From the moment Sam Newman and fourteen others awaken inside metal coffins next to the burning wreckage of a spacecraft, they face a constant struggle to stay alive on a seemingly uninhabited planet light-years from home. Worse, the last any of them remember, they were back home on Earth—at a time when interstellar travel was little more than a distant pipe dream. Survival means finding out who-or what-brought them to this place. Yet what few answers they find amidst the steaming jungles and the ruins of that distant world defy all logic or sanity.

Get ready to experience two more origin stories in the Backyard Starship universe.

The Divide. It’s the edge of the universe. Now, it’s collapsing - and taking everyone and everything with it. The only ones who can stop it are the Sentinels - the recruits, exiles, and court-martialed dregs of the military. At the Divide, Adequin Rake commands the Argus. She has no resources, no comms - nothing, except for the soldiers that no one wanted.

In the 25th century, humans have conquered space. The advent of faster-than-light travel has opened up hundreds of habitable planets for colonization, and humans have exploited the virtually limitless space and resources for hundreds of years with impunity. So complacent have they become with the overabundance that armed conflict is a thing of the past, and their machines of war are obsolete and decrepit. What would happen if they were suddenly threatened by a terrifying new enemy?

Sanda and Biran Greeve were siblings destined for greatness. A high-flying sergeant, Sanda has the skills to take down any enemy combatant. Biran is a savvy politician who aims to use his new political position to prevent conflict from escalating to total destruction. However, on a routine maneuver, Sanda loses consciousness when her gunship is blown out of the sky. Instead of finding herself in friendly hands, she awakens 230 years later on a deserted enemy warship controlled by an AI who calls himself Bero. The war is lost.

When itinerant cave diver James Tighe receives an invitation to billionaire Nathan Joyce's private island, he thinks it must be a mistake. But Tighe's unique skill set makes him a prime candidate for Joyce's high-risk venture to mine a near-Earth asteroid - with the goal of kick-starting an entire off-world economy. The potential rewards and personal risks are staggering, but the competition is fierce, and the stakes couldn't be higher. Isolated and pushed beyond their breaking points, Tighe and his fellow 21st-century adventurers must rely on each other to survive....

In the 1800s, a sailing ship crashes off the coast of Norway. In the 1900s, a Zepellin explores an icy canyon in Antarctica. In the far future, a spaceship sets out for an alien artifact. Each excursion goes horribly wrong. And on every journey, Dr. Silas Coade is the physician, but only Silas seems to realize that these events keep repeating themselves. And it's up to him to figure out why and how. And how to stop it all from happening again.

The 26th century. Humanity has expanded beyond Earth’s system to hundreds of planets that colonists now call home. But the United Earth Government and the United Nations Space Command is struggling to control this vast empire. After exhausting all strategies to keep seething colonial insurrections from exploding into a full-blown interplanetary civil war, the UNSC has one last hope.

Dennis E. Taylor, author of the best-selling Bobiverse trilogy, explores a whole different, darker world in this sci-fi stand-alone. Determined to give his wife and children a better life back home, Ivan Pritchard ventures to the edge of known space to join the crew of the Mad Astra as an asteroid miner. He's prepared for hard work and loneliness—but not the unthinkable. After coming into contact with a mysterious alien substance, Pritchard finds an unwelcome entity sharing his mind, and a disturbing physical transformation taking place.

Abigail and Clementine were just a couple of orphans looking for a home. But when the two girls witness something terrible, they have no choice but to leave their orphanage and go into hiding. The only person willing to take them in is a man named Mulberry, but his home isn't the safest place for two innocent children.

The Hundred Worlds have withstood invasion by the relentless Hok for decades. The human worlds are strong, but the Hok have the resources of a thousand planets behind them, and their fleets attack in endless waves. The long war has transformed the Hundred Worlds into heavily fortified star systems. Their economies are geared for military output, and they raise specialized soldiers to save our species. Assault Captain Derek Straker is one such man among many.

Cities all around the world reported strange alien vessels descending. Some saw them as the heralds of a new age; others fired everything they had at them. All were taken as the beams lashed down and drew them into the sky. Dean was left behind, seemingly the last man on Earth. A trail of clues left by his dead wife guides Dean on a perilous journey across America and beyond to learn the truth behind the mysterious ships and save humanity from its doom.

Jason Steadman is a thirty-year-old sales executive living in Boston and working for an electronics giant, a competitors to Sony and Panasonic. He's a witty, charismatic guy who's well liked at the office, but he lacks the "killer instinct" necessary to move up the corporate ladder. To the chagrin of his ambitious wife, it looks as if his career has hit a ceiling. Jason's been sidelined. But all that will change one evening when Jason meets Kurt Semko, a former Special Forces officer just back from Iraq.

Nick Conover, the son of a factory worker, is the CEO of a major corporation in a company town. Nick, once the most admired man in Fenwick, Michigan, is now, having presided over massive layoffs, the most despised. A single parent since the recent death of his wife, he's struggling to insulate his 10-year-old daughter and angry 16-year-old son from the town's hostility.

