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.

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.

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.

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.

Graham Gooding is a leader at a tech start-up when his brilliant coworker—and work crush—Nessie Locke asks for help testing a new algorithm. Graham jumps at the chance to impress her, and to improve his floundering personal life. He soon discovers that the algo is more powerful than Nessie—or anyone—realizes. It was built to detect lies on the internet, but when Graham makes a small edit to Nessie’s online profile, hoping to see if the program will catch the lie, Nessie changes in real life. The algo can alter the real world. Now, so can Graham.

As a villain for hire I followed those rules, facing down heroes in scripted fights to make them look good for the press and brand deals. Sure, losing every time was a pain, but the money was good. Well, decent. And it kept real heroes off my back. Well, usually.

Colonel David Gath is an aging astronaut on his last expedition to the International Space Station. He was no one’s first choice; he was a replacement of a replacement. After learning the United States has been attacked with a weaponized disease, Gath convinces his crew to help him bring a vaccine from the Station to Earth. As they cross a devastated land, facing violent infected, mercenaries, and a traitor determined to see them fail, Gath is haunted by the fear he may have led his crew to their deaths based on a lie.

Jack Monroe had very few paths before him. In 3263 you could either choose to work the mines, extracting raw materials for shipment to Luna, or take a menial job maintaining the atmosphere of Earth. Not satisfied with either, Jack chose to enlist in the AHF to protect those he loves and find his purpose in life. Should he successfully complete the first year of training, he will have become something he never would have dreamed of–a leader and a killer.

A brain-rotting virus, which leaves its victims disoriented and hyper-violent, rages out of Cuba into the Florida Keys. The bewildered government destroys the mainland bridge and places the islands under quarantine. Inside this cordon, the population descends into chaos, as rival factions battle over dwindling resources, buildings become fortresses, boats lash together as defensible islands, and whole neighborhoods wall off into armed camps.