But in deep space, he found only darkness and isolation. Then on planet LV178, he and his fellow miners discovered a storm-scoured, sand-blasted hell - and trimonite, the hardest material known to man.When a shuttle crashed into the mining ship Marion, the miners learn that there was more than trimonite deep in the caverns. There was evil, hibernating - and waiting for suitable prey.Hoop and his associates uncover a nest of Xenomorphs, and hell takes on new meaning. Quickly they discover that their only hope lies with the unlikeliest of saviors...Ellen Ripley, the last human survivor of the salvage ship Nostromo.

    With a ragtag bunch of other women and girls, she has successfully avoided capture and eked out a nomadic but free existence in the mountains. But when Aya’s luck runs out and she’s caught by a group of businessmen on a hunting expedition, fighting to survive takes on a whole new meaning.

    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.

    After all, she’s been on a self-imposed losing streak since her survivalist parents died: she’s stopped painting, broken off her engagement to Adrian and dated a real jerk. Rectifying her mistakes has to wait, however, because Cassie and her friends have just enough time to escape Brooklyn for her parents’ cabin before Bornavirus LX turns them into zombies, too. This is difficult enough, but Cassie’s tag along ex-boyfriend and her friend’s bratty sister have a knack for making everything, even the apocalypse, more unpleasant. When the two attract a threat as deadly as the undead to their safe haven, Cassie’s forced to see how far she’ll go to protect those she loves. And it’s a lot farther than she’d anticipated. This, coupled with Adrian’s distant voice on Safe Zone Radio and, of course, the living dead, threaten to put Cassie right back into the funk she just dragged herself out of. Survival’s great and all, especially when you have leather armor, good friends and home-brewed beer, but there’s something Cassie must do besides survive: tell Adrian she still loves him. And to do that, Cassie has to find faith that she’s stronger than she thinks, she’s still a crack shot and true love never dies.

    In Los Angeles, Raymond and Mia James are about to lose their house. Within days, none of it will matter.When Vanessa dies of the flu, Walt is devastated. But she isn't the last. The virus quickly kills billions, reducing New York to an open grave and LA to a chaotic wilderness of violence and fires. As Raymond and Mia hole up in an abandoned mansion, where they learn to function without electricity, running water, or neighbors, Walt begins an existential walk to LA, where Vanessa had planned to move when she left him. He expects to die along the way.Months later, a massive vessel appears above Santa Monica Bay. Walt is attacked by a crablike monstrosity in a mountain stream. The virus that ended humanity wasn't created by humans. It was inflicted from outside. The colonists who sent it are ready to finish the job--and Earth's survivors may be too few and too weak to resist.

    Instead, they are taught to persuade. Here the art of coercion has been raised to a science. Students harness the hidden power of language to manipulate the mind and learn to break down individuals by psychographic markers in order to take control of their thoughts. The very best will graduate as "poets", adept wielders of language who belong to a nameless organization that is as influential as it is secretive.Whip-smart orphan Emily Ruff is making a living running a three-card Monte game on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization's recruiters. She is flown across the country for the school's strange and rigorous entrance exams, where, once admitted, she will be taught the fundamentals of persuasion by Bronte, Eliot, and Lowell--who have adopted the names of famous poets to conceal their true identities. For in the organization, nothing is more dangerous than revealing who you are: Poets must never expose their feelings lest they be manipulated. Emily becomes the school's most talented prodigy until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love.Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Jamieson is brutally ambushed by two strange men in an airport bathroom. Although he has no recollection of anything they claim he's done, it turns out Wil is the key to a secret war between rival factions of poets and is quickly caught in their increasingly deadly crossfire. Pursued relentlessly by people with powers he can barely comprehend and protected by the very man who first attacked him, Wil discovers that everything he thought he knew about his past was fiction. In order to survive, must journey to the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, to discover who he is and why an entire town was blown off the map.As the two narratives converge, the shocking work of the poets is fully revealed, the body count rises, and the world crashes toward a Tower of Babel event which would leave all language meaningless. A brilliant thriller that connects very modern questions of privacy, identity, and the rising obsession of data collection to centuries-old ideas about the power of language and coercion, Lexicon is Max Barry's most ambitious and spellbinding novel yet.

    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.

    He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it's up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he's got to do it all alone.Or does he?An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could imagine it, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.

