Celtiboria. Once the premier world in the Far Stars, now a planet wracked by centuries of brutal civil war, driven to the edge of a dark age by the unending struggle among its Warlords for power and control.Augustin Lucerne. One of Celtiboria’s feuding Warlords, a brilliant tactician and a respected commander. Lucerne is something rare on Celtiboria, in all of the Far Stars…an honorable man who fights not for personal aggrandizement but to save his world.When Blackhawk meets Lucerne he comes to a stark choice. He can continue on his way, a drifter wandering from world to world, alone and without purpose. Or he can join with Lucerne, fight at the Warlord’s side in desperate battle for survival. But whatever he chooses, he will have to face the demons that have pursued him across the stars, the dark version of himself that still lives deep within his mind.Blackhawk is a prequel to the Far Stars series, set twenty years before the existing books. For those who have read the Far Stars trilogy, this is the origin story of Arkarin Blackhawk. And for those who have not read the existing Far Stars series, Blackhawk is an ideal place to start.The Far Stars SeriesShadow of EmpireEnemy in the DarkFuneral GamesAlso by Jay AllanCrimson Worlds SeriesMarines (Crimson Worlds I)The Cost of Victory (Crimson Worlds II)A Little Rebellion (Crimson Worlds III)The First Imperium (Crimson Worlds IV)The Line Must Hold (Crimson Worlds V)To Hell’s Heart (Crimson Worlds VI)The Shadow Legions (Crimson Worlds VII)Even Legends Die (Crimson Worlds VIII)The Fall (Crimson Worlds IX)Tombstone (Crimson Worlds Prequel Novella)Bitter Glory (Crimson Worlds Prequel Novella) The Gates of Hell (Crimson Worlds Prequel Novella)Crimson Worlds Successors SeriesMERCS (Successors I)The Prisoner of Eldaron (Successors II)The Black Flag (Successors III - Coming Summer 2016)Crimson Worlds Refugees SeriesInto the Darkness (Refugees I)Shadows of the Gods (Refugees II)Revenge of the Ancients (Refugees III)Portal Wars SeriesGehenna Dawn (Portal Wars I)The Ten Thousand (Portal Wars II)Homefront (Portal Wars III)Pendragon ChroniclesThe Dragon’s Banne

    An age of innocence, a time of danger: The Summer of Love. San Francisco is the Summer of Love: a convergence where American youth seek a New Explanation, music is free in the park, and violence lurks just around the corner. Lost in these strange and wondrous days, teenager Susan Bell, alias Starbright, has run away from the straight suburbs of Cleveland to find her troubled best friend. Her path will cross with Chiron Cat's Eye in Draco, a strange and beautiful young man who has journeyed farther than she could ever imagine. With the guidance of Ruby A. Maverick, a feisty half-black, half-white Haight-Ashbury hip merchant, Starbright and Chi will discover a love spanning five centuries. But Chi has traveled across the centuries on a vital mission-nothing less than saving the Universe. He, Starbright, and Ruby must unite to save all of spacetime from demonic entities who crave their annihilation.

    The Realm has degenerated into a harsh caste system and Middle Ages technology. Their religion strictly enforces the castes who can marry, and which children are allowed to live. Eric Born is a lapsed priest and a son of one of the noble families. Like all members of the priesthood, he is a very precise telekinetic, but he also has the rare gift of healing. Stifled by the backward ways of The Realm, he escapes to make a new life among the stars. Since then, he has established himself as a freelance computer engineer. He is employed by the Rhudolant Vitae, space traders who travel between star systems trading their technological and management skills for raw materials and political influence. The Vitae's deepest desire is to find their native world, from which they were forced to flee many centuries ago. When Eric Born discovers that The Realm is that very world, his loyalties are split.

    This collection includes If Vanity Doesn't Kill Me and The Devil Within which have not been previously released or collected with these other stories. Tricknomancy tells the story of Patrick Molloy, a magick-using ex-cop who was busted off the force on trumped up bribery charges. He works as a bouncer in a Gentlemen's Club, Club Flesh, where all the women use magick to conjure dollars out of the patrons' pockets. His only true friend is the coroner; his family hates him with a passion, and the cop who busted him off the force is just itching to find a way to send him to jail. Trick Molloy's world is one in which magick-users are feared and hated. Televangelists make bank on casting them as the devil's tools. Gangsters often use magick more readily than guns. Respectable magickers use their skills for seduction, robbery and murder. No one in power really cares about what befalls the criminal class, which Trick Molloy as the one man smart enough to discover the truth, and tough enough to administer justice.

