Centuries ago, we lost our world. Planetary Acquisitions keeps us alive solely to maintain their vast fleet of gate ships in an endless quest to find them new worlds to settle - or to conquer. Years flutter by like a tree shedding its spring petals, and so we desperately cling to this chunk of dirt-and-machine we call home.

Tales of Hayven Celestia tells 13 stories of ordinary people put in extraordinary circumstances. Stuck in situations far beyond their control, they have to make the hardest choices of their lives. The stakes have never been higher, and one wrong move will lead to catastrophe.

"They’ve put Kaz on trial for the murders!” cried Aziz. “They’re going to execute her as the killer!” Tori shook her head in an attempt to wake more fully. “What? No. That’s a mistake. Kaz wouldn’t harm an insect. There’s no way a court could find her guilty.” “The krakun legal system doesn’t give a damn about geroo. They find everyone guilty!”

Tom wished for a meaningful job with the chance to make things. Someone listened. Judged by a masked demigod, Tom gets sent to another world with magic, game-like rules, and massive opportunity for a clever inventor. He's been handed a new identity and adopted by a loving family. As a young man with otherworldly knowledge, he tries to recreate technology from humble beginnings. There are spells to learn, too, and he wants to treat his sister and parents right. His river homeland seems idyllic, but there are problems brewing.

Civilization has fallen. The solar system is blanketed with the automated weapons of ancient wars, engineered plagues, hazardous waste, rogue AI, monsters from outside our dimension, artificial disasters, and nuclear climate change. Every moment of life on Earth is a brutal fight for survival. The people of Sol carry on, but hope is at a premium. They need something more. Someone with a plan, a savior, a hero. What they get is Lily.

Kobolds cower at the bottom of the food chain, forced to eke out a meager existence in the most wretched of caves. Most have made peace with their lot in life; one of eating scraps and carrion. They hide and run from predators, delaying the inevitable day when they aren't fast or sneaky enough to make their escape. But not Samazzar. Sam is different from other Kobold pups.

For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the "Sliver of Infinity," reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison.

If Sol can just survive his last year of high school, he can escape his homophobic small town and go live with his Internet boyfriend for the summer. But when he loses his starting spot on the baseball team and converts to vegetarianism - a wolf, giving up meat! - his father threatens him with a hot, muggy summer working in the peach cannery unless he gets his act together. His teammates, who suspect his sexuality already, won't make it easy for him.

In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car.

This is the way the world ends...for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

Rocky N'Guwe thought tennis would be the hardest thing he'd have to learn at Palm Gables Tennis Academy. But the young jackal finds himself navigating a new culture as well as his own sexuality and the volatile relationships of any high school, all while keeping himself focused on the professional career that will allow him to rescue his sister from an undesirable marriage back home. And looming in his future is Palm Gables alum and rising tennis star Braden Longacre, an abrasive cross fox whose path keeps crossing Rocky's no matter how much the jackal tries to avoid him....

Sacred artists follow a thousand Paths to power, using their souls to control the forces of the natural world. Lindon is Unsouled, forbidden to learn the sacred arts of his clan. When faced with a looming fate he cannot ignore, he must rise beyond anything he's ever known...and forge his own Path.

An orphan’s life is harsh - and often short - in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But young Locke Lamora dodges death and slavery, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist. As leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentleman Bastards, Locke is soon infamous, fooling even the underworld’s most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone still more ambitious and deadly. Faced with a bloody coup that threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game.

Lewis was always the lazy kid in school.After a harrowing hospital visit, he wakes up as a dragon. It's awesome, but he doesn't know the first thing about using his new body! Why is everything so fragile? And since when have people been so tasty? When he reveals himself to his friends, they don't know what to think. He's still Lewis, but he's also something a lot more dangerous. When he eats something he shouldn't have, the wrong people find out. Now, it's up to his friends to keep him out of trouble or risk losing him in the process.

Carl was a regular construction foreman. Not the worst, not the best, and definitely not the thinnest. Even so, he didn't deserve that heart attack! He really didn't deserve being reborn into a magic-filled, dog-eat-dog world as a dragon. To be fair, it’s nice to be at the top of the food chain. Now Carl just needs to learn how magic works, which monsters are safe to eat, and why his hoard is so important to him. Dealing with everything changing is hard enough, but he has enemy dragons incoming, hostile environments, and foes constantly trying to get bragging rights by taking down a dragon.

Living and slaving in Fill City One, you get used to the smell. We call it the Everpresent Stink. But every once in a while, on a spring day with a breeze, it clears away enough to remind us that there is something more out there. Most Fillers' wildest dreams would be just to get past the walls and live in the mainland. But my dream? It’s a little bigger. I’m going to Mars.

Earth’s first colony ship finally reaches the target world. The excitement of planetfall is indescribable, but quickly transforms into sick disappointment when they find the atmosphere is a roiling mass of hydrochloric acid, carbon dioxide, and other deadly poisons. They fly onward, seeking better planets. They find them, but none are ideal. The search goes on for a century, then longer still. As they move farther from Earth, aliens discover the intruding ship, and they begin to investigate humanity. They find our species unacceptable.

Higgens has the best job in the galaxy. Except for the fact that he’s technically a janitor on a galactic mining vessel. When he discovers an unknown alien species, his world gets turned upside down. He will have to find unlikely allies if he is going to save his new friend and help her build a new home. The Mimic and the Space Engineer boxed set contains the first three books in the Space Shifter Chronicles. If you like fast-paced space adventures with engaging, and quirky, characters, you will love Higgens, Mimic, and their adventures in space.

