Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Science Fiction

The essential short story collection set in the universe of Ninefox Gambit. An ex-Kel art thief has to save the world from a galaxy-shattering prototype weapon.... A general outnumbered eight-to-one must outsmart his opponent.... A renegade returns from seclusion to bury an old comrade....

Thirty years ago, the world ended. Giant electrovoric ants and pterodons came through a rift in space-time, millions of humans died, and that was that. Thirty years later, humanity has rebuilt … to an extent. Human ingenuity has provided some creative solutions to life without electricity, but most folks survive at the subsistence level, farming to keep themselves and their families fed.

Sol has disappeared. Their Earth-born wife Lumi sets out to find them but it is no simple feat: each clue uncovers another enigma. Their disappearance leads back to underground environmental groups and a web of mystery that spans the space between the planets themselves. Told through letters and extracts, the course of Lumi’s journey takes her not only from the affluent colonies of Mars to the devastated remnants of Earth, but into the hidden depths of Sol’s past and the long-forgotten secrets of her own.

After deactivating Parallax and restoring access to Earth, Deadeye and the Redshift Runners have become the most infamous pirates in the Orion Spur. Yet the old order has its hands full with Dying Suns, a political movement calling for a return to Earth—while leaving the barren, ‘dying’ worlds they were forced to colonize. Miners, farmers, and other settlers petition the Runners to fly them to humanity’s birthplace.

Five men and women venture to another universe to find beings whose power gives them abilities they can’t imagine. Their leader? The greatest warrior produced since Prometheus: Achilles. Young, untested, but with unbridled potential, will his raw talent be enough? Can Achilles fight gods and turn back the tide of fate for the entire universe? Or will he be crushed like an ant beneath the feet of beings who can walk the stars?

Jeff Kerwin spent the first decade of his life in the Spacemen’s Orphanage in the Terran Trade City on Darkover. Yet he never felt that he belonged. When Jeff is shipped back to Earth at the age of 12, he becomes haunted by dreams of the world surrounding the Terran oasis that had once been his. He is convinced that only on Darkover can he discover his true identity.

In Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives, readers met the optimistic young hero Owen Hardy, as well as the more reluctant adventurer Marinda Peake, in an amazing world of airships and alchemy, fantastic carnivals and lost cities. Now Owen Hardy, retired and content in his quiet, perfect life with the beautiful Francesca, is pulled into one last adventure with his eager grandson Alain. This final mission for the Watchmaker will take them up to the frozen lands of Ultima Thule and the ends of the Earth.

The art of speculative fiction lies in the ability to create a plausible future that tells us a great deal about our present. This critically acclaimed recording by narrators Aaron Lustig and Henry Strozier chronicles human reactions on Earth to an invasion by alien exterminators intent upon wiping out all sentient life on Earth.

A junior intelligence officer in the Martian Combined Fleet, Radrick Siegn supplements his meager pay by smuggling contraband from Saturn to Mars. Someday, he’ll buy his own ship and escape the Fleet forever. But his captain has other plans for him. A tanker pilot has been murdered on Saturn Station. It’s up to Siegn to salvage the honor of the Fleet by finding the killer … before they kill again. The investigation plunges Siegn into the seedy underworld of Saturn Station, where he learns this was no ordinary killing.

For centuries The City of Cries—one of the most desired locales in the Skolian Imperialate—has existed by the thinnest of threads. On the dying world of Raylicon, the “haves” live in great luxury in Cries while the “havenots” scrape by, eking out a marginal existence in the notorious Undercity beneath the desert. Major Bhaajan, formerly of the Pharaoh's Army, knows both worlds. Born into the Undercity, she nevertheless has made a name for herself in the Imperialate. And now, she has the chance to help her people.

Hayden Lichfield’s life is ripped apart when he finds his father murdered in their lab, and the camera logs erased. The killer can only have been after one thing: the Sisyphus Formula the two of them developed together, which might one day reverse death itself. Hoping to lure the killer into the open, Hayden steals the research. In the process, he uncovers a recording his father made in the days before his death, and a dying wish: Avenge me.

Maya has died and been resurrected into countless cyborg bodies through the years of a dangerous long career with the infamous Dirty Dozen, the most storied crew of criminals in the galaxy, at least before their untimely and gruesome demise. Decades later, she and her diverse team of broken, diminished outlaws must get back together to solve the mystery of their disastrous last mission and to rescue a missing and much-changed comrade … but they’re not the only ones in pursuit of the secret at the heart of the planet Dimmuborgir.

The Domination of the Draka begins as a British possession in Africa, but soon becomes far more. Absorbing refugees after the American Revolution, and later the Civil War, the Draka become a people bred to rule with an iron fist. They permanently enslave the peoples of Africa, when they do not simply kill them. But this does not slake the Draka thirst for power. Sweeping across the world, the Draka empire engulfs nation after nation, shackling into servitude all who are not Draka.

If he’d known he was getting stuck with a pair of psi-wielding super-beings, even straitlaced do-gooder Captain Pausert might have thought twice about rescuing his two young “witch” charges from slavery on a dark planet. But what’s done is done - and with galactic peace once again threatened in the mysterious and pirate-ridden Chaladoor region, only a dangerous mission backward in time can save the present and - maybe - get stalwart-but-obtuse Pausert to see one of these young “witches” as more than just a friend.

It's been five years since a cosmic incident known as The Ring of Fire transported the modern-day town of Grantville, West Virginia, through time and space to 17th-century Europe. The course of world history has been forever altered. And Mother Russia is no exception. Inspired by the American up-timers' radical notion that all people are created equal, Russian serfs are rebelling. The entire village of Poltz, led by blacksmith Stefan Andreevich, pulls up stakes to make a run for freedom.

Science fiction is a portal that opens doors onto futures too rich and strange to imagine. Fantasy takes us through doorways of magic and wonder. For more than a decade award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan has sifted through tens of thousands of stories to select the best, the most interesting, the most engaging science fiction and fantasy to thrill and delight readers.

In cycle three of the series, the Harbingers team investigates more mysterious and fascinating supernatural occurrences in Hollywood, a small town in North Carolina, and elsewhere. Can they keep the growing darkness at bay? This fast-paced and ongoing collection plays like your favorite TV series, with each linked episode written by a talented author. Featuring "Leviathan", "The Mind Pirates", "Hybrids", and "The Village".

The United Sovereign States of Russia struggles to set in place the traditions and legal precedents that will let it turn into a constitutional monarchy with freedom and opportunity for all its citizens. At the same time, they’re trying to balance the power of the states and the federal government.

Ruth Johnson and her sister Jules have been small-time hustlers on the interstellar cruise lines for years. But then Jules fell in love with one of their targets, Esteban Mendez-Yuki, sole heir to the family insurance fortune. Esteban seemed to love her too, until she told him who she really was, at which point he fled without a word. Now Ruth is set on revenge: disguised as provincial debutante Evelyn Ojukwu and set for the swanky satellite New Monte, she’s going to make Esteban fall in love with her, then break his heart and take half his fortune. At least, that’s the plan.

Nineteen sparkling stories that weave between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. Spirits Abroad is an expanded edition of Zen Cho’s Crawford Award winning debut collection with nine added stories including Hugo Award winner “If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again”. A Datin recalls her romance with an orang bunian. A teenage pontianak struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love, and eating people.