On the African savanna, the male lion is the lord who watches over his family, while the females of the clan do the real work. Joel “The Lyon” Lyons thought that owning a mercenary company would be similar—he could sit back and allow the Lyoness to run the Pride. Everything would go well, money from successfully completed contracts would flow like water into his bank accounts, and everything would be as easy as it had been for him when he’d owned a chain of highly successful restaurants.

Terry Clark grew up surrounded by his parent’s life’s work, the rescue and rehabilitation of cetaceans. Born just after first contact with the Galactic Union, he’s never known a time when aliens weren’t visiting Earth. At 10 years old, he had a normal life, until a visit from one of the aliens resulted in a ground-breaking discovery. The cetaceans have a developed and complex language...and it can be deciphered by the aliens’ translators.

Before Hr'ent Golramm became a legendary Enforcer for the Peacemaker Guild, he was a mere candidate. Granted, he was a particularly unusual candidate - only six Oogar had ever successfully graduated from the Peacemaker Academy on Ocono, and Hr'ent would be the seventh. Every candidate must pass a commissioning mission in order to graduate, though, and Hr'ent's is unsolvable. The Pushtal of Vorrhurna were once one of the Mercenary Guild's 37 races.

Peacemakers. The Galactic Union’s most capable enforcers and resolute negotiators, their name alone elicits fear and awe among the Union’s citizenry. It is a time of upheaval throughout the Galactic Union. As the effects of the Omega War ripple outward, a Peacemaker falls silent at the outpost mining colony of Parmick. Sensing danger, the Peacemaker Guild dispatches two new graduates of the Academy to investigate and report. They are a new breed of Peacemaker, perfect for the clandestine infiltration mission.

The Peacemaker-enforced ceasefire brought an end to the hostilities, but not a resolution, and now it’s up to the Four Horsemen to forge a lasting peace. Alexis Cromwell, despite her pregnancy, heads off to Capital with Nigel Shirazi to obtain justice from the enigmatic Mercenary Guild Council, but when they arrive, they’re quickly embroiled in galactic politics, and find out the situation is far, far worse than they could possibly have imagined.

Sixteen-year-old Colt Maier is enrolled at a prestigious mercenary training school aboard a converted space freighter. At least, Colt thinks it's prestigious, until a bounty hunter hired by the Merchant Guild arrests the school's faculty, leaving Colt and his fellow cadets in deep debt to a loan company. Facing the specter of indentured servitude should they fail to pay what they owe, Colt and his friends transform their former school into a legitimate mercenary company.

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.

Go to war or go to jail. For small-time street hustler Cam Alvarez, the choice is simple.... He has no family, no friends, no place in the world...nothing to lose. When his latest con results in the death of a cartel hit man, Cam opts to join the Marines and leave Earth to fight a vicious alien enemy. Drafted into the Marine Drop-Troopers, Cam discovers there’s one thing he’s even better at than running street-con games, and that’s killing the enemy.

The plot by the Galactic Union’s Mercenary Guild against the Four Horsemen has culminated in an invasion of Earth. Faced with an overwhelming force, the human mercs had no choice. They’ve fled, leaving Sansar Enkh to go to the Mercenary Guild headquarters on Capital Planet to stand trial for humanity. On the run, Jim Cartwright and Nigel Shirazi have travelled to the Winged Hussars’ secret base of New Warsaw, in an effort to convince Alexis Cromwell to join the fight, while the other mercenaries who escaped the fall of Earth have gone to the perceived safe haven of Karma.

At a time when Humans were just starting to venture forth into the Galactic Union as mercenaries, Martin Quincy survived long enough to do something no one else had - he retired. There was only one problem: He got bored. After battling aliens for many years - killing aliens and getting paid - retirement didn’t suit him, and he decided to strap on the combat armor and go back to the stars. Along with his old friend Kal, Martin joined Cartwright’s Cavaliers, humanity’s best merc company. Life was exciting! But he got bored. Again.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. 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.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.

Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down.