    The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies as a matter of course.But some things never change. So when ex-envoy, now-convict Takeshi Kovacs has his consciousness and skills downloaded into the body of a nicotine-addicted ex-thug and presented with a catch-22 offer, he really shouldn't be surprised. Contracted by a billionaire to discover who murdered his last body, Kovacs is drawn into a terrifying conspiracy that stretches across known space and to the very top of society.

    Plain and serious, a girl who loves books and learning, Kelsea bears little resemblance to her mother, the vain and frivolous Queen Elyssa. But though she may be inexperienced and sheltered, Kelsea is not defenseless: Around her neck hangs the Tearling sapphire, a jewel of immense magical power; and accompanying her is the Queen’s Guard, a cadre of brave knights led by the enigmatic and dedicated Lazarus. Kelsea will need them all to survive a cabal of enemies who will use every weapon—from crimson-caped assassins to the darkest blood magic—to prevent her from wearing the crown.Despite her royal blood, Kelsea feels like nothing so much as an insecure girl, a child called upon to lead a people and a kingdom about which she knows almost nothing. But what she discovers in the capital will change everything, confronting her with horrors she never imagined. An act of singular daring will throw Kelsea’s kingdom into tumult, unleashing the vengeance of the tyrannical ruler of neighboring Mortmesne: the Red Queen, a sorceress possessed of the darkest magic. Now Kelsea will begin to discover whom among the servants, aristocracy, and her own guard she can trust.But the quest to save her kingdom and meet her destiny has only just begun—a wondrous journey of self-discovery and a trial by fire that will make her a legend . . . if she can survive.This book will be a beautifully designed package with illustrated endpapers, a map of the Tearling, and a ribbon marker.

    Assigned the task of blazing man's first trail into that great unknown, Captain Eric Weston and the crew of the NAC Odyssey launch on a mission destined to make history.Past the bounds of comfort, they encounter horrors and wonders beyond their imagining, with people and monsters beyond reckoning.Odyssey One is the first voyage of the NAC Odyssey and its crew, and the beginnings of a Military Science Fiction Epic that combines both old school space opera, and modern storytelling in one great, exhilarating adventure.Odyssey One is a 150,000 word novel.

    Now that sounds like fun for a barbarian from the Black Wolf Clan. The barbarians of the frozen north live to fight, drink, hunt, and screw, and Ymir is a true son of the Ax Tundra, until a demon curses him with magic. Orphaned by battle and banished by his tribe, Ymir heads south to Old Ironbound, a university where the rich and well-connected learn to master magic. Will Ymir’s traditions and pride lead him to failure? Or will the centuries of knowledge—and the lusty human, elven, orcish, and dwarven noblewomen—give him limitless power?Either way, while his days are all about studying and scheming, his nights are filled with wild sex in the beds of beautiful women. Because in the lands of the South, there are few men, and those Southern women have needs.Disclaimer: Barbarian Outcast is a steamy slice-of-life harem adventure in a magic university on another world. The sex scenes are explicit but don’t get in the way of the story as it slowly unfolds. Enter a brand-new world from Aaron Crash, the bestselling author of the American Dragon series.

    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).

     When the plague hit, her neighbors turned into mindless, hungry, homicidal maniacs. Daniel has been a loner his entire life. Then the world empties and he realizes that being alone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Finn is a former cop who is desperate for companionship, and willing to do anything it takes to protect the survivors around him. When the three cross paths they band together; sparks fly, romance blooms in the wasteland, and Ali, Daniel, and Finn bend to their very human needs in the ruins of civilization. Lust, love and trust all come under fire in Flesh as the three battle to survive, hunted through the suburban wastelands.

    However, a chance encounter while wandering in the woods and he finds himself trapped on a distant planet, in a new and powerful body overflowing with magical powers. He must learn about his new powers, learn about this new world and try to find a way back home to Earth while surviving the trials of Harem World! Druska arrived on the lush and backwater world, her mission: to scout it for resources and opportunities on behalf of the Galactic Corporation. Seeing neither electrical nor nuclear technologies she feels safe to collect some surface samples. Disaster follows when she is set upon by a crazy old man in robes and his lightning flinging female friend... Leesha was a humble elven princess, destined to give her life in sacrifice for her people. But inside her burns the heart of a sorceress! Born without the gift to touch magic her long elven life has been dull and lifeless. That will all change when she is rescued by the man who will become her love and master... Contains: Harem World - Part One - Harem World Harem World - Part Two - The First Quest Harem World - Part Three - A Forging Harem World is an explicit story with Magic, Harems, FFM, FFFM, Monster Girls, Aliens, Elves, with light LitRPG elements. Edited and revised!