It's been over a century since three generation ships escaped an Earth dominated by artificial intelligence in pursuit of a life on a distant planet orbiting Tau Ceti. Now, it’s nearly Braking Day, when the ships will begin their long-awaited descent to their new home. Born on the lower decks of the Archimedes, Ravi Macleod is an engineer-in-training, set to be the first of his family to become an officer in the stratified hierarchy aboard the ship. While on a routine inspection, Ravi sees the impossible: a young woman floating, helmetless, out in space.

Centuries in the past, mankind fought a seemingly unbeatable adversary from sector to sector across the Spiral Arm until the war ground to a standstill and the Enemy withdrew. Believing that they had won, the citizens of the galaxy rebuilt. The Inner Worlds, which had escaped the worst of the war's ravages, became even more insular, while the Rim worlds adopted a free and easy way with law and order. Now, hundreds of years after their withdrawal, the Enemy is back - and this time they'll be satisfied with nothing less than the extinction of the galaxy.

The future has amazing technology. Our alien allies have magic. Together, we are building a training system to teach the best of humanity to go to the stars. But the training is monumentally expensive. Stephanie Morgana is a genius, she just doesn't know it. Join her on the first half of her adventure with this collected edition, including the first three megabooks in the Federal Histories series.

They’ve watched us for centuries through the Rift. They’ve prepared. Invasion is inevitable. The Earth Fleet has known of the Watchers for years, unwilling to share the knowledge with humanity. Now it might be too late. Hidden away from the Fleet, one man is creating a new colony ship destined for the other side of the Rift, but he’s missing a few pieces. Three other people have varied paths to get there. Ace goes from the streets of Earth to the Fleet training facility on the moon. Flint, an ex-Fleet pilot, must decide if a job is worth his life.

When a mine owner thinks that he's above the law and continues to utilize slave labor to keep his mines running, Barnabas, a former Ranger One, must fight for justice.

During the day, he’s a South Chicago high school janitor, slopping a mop around from nine o’clock to three o’clock, five days a week. At night, hiding out in a boarded-up factory, he attends to his damaged interstellar spacecraft, making repairs and counting the days until he can return to his homeworld of Calunoth. All he needs to do is mind his own business and avoid any messy human dramas for just a few more weeks. But it is on one of those quiet nights when he hears them outside: the MP140s. Named for a police radio code for murder, they're among the most ruthless killers.

Stella Ainsley leaves poverty behind when she quits her engineering job aboard the Stalwart to become a governess on a private ship. On the Rochester, there’s no water ration, more books than one person could devour in a lifetime, and an AI who seems more friend than robot. But no one warned Stella that the ship seems to be haunted, nor that it may be involved in a conspiracy that could topple the entire interstellar fleet.

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.

After decades hunting wanted offworlders throughout the solar system, Corporate Bounty Hunter Malcolm Graves doesn't bother asking questions. So long as the pay is right, he's the man for the job. And he always works alone. But when a high-profile bombing on Earth has Pervenio Corp clamoring for answers, they force him to team up with a strange, cyber-augmented partner. A young man more interested in statistics than instinct. Their assignment: Track down a suspected group of extremists from Titan who will go to any length to free their moon from the grip of Earth's corporations.

When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!

Space travel just isn't what it used to be. With the invention of quantum teleportation, space heroes aren't needed anymore. When one particularly unlucky ex-adventurer masquerades as famous pilot and hate figure Jacques McKeown, he's sucked into an ever-deepening corporate and political intrigue. Between space pirates, adorable deadly creatures, and a missing fortune in royalties, saving the universe was never this difficult!

Engagement season is in the air. Eighteen-year-old Princess Leonie "Leo" Kolburg, heir to a faded European spaceship, has only one thing on her mind: which lucky bachelor can save her family from financial ruin? But when Leo’s childhood friend and first love, Elliot, returns as the captain of a successful whiskey ship, everything changes. Elliot was the one who got away, the boy Leo’s family deemed to be unsuitable for marriage. Now he’s the biggest catch of the season, and he seems determined to make Leo’s life miserable.

"They’ve put Kaz on trial for the murders!” cried Aziz. “They’re going to execute her as the killer!” Tori shook her head in an attempt to wake more fully. “What? No. That’s a mistake. Kaz wouldn’t harm an insect. There’s no way a court could find her guilty.” “The krakun legal system doesn’t give a damn about geroo. They find everyone guilty!”

Centuries ago, we lost our world. Planetary Acquisitions keeps us alive solely to maintain their vast fleet of gate ships in an endless quest to find them new worlds to settle - or to conquer. Years flutter by like a tree shedding its spring petals, and so we desperately cling to this chunk of dirt-and-machine we call home.

Tales of Hayven Celestia tells 13 stories of ordinary people put in extraordinary circumstances. Stuck in situations far beyond their control, they have to make the hardest choices of their lives. The stakes have never been higher, and one wrong move will lead to catastrophe.

Warren loves his job. As a game master for Fate and Freedom Online, he gets to do everything from piloting world bosses to helping players stuck in geometry. When he overhears two coworkers plotting to hack the game and endanger players, things go downhill fast. Not wanting to leave a witness, Warren finds himself stuck in the game as a gnoll! He’s level one, aggroing to every player, and unable to call for help or even log out of the game. How could things possibly get any worse?

Kory was having enough trouble in high school. His girlfriend just dumped him, his poetry made him a target for ridicule, and college applications were looming. The very last thing he needed was to fall in love with another boy.