Dirriken Friedel used his aristocratic connections to rescue his troops. He didn't plan on starting a war or killing them himself. Now he spends his days in jail, waiting for an assassin sent by his dead officers families to end his misery. When he's broken out by off-duty marines he has a chance to start over, if he's worthy. During his ramshackle escape he collects a broken-down trading ship, a bitter former army officer, a genetically altered religious fanatic, a runaway ingenue, a sham engineer, and a murderous femme fatale.

After the arrival of the multiversal monopoly BuyMort, life got brutal. All systems were through BuyMort. All currency was through BuyMort. All sales were through BuyMort. You could resist, you could compete, but it didn’t really matter because in the end you used BuyMort—or you perished. BuyMort be praised. But not everyone’s happy with the new system. Some, even, want to see it destroyed. It’s quick. It’s convenient. And it will help people kill you and your family as readily as it will help them sell you knickknacks for a quick mortie.

Knocking at death’s door. Bargaining for a second chance. Seems like a heck of a way to find out about an alien invasion.... Vietnam vet Albert Jenkins is battling a bulging waistline and a passion for drink. So when a towering pile of scrap rocket parts falls and crushes the stubborn curmudgeon, he thinks it’s finally the end. But just as he’s about to take one final breath, a snarky alien parasite offers him a deal: His life in return for sharing his body.

Captain Caleb Card and his crew are on a mission to investigate a transmission believed to be from the lost ship. Ambushed upon arrival, they immediately fear the worst. But the beacon isn’t only active, it’s on the move, and where it leads will change everything they thought they knew about the universe. Cast into a distant galaxy brimming with unknown dangers, they’ll need to adapt quickly if they want to survive long enough to help the missing colonists.

Charlie Travers figures his life can’t get much worse. He lives over a pizza restaurant, he’s lost his girlfriend, and has no prospects for a career. Then, he’s abducted by an alien robot and taken across the galaxy. When he wakes up, he finds himself stranded thousands of light-years away, and about to be killed by space pirates.

When Manchester Yards donates a new training vessel to the Merchant Officer Academy at Port Newmar, Alys Giggone recalls the Chernyakova. She wants Ishmael Wang and his crew to take a crew of cadets into the Deep Dark. They have to sort out the crews of two ships, figure out what lessons they need to teach, and who will get those lessons. Once they agree, the trouble starts.

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.

What would you do to change your life? How far would you go? How hard would you fight? Rather than work his bones into dust toiling away on a barren world, Ryck Lysander chooses to enlist in the Federation Marine Corps. But as he quickly finds out, this path isn't just a job...it's a calling...and not everyone is suited to wear the uniform.

In the 20th century Earth sent probes, transmissions, and welcoming messages to the stars. Unfortunately, someone noticed. The Galactics arrived with their battle fleet in 2052. Rather than being exterminated under a barrage of hell-burners, Earth joined their vast Empire. Swearing allegiance to our distant alien overlords wasn't the only requirement for survival. We also had to have something of value to trade, something that neighboring planets would pay their hard-earned credits to buy. As most of the local worlds were too civilized to have a proper army, the only valuable service Earth could provide came in the form of soldiers....

When the Solus Hegemony’s profit margins are threatened, expendable soldiers are called in to foot the bill—one bloody conquest at a time. Noah Rivers is one such soldier. Raised from birth with a single objective—obtain eternal glory through death in service to the galaxy’s most notorious corporate empire.

Bob thought he was doing fine on his own. Then the love of his life fell out of the sky. Can he get her back in the air with auto parts and a cutting torch? If he does, will she ever come back? Nikki took a job before she saw the equipment. Can she keep her passengers alive on a strange planet? Are the natives friendly?

Few know the warship’s actual name. But everyone has heard the rumors. The PUV James Keeling can do something no other vessel in existence can do—slip into another dimension, travel undetected, then re-emerge onto our plane and surprise enemy targets. But the thing that makes the Crypt unique also makes it a nightmare for those onboard; interdimensional travel causes hallucinations, violent behavior, and psychotic breakdowns. Keeling could be the Union’s greatest weapon, a game-changing asset that can defeat the bloodthirsty zealots of the Purist Nation, the Union’s mortal enemy.

Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a 14th story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer. It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit.

Nick Morrison always wanted to be an astronaut. When a start-up company recruits him to build a lunar launch system at the moon’s south pole, Nick gladly leaves behind his troubled life on Earth—but Nick doesn’t know that the company is in financial and legal trouble. Deprived of support from Earth, the team on the moon must figure out how to survive on their own. Worse yet, there’s another base at the lunar south pole, run by a ruthless contractor who has big plans for the moon...and for Earth.

Michael Freeman is a disabled veteran who had just been fired from his mind-numbing cubicle job, which allowed his opportunistic girlfriend to dump him. Now, he only wants to spend some time at his grandfather's mountain cabin so he can unwind, away from the drudgery of daily life and with a cold beer in his hands. Standing in his way is an ancient spaceship with an emotional AI, nanites that have invaded his body, an international crime syndicate, a suicidal FBI agent on a vigilante mission, terrorists . . . and that's just the beginning.

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.

When a battleship and its escorts mysteriously disappear near a contested area of space, they leave no clues behind, and their own Navy is preparing for war and can’t spare the resources to find them. Which wouldn’t really matter to ex-Navy Captain Brad Mendoza. He finally has all he ever wanted: a ship, a crew, and the most beautiful woman in the galaxy as his girlfriend. Seriously, can life get any better? But that’s when Carla Mendoza, his ex-wife, appears, begging Brad for help to find the missing task force and its flag captain, the man she left Brad for.