    She's out to make a name for herself and her line of intoxicating human snacks. Not easy in A-Ki s tightly controlled society. Her task gets even more delicate when she rushes to the aid of a dying alien and finds herself the unwilling guardian of a shunned alien ghost named Kenjan. And the new owner of his slave.The danger mounts when Kenjan's grieving lover, the powerful leader of the Kishocha, offers her a dream and a nightmare rolled into one: a new store all her own with a strange double purpose: half snack bar, half shrine. The catch? She must spend the rest of her life there, tending Kenjan the Heretic's ghost. Or the entire station will be destroyed.There's only one way to gain both her freedom and justice for Kenjan: teach both the powerful government elite and the Kishocha theocracy a lesson in "uncivil disobedience".

    When a high-profile delivery is compromised aboard a state-of-the-art cargo vessel, the newly appointed captain finds himself embroiled in an assignment far above his pay grade. Blackmail, terrorists, a malfunctioning prototype A.I. pilot, and a sinister terraforming corporation with deep criminal ties await him. Who knew delivering cargo to the deep recesses of space could be so dangerous? Armed only with his cunning and past military experience, Cole is one against many. But this unorthodox interstellar cargo pilot won’t go down without a fight—even after he is faced with a choice that will alter the course of his life forever.

     The very word immediately conjures up images of cackling madmen waving death rays as they rant and rave about their maniacal plot for world domination. But there is more to professional evil - so many questions left unanswered by movies and comic books. What kind of salary do henchmen get? Where do all these super gadgets come from? How come good guys never use the door? One man has the answers. Mike Leon spent months following Baron Hammerspace during his rise from C-list rogue to A-list arch-nemesis of the most powerful heroes on the planet. This is the startling and true story of those events.

    When her shell is destroyed and her squad killed, Rook is imprisoned, left stranded, scarred and broken. Hollow and helpless without her steel frame, she's ready to call it quits. When her cohort of prisoners are sold into indenture to NorCol, a vast frontier corporation, Rook's given another shell – a near-decrepit Juno, as broken as she is and decades older – and sent to a rusting bucket of a ship on the end of known space to patrol something called "the Eye," a strange, unnerving permanent storm in space. But they're not alone.

    The citizens are organized. Everyone's been notified and assigned a duty. The problem is . . . no one knows for sure how it will end.Energy-hungry Mages are the most likely culprit. They travel toward a single location from every corner of the continent. Fueled by the two suns, each Mage holds the power of an element: air, earth, fire, metal, water, or ether. They harness their powers to draw energy from the most readily available resource: humans.Ashara has been assigned to the Ethereal task force, made up of human ether manipulators and directed by Loken, a young man with whom she has a complicated past. Loken and Ashara bond over a common goal: to stop the Mages from occupying their home and gaining more energy than they can contain. But soon, they begin to suspect that the future of the world may depend on Ashara's death.

    Nightmarish female warriors with blue skin, fangs, and razor sharp talons, the Kreelans have technology that is millennia beyond that of the Confederation, yet they seek out close combat with sword and claw, fighting and dying to honor their god-like Empress. Captured and enslaved, Reza must live like his enemies in a grand experiment to see if humans have souls, and if one may be the key to unlocking an ages old curse upon the Kreelan race. Enduring the brutal conditions of Kreelan life, Reza and a young warrior named Esah-Zhurah find themselves bound together by fate and a prophecy foretold millennia before they were born.