A thousand years ago, an alien invasion set humanity back to the Iron Age. Slowly, we recovered, colonizing the Solar System in peace. And discovered that an unknown force is stopping us from exploring any farther. But before the cause can be discovered, a slow-burning conspiracy threatens to explode into System-wide war. With enemies at home and in the darkness beyond, a team of unlikely heroes-a janitor, a mercenary, an asteroid miner, and a pirate-are the only ones who can avert a second apocalypse. This set includes the first three books of the newly-finished REBEL STARS series.

When humanity reaches for the stars, our probes are destroyed. They crash into an incredibly advanced piece of technology: a massive force-field. Unknown beings have placed a barrier around our star and planets, enclosing us within. We’re locked inside a Great Sphere. Was this invisible obstacle built to imprison us - or to protect us? No one knows the truth, but it soon becomes clear the barrier has leaks. Aliens infiltrate and try to sabotage our efforts to escape our cage.

Geoff and his friends live in Phocaea, a distant asteroid colony on the Solar System's frontier. They're your basic high-spirited young adults, enjoying such pastimes as hacking matter compilers to produce dancing skeletons that prance through the low-gee communal areas, using their rocket-bikes to salvage methane ice shrapnel that flies away when the colony brings in a big (and vital) rock of the stuff, and figuring out how to avoid the ubiquitous surveillance motes.

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.

Syd Chambers grew up on Earth with his human mother and barely remembers his alien father from Denza, who left on a mission when Syd was very young. After leaving Earth, Syd learned the truth of his father’s disappearance on the planet Ashfall—his father had died protecting a devastating secret about the history between humans and Denzans.

Convicted criminal James Griffin-Mars is no one's hero. In his time, Earth is a toxic, abandoned world, and humans have fled into the outer solar system to survive, eking out a fragile, doomed existence among the other planets and their moons. Those responsible for delaying humanity's demise believe time travel holds the key, and they have identified James, troubled though he is, as one of a select and expendable few ideally suited for the most dangerous job in history.

Hotshot pilot Nax Hall has a history of making poor life choices. So it’s not exactly a surprise when he’s kicked out of the elite Ellis Station Academy in less than 24 hours. But Nax’s one-way trip back to Earth is cut short when a terrorist group attacks the Academy. Nax and three other washouts escape - barely - but they’re also the sole witnesses to the biggest crime in the history of space colonization. And the perfect scapegoats. On the run, Nax and his fellow failures plan to pull off a dangerous heist to spread the truth.

The Keiko is a ship of smugglers, soldiers of fortune and adventurers, travelling Earth's colony planets, searching for the next job. And nobody talks about their past. But when a face from Captain Ichabod Drift's former life sends them on a run to Old Earth, all the rules change. Trust will be broken, and blood will be spilled.

Cities all around the world reported strange alien vessels descending. Some saw them as the heralds of a new age; others fired everything they had at them. All were taken as the beams lashed down and drew them into the sky. Dean was left behind, seemingly the last man on Earth. A trail of clues left by his dead wife guides Dean on a perilous journey across America and beyond to learn the truth behind the mysterious ships and save humanity from its doom.

Mankind was beginning its third leap into the Galaxy, but Old Earth had so long kept to herself that her people were unable to travel safely among the rough-and-tumble cultures that had evolved on distant worlds. That annoyed Earth's rulers, for Hobart Floyt--a minor Terran bureaucrat-- had been left a mysterious inheritance by the deceased ruler of a small but wealthy interstellar empire.

Two hundred years ago, a fleet of colony ships left Earth and started a settlement on Proxima Centauri. Centurion Space Force pilot Nathan Stacker didn't expect to return home to find his wife dead. He didn't expect the murderer to look just like him, and he definitely didn't expect to be the one to take the blame. But his wife had control of a powerful secret. A secret that stretches across the light years between two worlds and could lead to the end of both. Now that secret is in Nathan's hands, and he's about to make the most desperate evasive maneuver of his life.

In the final days of the empire, Cyborg Corps Colonel Leonidas Adler plans to die in a manner befitting of an imperial officer. He will fight until his last breath, giving his life to defend Emperor Markus, as it was meant to be. But when the emperor himself summons him for a final special mission, how can he refuse?

In the wilds of a jungle planet, the Legion fights in brutal combat as Republic marines fly their SLICS from one tragedy to the next. H292, a repurposed warbot, shows the heart of a hero as he wades into the battle not to destroy - but to save.

In this New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a strange new life form threatens all of humanity, and only a fool would stand in its way. Katmer Al Shei has done well with the starship Pasadena, cutting corners where necessary to keep her crew paid and her journeys profitable. But there are two things she will never skimp on: her crew - and her fool. For a long space journey, a certified Fool’s Guild clown is essential, to amuse, excite, and otherwise distract the crew from the drudgeries of interstellar flight.

To Inquisitor Angel Xia, it was just another corporate killing on a backwater planet. But as the bodies begin to pile up and she finds herself a target, she realizes she's stepped on one toe too many. Barely escaping attempts on her life by powerful agents with seemingly limitless reach and influence, Angel senses even her co-Inquisitors can't be trusted. But as the web tightens, she receives a cryptic message from a computer program claiming to be a little girl in desperate need of her help.

