Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in First Contact

The Destiny’s Crucible series chronicles the incredible adventure of Joseph Colsco, a college student of no particular importance who is thrust into an unimaginable fate by an accident that couldn’t happen - but did. Cast naked on the planet Anyar, he forges a new life for himself and rises to prominence and responsibilities he would otherwise never have imagined. However, much is left undone and uncertain.

Captain Elya Nevers and the Furies face a different kind of danger back home as they bid farewell to fallen comrades, wade into the murky realm of Solaran politics, and hunt for knowledge about the Telos relics—while being hunted themselves. Overmind X is still at large. She’s hungry to get her talons on the next artifact of alien power. Will she find it before the Solarans get their own house in order? And what terrifying existential threat to the galaxy does she become if they’re too late?

Earth has been allowed to colonize the planet Garth only because its previous occupants went berserk and wiped out virtually all life there. But now humans, chimps, and their alien allies on Garth are being held hostage in a conflict that could affect the fate of the entire Five Galaxies.

After a fateful expedition to Antarctica, Alexander Hawkes finds himself catapulted across the stars into a galaxy in chaos. The Emperor is assassinated. The Eternum Empire, already fading, has collapsed. But he has a starship now. And friends. Alongside a crew of unlikely allies—Ban Tarro, an honorable Barundi soldier; Diliseth, a genetically-engineered Nacendo handmaiden; and Four, a sentient AI—Alexander witnesses the brutal aftermath of imperial collapse on the planet Twilight. Driven by an innate sense of justice, Alexander proposes a radical solution.

Lucian must do what no mage has ever done before: Escape the Mad Moon. But between frayed mages, violent monsters, and the hostile environment, that may prove impossible. Wandering the brutal surface, every breath is a fight for survival. And things only get worse when Lucian receives visions from the so-called Sorceress-Queen of Psyche, whose Psionic Magic is second to none. Teaming up with a dedicated captain, a frayed mage, and a former Mage-Knight of Dara, Lucian sets off on a quest across Psyche. He needs a way off the moon for good.

While patrolling the borders of the Klingon Empire, Captain Christopher Pike and the crew of the USS Enterprise record a series of subspace echoes from a planet orbiting a volatile flare star—and when Lieutenant Spock and Commander Una Chin-Riley lead a landing party to learn more, they discover the ruins of a dead civilization and evidence of starship-grade metals…quite possibly a crash site.

Growing up, she was the girl down the street. Even then, I knew she was different. She was tough, rough, and had the strength to stop a speeding car with her bare hands. We were as thick as thieves, sharing every adventure. Then one day she revealed a secret. She wasn't from Earth. She was from a distant place called the Arcadia Multiverse. Her people lived under the rule of a god-like entity known as the System. That System had its gaze fixed on Earth. And it was only a matter of time before it came for us.

First there were good times: humankind reached glorious heights, even immortality. Then there were bad times: Earth was occupied by the faceless, brutal Qax. Immortality drugs were confiscated, the human spirit crushed. Earth became a vast factory for alien foodstuffs. Into this new dark age appears the end of a tunnel through time. Made from exotic matter, it is humanity's greatest engineering project in the pre-Qax era, where the other end of the tunnel remains anchored near Jupiter.

The Sa’Nerra were close to defeat, then everything changed. Armed with a neural weapon, the brutal alien warriors turned Fleet crew against their own. Entire warships went rogue. Suspicion and fear ran riot. Surrender seemed like the only option. But Lucas Sterling knows that in the fight against the Sa’Nerra there is only victory or death.

Ellie Masters comes out of a coma to find herself the only inhabitant of an eerily empty moon station. She’s not on Earth any more; she’s not even in the right solar system. So when someone reaches out to her, tells her he’s her friend, she’s happy to believe it. The alternative is to be stuck alone with an enemy. Renn Sorvihn has been chasing a rogue Tecran ship for over a month. But when Renn follows the Tecran ship into an uncharted sector, and realizes the Tecran have been working their way to a secret moon base, he suddenly understands things are not as they seem.

