The distant future. Earth’s Alliance forces have emerged victorious from a brutal nine-year war with the mysterious Kastazi - a vicious, highly advanced alien race. In the dawn of a new peace, the Alliance Devastation Class starship California embarks on a mission of science and learning with a skeleton crew of seasoned officers, civilian students, and inexperienced military cadets in tow. For JD Marshall and Viv Nixon, gifted cadets and best friends, the mission holds special meaning: It offers an opportunity to prove themselves.

You ever have one of those days? U.S. Marine Sergeant Jake Bayard did when he has to cancel a hot date to board a transport plane to the South Pole, which is hijacked by aliens with hostile intent to Earth. Bayard escapes into tunnels deep under the ice and stumbles upon advanced technology that teleports him to Epsilon Eridani. Desperately alone and on the run, Bayard falls back onto his combat training, soon discovering that these aliens keep human herds for meat. That’s it. He enlists some of the downtrodden and declares war against the hungry oppressors.

Ten thousand years ago, a single alien super-ship survived a desperate battle. The vessel's dying crew set the AI on automatic to defend the smashed rubble of their planet. Legend has it the faithful ship continues to patrol the empty battlefield, obeying its last order throughout the lonely centuries.In the here and now, Earth needs a miracle. Out of the Beyond invade the New Men, stronger, faster and smarter than the old. Their superior warships and advanced technology destroy every fleet sent to stop them.

A journey into the deepest, darkest jungles of the Venezuelan Amazon...and a primeval place and time that mankind was never meant to exist in. Ben Cartwright, former soldier, home to mourn the loss of his father, stumbles upon cryptic letters from the past between author Arthur Conan Doyle and his great-great-grandfather who vanished while exploring the Amazon jungle in 1908. Amazingly, these letters lead Ben to believe that his ancestor’s expedition was the basis for Doyle’s fantastical tale of a lost world inhabited by long-extinct creatures.

They came from the brightest star in the southern constellation of Carina. First they studied us. Now they're among us, threatening human existence as they search for the Starcore, the greatest device of the lost Polarions. Logan is captured in the Nevada desert but escapes in Greenland. There he finds an extraterrestrial stealth ship, giving him the means to take the battle to the enemy.

After endless years of fighting in a galaxy-wide war, the most decorated super-soldier of the Old Federation was granted leave, sliding into a stasis tube aboard a sleeper ship. The ship never reached its port, and the soldier woke up a thousand years later on an operating table. The Old Federation was gone, most planets hurled back into the Stone Age. A devastated Earth used spies instead of spaceships to compete against the tougher, richer worlds.

Omar Haddad is a brutal jihadist in Syria who appears to be invulnerable and capable of supernatural feats. But is Haddad divine, as he claims? Is he a gifted magician? Or is he making use of a stunning scientific breakthrough? And what, exactly, is keeping him from unleashing the global apocalypse he’s so eager to bring about? Brennan Craft, a quirky quantum physics genius, has the answers, and the US military is desperate to capture him.

The totalitarian East has triumphed in a massive invasion, and the United States has fallen to a dictatorial superpower bent on total domination. That power is consolidating its grip through concentration camps, police state tactics, and a total monopoly upon the very thoughts of the conquered populace. A tiny enclave of scientists and soldiers survives, unbeknownst to America’s new rulers. It’s six against six million - but those six happen to include a scientific genius, a master of subterfuge and disguise who learned his trade as a lawyer-turned-hobo, and a tough-minded commander....

In the 20th century Earth sent probes, transmissions, and welcoming messages to the stars. Unfortunately, someone noticed. The Galactics arrived with their battle fleet in 2052. Rather than being exterminated under a barrage of hell-burners, Earth joined their vast Empire. Swearing allegiance to our distant alien overlords wasn't the only requirement for survival. We also had to have something of value to trade, something that neighboring planets would pay their hard-earned credits to buy. As most of the local worlds were too civilized to have a proper army, the only valuable service Earth could provide came in the form of soldiers....

In ancient Egypt, Atticus agrees to raid a secret chamber underneath the library of Alexandria, dodging deadly traps, only to learn that on-site security includes two members of the Egyptian pantheon.

The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements: You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world...or you can join the service. With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth.

The urge to explore and discover is a natural and universal one, and the edge of the unknown is expanded with each passing year as scientific advancements inch us closer and closer to the outer reaches of our solar system and the galaxies beyond them. Generations of writers have explored these new frontiers and the endless possibilities they present in great detail. The Final Frontier delivers stories from across this literary spectrum, a reminder that the universe is far large and brimming with possibilities than we could ever imagine, as hard as we may try.

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization, the Illuminati. Desperate to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra.

Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lies the largest platinum deposit ever discovered. A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world-record three-mile-deep mine shaft. EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources, and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company’s driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure. But far beneath the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting...and guarding.