Evan Gabriel wasn't always a feared and respected North American Federation Navy Commander. Before dangerous missions to the ice-bound planet of Poliahu, the deadly jungle world of Eden, and politically corrupt Mars, he was a simple recruit, fighting to make his mark in the elite Naval Special Forces…and was part of a top-secret military experiment that would change his life forever. Zero Point tells the tale of a young man faced with difficult choices and dangerous trials.

Fergus Ferguson has been called a lot of names: thief, con artist, repo man. He prefers the term finder. His latest job should be simple. Find the spacecraft Venetia's Sword and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. He’ll slip in, decode the ship’s compromised AI security, and get out of town, Sword in hand.

A deadly cloud of spores has already infected and killed the inhabitants of two worlds. Now the plague is heading for Earth, threatening humans and aliens alike. Can either species be trusted to find the cure? Geneticist Marianne Jenner is immersed in the desperate race to save humanity, yet her family is tearing itself apart. Siblings Elizabeth and Ryan are strident isolationists who agree only that an alien conspiracy is in play. Marianne's youngest, Noah, is a loner addicted to a drug that constantly changes his identity.

The lines. No ship can traverse the void without them. Only linesmen can work with them. But only Ean Lambert hears their song. And everyone thinks he's crazy.... Most slum kids never go far, certainly not becoming a level 10 linesman like Ean. Even if he's part of a small and unethical cartel, and the other linesmen disdain his self-taught methods, he's certified and working. Then a mysterious alien ship is discovered at the edges of the galaxy.

The Krakau came to Earth to invite humanity into a growing alliance of sentient species. However, they happened to arrive after a mutated plague wiped out half the planet, turned the rest into shambling, near-unstoppable animals, and basically destroyed human civilization. You know - your standard apocalypse. The Krakau's first impulse was to turn around and go home. Their second impulse was to try to fix us. Now, a century later, human beings might not be what they once were, but at least they're no longer trying to eat everyone. Mostly.

Rory Thorne is a princess with 13 fairy blessings, the most important of which is to see through flattery and platitudes. As the eldest daughter, she always imagined she'd inherit her father's throne and govern the interplanetary Thorne Consortium. Then, her father is assassinated, her mother gives birth to a son, and Rory is betrothed to the prince of a distant world. When Rory arrives in her new home, she uncovers a treacherous plot to unseat her newly betrothed and usurp his throne.

In 2063, Earth's overheated climate and war-ravaged cities are near breaking point. A new habitable planet is discovered within reach, but the first two missions have failed to return. This is the story of the third mission to Eden. What really awaits the crew of four as they make the long journey to this supposedly uninhabited virgin planet, and what is the link to the secret 900-year-old sect known as Alicians back on Earth? While Blake leads the Eden mission, a young researcher named Micah discovers a terrible truth that threatens the very existence of humanity.

It should have been a case like any other: a missing princess, a king willing to pay in gold for her return. But before he realizes it, private investigator Eddie LaCrosse, a slightly shopworn sword jockey with a talent for discretion and detection, is swept up in a web of mystery and deceit involving a brutally murdered royal heir, a queen accused of an unspeakable crime, and the tragic past he thought he'd left behind.

Separated at birth, orphaned twins Peyton and Jai Foster’s lives couldn’t be more different. Raised by a billionaire, Peyton Foster has been taught that anything other than first place is failure. With her adoptive family’s name dangled like a carrot, she’ll need to not only get accepted to Space Academy but finish at the top of her class. Raised in a group shelter one step from the streets, Jai Foster has earned every meal he’s ever eaten. Discovering early that his penchant for technology gave him an undeniable advantage, Jai manages to earn a spot to the academy.

Mitch Matthews is writer struggling to make ends meet when his wife's brother offers them a first-class seat on a flight from Hong Kong to New York. When his wife needs to stay behind, it becomes an opportunity for some quality daddy-daughter time with his five-year-old Lilly. At check-in, they run into a strange Norwegian arguing with a huge Russian. A mysterious redhead is guarding a package in the business lounge. But everything is fine...right up until the event. Within hours of Allied Airlines 695 disappearing, a massive international search is launched.

As Chinese and US spacecraft compete to be the first to land on Mars, a former astronaut, his cousin, and four teens from Florida decide to take matters into their own hands. If they can quickly build their own space-worthy ship using scrap metal, appliances, and power tools, they have a chance to come from behind - thanks to an inventive new power source that can propel them to the Red Planet within three days. No guts, no glory.

Intergalactic lawman Terry Victor is betrayed by fellow officers and sent to a backwater planet on the interstellar arm of the universe. In short, he was sent to the planet called Earth. Fed up, he quits in a fit of disgust and seeks a peaceful retirement among the humans. Unfortunately, trouble has a way of finding Terry Victor. Keep his head down and away from Earth's authorities, or help a woman about to be attacked by a gang?