For four centuries, the Order of the King’s Cross has worked in the shadows to protect Promethean society. Known only to the King and his closest advisors, the agents of the Order carry out their monarch’s will throughout the Federated Planets and their neighboring star nations, cleaning up messes, investigating heinous crimes, and most often, eliminating threats. Heather Kilgore is one of the deadliest agents the Order has ever trained. Young, focused, and coldly efficient, the King sends her in when all else has failed.

Dirriken Friedel used his aristocratic connections to rescue his troops. He didn't plan on starting a war or killing them himself. Now he spends his days in jail, waiting for an assassin sent by his dead officers families to end his misery. When he's broken out by off-duty marines he has a chance to start over, if he's worthy. During his ramshackle escape he collects a broken-down trading ship, a bitter former army officer, a genetically altered religious fanatic, a runaway ingenue, a sham engineer, and a murderous femme fatale.

Cut-throat bosses, local mobsters, an influencer girlfriend, and evil corporations, that’s who. A fun and smart near future thriller crammed with mind-expanding concepts, science being explored today, fast paced action, and unexpected twists. All driven by expertly presented emotions, desires, and childhood issues in life or death situations.

When the over-driven hyperdrive on their mobile shipyard burned out, the Chhrt'ktk't abandoned it in an inhabited system along their path, hoping it would work as a decoy to buy them more time to escape the Khreetan fleet pursuing them. They didn't anticipate how far the pre-spacefaring species they turned over their broken-down maintenance facility to would subvert their plan.

The Galactic Empire disappeared a lifetime ago. Jake Stewart doesn't care, he needs to earn a living. He fled his station in the outer Belt, enrolled in the merchant academy, and snagged a scholarship. The future looks bright. But a crooked boss, some paperwork shenanigans, and a freeloading best friend put him in a bind. When he's accused of a murder he didn't commit he goes on the run from the Planetary Militia. There's only his wits and a suspiciously helpful pretty girl between him and jail. Can he trust her to prove his innocence? Or does she have another agenda?

From TheReadingCafe.com: "the characters are diverse, distinctive and unconventional but such are the personalities of every entertaining story of science fiction. CORVUS ASCENDING begins slowly but accelerates at 'warp speed'." Wisecracking star-sailor Gus Johansson’s beach bum retirement suddenly goes from boring to blazing when he pulls a 1400-year-old robot and a sentient spaceship from the sea. Soon, Gus and his crew of misfits are in the fight of their lives against an old enemy. The vengeful Captain Harrison “Hazy” Grey is convinced he can finally get his Admiral’s flag by ...

Idealistic Navy Lieutenant Jacob Grimm just wanted to honor his mother’s sacrifice in the last great war. When he’s forced to return fire and destroy a squadron of ships to save his own, he thinks he’s the hero...until they discover the ships are full of children. Disgraced and denied promotion, Jacob’s career is over. That is until the head of ONI needs a disposable officer to command a battered destroyer on the rim.

Book 1: Albion Lost: For centuries, the Daegon waited. They plotted. And now they are ready to strike. The core worlds of settled space enjoy a tenuous peace, unaware and ill prepared for the threat building beyond the furthest reaches of humanity. The star kingdom of Albion stands as a shining light of justice and mercy in a harsh galaxy, and they will be the first to suffer the Daegon's fury. Book 2: The Long March: Commodore Thomas Gage and his fleet, safeguarding the last of the Albion Royal Family, are on the run.

Fergus Ferguson, repo-man, has one job: find the spacecraft Venetia's Sword and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. Finding Gilger in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a gas-giant harvesting colony called Cernee, was easy. The hard part will be getting past a field of space mines, hacking into the Sword's compromised AI, and fighting a crew of hostile enemies to take control of the ship. But when a cable car explosion launches Cernee into a civil war, Fergus finds himself caught in the crosshairs.

Few know the warship’s actual name. But everyone has heard the rumors. The PUV James Keeling can do something no other vessel in existence can do—slip into another dimension, travel undetected, then re-emerge onto our plane and surprise enemy targets. But the thing that makes the Crypt unique also makes it a nightmare for those onboard; interdimensional travel causes hallucinations, violent behavior, and psychotic breakdowns. Keeling could be the Union’s greatest weapon, a game-changing asset that can defeat the bloodthirsty zealots of the Purist Nation, the Union’s mortal enemy.

The Sol System is a powder keg waiting for a spark. Corporal James Aurelius didn’t sign up for this. Fancy hotels, powerful politicians, and… guard duty. Two years into his enlistment and the young marine has yet to see combat, while all his buddies from boot camp have done at least one tour in the war that raged with the Caliphate back on Terra.

A formidable alien armada stands on the brink of vanquishing the cosmos, their gaze set firmly on every inhabited world. The last line of defense? An eclectic crew of improbable champions: a maverick starfighter pilot, a daredevil stuntwoman, a lethal super-assassin, and a cosmic prankster with alien tricks up his sleeves. Their mission is to shield not just humanity, but billions of other intelligent lifeforms spanning the multiverse.

When Vanti and O'Neill graduated at the top of their academy class, they thought they'd get their dream assignments. Instead they end up in security on Station Kelly-Kornienko. Sure, the station if glitzy, but they're basically well-dressed security guards.

Zac was the most senior REV alive, a miracle of science and a legend in the Corps. His job was to be the battering ram for the Marines, the first in while revved up on NT-4. During a Run, he was a mindless killing machine, dangerous to both foe and friend alike. But something was happening to Zac. Long after most other REVs were dead, burned out or "retired", Zac was growing stronger, more powerful. He was also doing what no REV had ever done before during a Run. He was beginning to think.