After an industrial ship carrying advanced self-replicating machines explodes on its way to Mercury, analysis of the wreckage reveals it to be forty years too old. Raibert Kaminski, the Gordian Division’s top agent, and his crew on the TransTemporal Vehicle Kleio soon discover the ship had been transported to an uncharted universe, one with temporarily accelerated time. Forty years passed for the ship’s industrial machines while everyone else experienced only a few short days. Raibert is certain a powerful weapon of some nature has been built out in the unexplored reaches of the multiverse.

Doctor Benjamin Schröder was far from a man of action. In fact, he was a history teacher - chairman of the Castle Rock University history department - and if his life wasn't perfect, it was close. Until, that is the discussion of his star student Elzbietá Abramowski's dissertation on Operation Oz, the Pacific Allies' invasion of Vladivostok, was brutally interrupted. The psychotic episode that turned his entire world upside down struck with absolutely no warning, and it was more terrifying than anything he should have been able to imagine.

The Atlas Corporation was all set to tear apart the planet Mercury—converting its resources into a swarm of solar-collecting megastructures—when Esteban Velasco, lead Atlas engineer, is found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Detective Isaac Cho and Special Agent Susan Cantrell, both eager to return to active duty despite close calls on their last case, are sent in to assess the situation. Their superiors expect a simple declaration of suicide, but Velasco’s death proves anything but typical.

Lieutenant Brandy Bolgeo has come home from the Battle of Hancock station wounded in both body and spirit. She will need months to regenerate her lost leg, but how long will it take to heal her heart? She’s come home to find that her wounds, her ship’s brutal damage, the deaths of so many friends, were the fault of an arrogant, aristocratic coward who broke and ran in the face of the enemy. Who left her ship to pay the price for his craven desertion under fire. And whose powerful political allies are determined to protect and preserve him at any price.

For more than fifty years, the Terran Republic and the Terran League have been killing one another. The death toll has climbed ever higher, year after year, with no end in sight. But the members of the Five Hundred, the social elite of the Republic's Heart Worlds, don't care.

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.