    First Published in 2010, the story has grown significantly, expanding the story into earlier and later eras, exploring the lives of characters both minor and major.The Book of Deacon Anthology is a collection of all currently published stories in the setting:The Book of Deacon - The tale of Myranda Celeste, a young woman orphaned by a century long war, and her chance discovery of a fallen soldier's priceless cargo. The find will change her life, sending her on an adventure of soldiers and rebels, wizards and warriors, and beasts both noble and monstrous. Each step will bring her closer to the truth of her potential, of the war, and of the fate of her world.The Great Convergence - The second in the Book of Deacon series, The Great Convergence continues the tale of young Myranda Celeste. With fresh knowledge of magic and steadfast resolve to see the end of the war that plagues her land, Myranda sets out to find and unite the five fated heroes, the Chosen. Each new warrior brings her world a step closer to peace, but does she have the strength to survive the trials ahead?The Battle of Verril - In this, the finale of the Book of Deacon Trilogy, Myranda and the Chosen face their greatest challenges yet. Time is running out, and the Generals are growing desperate. Through victory and defeat, reunion and betrayal, neither the heroes nor their foes will rest until they have seen their task through to the end. The only question is, will it be the end of a war, or the end of times?Jade - This short novel, set after the events of The Book of Deacon, follows the blessed and cursed life of Jade Rinton. Stripped of her family and kept in a tall tower by a fierce dragon due to the scheming of a mysterious stranger, Jade seems to be living in a twisted fairy tale. She soon learns, though, that fate has its own ideas of who should play each part, and that family is where you find it.The Rise of the Red Shadow - Before he was a legendary assassin and mythic hero, the creature known as Lain was just a simple malthrope, frightened and alone. The Rise of the Red Shadow tells the story of his tragic youth, beginning with his days on a plantation in Tressor and following him through the painful tragedies and thrilling trials that would one day lead him to greatness in the pages of The Book of Deacon.Entwell Origins: Ayna - AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME. The story of Ayna, a young fairy who is cruelly taken from her family, yet finds that this tragedy may have given her the opportunity to become more than she'd ever dreamed.The Stump and the Spire - Previously only available as part of the Neverland's Library anthology, The Stump and the Spire is the story of two children who gain a dark glimpse into the long forgotten past of their world.---For fans of the series looking to fill in the gaps, or for new readers hoping to gather the whole series, The Book of Deacon Anthology is a great way to catch up on the whole saga. Each book is updated with improved formatting, as well as a brief foreword by Joseph R. Lallo, and even a message from the mysterious curator who collected the stories. Read it now and be ready for The D'Karon Apprentice, a new Book of Deacon story releasing November 12th, 2015.

     Future America is dangerous and bankrupt. The interstate highways are littered with the rusted hulks of ambushed cars and trucks, and only Mad Max would dare travel the back roads. When an arms race with Russia and China to develop time travel for military purposes achieves success, the body count skyrockets as both patriot and enemy try to hijack the new technology. Like the Manhattan Project and Operation Overtime before it, such a project attracts the best and the brightest as well as the worst and the psychotic. But not everyone has given up on the rule of law. In Tennessee, Fayette County D.A. Pete Dance wants to prosecute the murder of a man whose fossilized remains turn up after a series of devastating earthquakes. The problem is that the victim is still alive. When the violence starts, it doesn’t stop until the final whirlwind of teeth and claws and lasers. The first spinoff series from William Alan Webb’s immensely popular series The Last Brigade is described by one critic as “…Spectre agents chasing Fast and Furious through Jurassic World,” while another reviewer added “…with a heavy dose of Harry Bosch for good measure.” “After the heart-pounding finale, you won’t see the shocking ending coming. Guaranteed to keep you awake at night.”

    Because it takes a lifetime for each region of the planet to experience dawn, midday and dusk, the planet's population does not remember the catastrophes that occur as the sun moves across the sky - entire civilizations have been scorched into oblivion. The only people who remember the dangers of the past are the planet's "angels" - a people who have tried to preserve past technologies to save the planet. This action-filled story of a very strange planet showcases Duncan's remarkable ability to create unique worlds.

    An alien race simultaneously slaughters Commonwealth diplomats and command officers while attacking a partially completed Fifth Foreign Legion fortress. The surviving troops try to reach the League's primary base, where they plan to consolidate and attack the aliens (in Book #2).

    The Marq ssan bring business as usual to a screeching halt all over the world, and Professor Kay Zeldin joins Robert Sedgewick, US Chief of Security Services, in his war against the invaders. Soon Kay is making rather than writing history. But as she goes head-to-head against the Marq ssan, the long-buried secrets of her past resurface, and her conflicts with Sedgewick and Security Services multiply. She faces terrifying choices. Her worldview, her very grip on reality, is turned inside out. Whose side is she really on? And how far will she go in serving that side? Samuel R. Delany writes: "The coupling of real thoughtfulness and rip-roaring excitement is as rare in science fiction as in any other genre. But here, in Alanya to Alanya, they're locked together in the most exciting-and certainly the most intelligent!-tale of alien invasion I've read in decades. Because it is believable, it's fascinating. And, in the years that have seen Margaret Thatcher go and Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice arrive, Kay Zeldin is an extraordinarily effective portrait of a political hero." Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren Politically savvy and philosophically relevant, this title puts a human face on today's problems. --Library Journal