After the triumphs of the Battles of the Forts, with Serenea now firmly under Allied control, Brigadier General Spartacus Varinius set his sights upon the Pharaonis home world. The Allies used a tactic reminiscent of Earth's Second World War—however, instead of island hopping, they began planet-hopping, bypassing Pharaonis strongholds as they zeroed in on the planet Eurysa.

In the far reaches of the galaxy, a machine of war bursts into existence in a place and time it was never meant to be. On a mission of retribution for the destruction of his planet, its half-mad captain seeks the death of every intelligent being, and the annihilation of every civilized world. Kirk and Spock, two completely different and unyielding personalities must find a way to lead the only crew, aboard the only ship, that can stop him.

100,000 years ago the object hit the lake at the deepest point, quickly sinking into its mile-deep Stygian darkness. The sheets of ice closed, time moved on and the land forgot. But over the centuries, legends grew of people vanishing, of strange, deformed animals and of an unexplained luminescence down in the lake depths. When Marcus Stenson won the lucrative contract to create a sturgeon fish farm on the site of disused paper mill on the shore of Lake Baikal, he thought he had won the lottery and refused to listen to the chilling folktales....

Across America a mysterious disease is turning ordinary people into raving, paranoid murderers who inflict brutal horrors on strangers, themselves, and even their own families. Working under the government’s shroud of secrecy, CIA operative Dew Phillips crisscrosses the country trying in vain to capture a live victim. With only decomposing corpses for clues, CDC epidemiologist Margaret Montoya races to analyze the science behind this deadly contagion. She discovers that these killers all have one thing in common.

When Simon and Katherine Hawke stumble upon an alien shuttle that has landed on earth, it’ll not only change the course of their lives, but of the entire world. Taking the shuttle into orbit, they discover a much larger ship left adrift with no one on board. Commandeering it, they confirm that we’re not alone in the universe and must prepare the human race for what is about to come. Recruiting from all over the world, they begin to expand their fleet and build a federation to give humans a foothold in the galaxy.

Earth's armed forces have stopped the Lanky advance and chased their ships out of the solar system, but for CDC officer Andrew Grayson, the war feels anything but won. On Mars, the grinding duty of flushing out the twenty-meter-tall alien invaders from their burrows underground is wearing down troops and equipment at an alarming rate. And for the remaining extrasolar colonies, the threat of a Lanky attack is ever present.

Sikthand hadn't planned to take the stubborn little human hostage. But with political tensions at an all-time high, he had no choice. He would unflinchingly use her as a bargaining chip to secure better relations with the new Tremantian ruler. He would not, however, fall prey to her charms. When Sophia and Sikthand realize how far their enemies are willing to go to grab galactic power, they're forced into an unlikely alliance-and possibly a marriage of convenience-to protect their people. It's a good plan, too, if they don't do anything irrational along the way. Like falling in love.

Colton Beck has six months to live. He works for the Angor near Los Angeles, aware that any day could be his last. The Angor arrived 20 years ago, resolved to help mankind survive, but not everyone believes their motives are honorable. When the Angor offer humanity a colony world, Colton is determined to see another planet before his final breath. He’s been diagnosed with Xeno, a rare disorder that surfaced with the Angor’s arrival, but he won’t let this stop him.

Earth is conquered. The Shongairi have arrived in force, and humanity’s cities lie in radioactive ruins. In mere minutes, over half the human race has died. Master Sergeant Stephen Buchevsky, who thought he was being rotated home from his latest tour in Afghanistan, finds himself instead prowling the back country of the Balkans, dodging alien patrols and trying to organize the scattered survivors without getting killed.

Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter's third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people. Abandoned to their fate, their history lost along with contact with their makers, Star people survive in an environment that is possibly the strangest in science fiction.