They came from the brightest star in the southern constellation of Carina. First they studied us. Now they're among us, threatening human existence as they search for the Starcore, the greatest device of the lost Polarions. Logan is captured in the Nevada desert but escapes in Greenland. There he finds an extraterrestrial stealth ship, giving him the means to take the battle to the enemy.

Logan Willis’s life is falling apart: he lost his job and found out that his wife is cheating on him all in the same day. Thinking that his world has ended, Logan checks into a hotel and turns on the TV to see that he's not far wrong - radio telescopes have detected mysterious signals coming from inside our solar system, and the source is moving toward us at over 500 miles per second. The media concludes that these signals must be of an alien origin. Still reeling from the news, Logan gets a phone call from his brother-in-law.

Alex Hunter - in the mission that turned him from a normal man into the weapon known as the Arcadian - and the elite team of soldiers known as the Hotzone All-Forces Warfare Commandos must enter a hostile country to rescue a defected Chechen researcher from the centre of a country at war. But the HAWCs are not the only ones looking for the rogue scientist and the mysterious package he carries with him. A brutal and relentless killer and his death squad are on the trail, too - and they bring a savagery with them that Hunter and his team have never witnessed before in modern warfare.

When a fame-hungry scientist brings an impossible, living specimen of a creature long thought extinct back from the wild jungles of South America he unwittingly brings along a passenger. Something with the potential to destroy every living thing on our planet. The infestation begins, rapidly overtaking medical resources and resisting all treatment.

Archaeologists Pippa Quinn and Charlie Jackson find advanced technology in undisturbed 16th-century graves. A portent, the discovery precedes thousands of giant sinkholes opening up across the globe as extreme weather threatens the population. Charlie suspects the two are related.

The Spandau Diary -- what was in it? Why did the secret intelligence agencies of every major power want it? Why was a brave and beautiful woman kidnapped to get it? Why did a chain of deception and violent death lash out across the globe, from survivors of the Nazi past to warriors in this new conflict about to explode? Why did the world's entire history of World War II have to be rewritten as the future hung over a nightmare abyss?

On June 30, 1908, an object fell from the sky, releasing more energy than a thousand Hiroshima bombs. A Siberian forest was flattened, but the strike left no significant crater. The anomaly came to be known as the Tunguska Event, and scientists have never agreed whether it was the largest meteor strike in recorded history - or something else. Alien artifacts have been uncovered since the 1908 event, and a new star drive is discovered.

For a dozen years, villagers along the ancient Da River in Vietnam have feared a nightmarish creature who hunts and consumes human flesh. Only in whispers do they mention its name, The White Ghost. To the United States military, this creature has a different name - Marine Lieutenant Trevor Brett, the chemically engineered experiment gone wrong that they will do anything to hide. Sole survivor of his platoon, Brett has stalked the jungle for prey. But the men who made him into a monster are searching for him, and when they find him, the line between hunter and hunted will be blurred.

Russia, 1959. Nine members of a Soviet mountaineering team on an ambitious expedition into the Ural Mountains are found dead, victims of massive and bizarre injuries. The Dyatlov Pass incident, as this grisly event came to be known, remains unexplained to this day.

It's 1948, and World War II has just ended. Berlin is in pieces, torn apart by bullets, bombs, and bloodshed. But a particular scientist has survived - one with vital knowledge of an ancient weapon. When Endgame spies learn of the news, Boone, a Cahokian, and Ariadne, a Minoan, are each sent undercover to find the scientist amid the snowy rubble. But when their paths intertwine, the last thing they expect is to let their guards down and work together.

All Doctor Dire wants to do is save the world. But those pesky heroes keep getting in the way, and it's all she can do to give them a good fight without killing them. Supervillainy is such an underappreciated job these days....

Devi Morris isn't your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It's a combination that's going to get her killed one day - but not just yet. That is, until she gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn't misnamed; it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she's found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her plan.

Charles "Jay" Tice was a legend throughout the world of international intelligence. But secretly he was also a traitor, reputedly selling information that will seriously compromise the security of the United States for decades to come. Since his treachery was exposed, Tice has been kept under strict surveillance in a maximum security prison. Then one morning, his cell is discovered empty. Jay Tice has vanished - without tripping an alarm or leaving any trace of his passing.

Captain Max Ahlgren is proud to be one of the first team commanders in the Marine Corps’ nascent MARSOC detachment. Finally, the Corps’ elite warriors are working alongside those of other branches, battling insurgents, not on the front lines but behind them. After his first mission, however, Max learns he will be replaced as team commander.

When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there’s either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills - and there’s nothing wrong with Joe Ledger’s skills. And that’s both a good and a bad thing. It’s good because he’s a Baltimore detective who has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new task force created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can’t handle....