Showing titles in First Contact

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.

Cities were crushed by the falling spacecraft, but one ship didn't crash. It remained intact and disgorged hordes of alien soldiers determined to fight to the death. The abandoned vessels also contained a wealth of advanced technology. Led by David Levinson, the greatest minds of our world developed deadly new hybrid weapons. Bases were built on the moon, Mars, and beyond. A new generation of defenders had to be trained, for the invaders would return.

When Russ Wesley finds an unusual artifact in his grandfather’s collection of rare antiquities, the last thing he expects is for it to draw the attention of a ferocious alien from a distant planet. Equally surprising is the adventurous team of intergalactic exterminators dispatched to deal with the alien threat. They’re a little wild, and a little reckless. Worse yet, they’re so impressed with Russ’s marksmanship that they insist he join their squad . . . whether he wants to or not.

In modern-day Los Angeles, a shadowy faction led by the governor of California develops the arcane art of combat linguistics, planting the seeds of a future totalitarian empire. Isobel is the queen of the medieval rave-themed VR game Sparkle Dungeon. Her prowess in the game makes her an ideal candidate to learn the secrets of "power morphemes" - unnaturally dense units of meaning that warp perception when skillfully pronounced. But Isobel’s reputation makes her the target of a strange resistance movement led by spellcasting anarchists.

The alliance between the Great Powers is starting to fall apart, the human economy cannot keep up with the urgent need for newer and better starships, and politicians are demanding an end to military spending. When a generation starship is detected approaching a British colony world, HMS Invincible is dispatched to intercept the aliens before they can make landfall. But the newcomers bring with them tidings of a new and deadly threat, an expansionist alien race far too close to the Human Sphere for comfort...and a sinister horror beyond human understanding.

The scar across the side of Jack’s head is the visible price. The risk to his friends at the academy is the hidden price. His challenge is how to balance the risks. The final stage of his training is a shakedown cruise on an old minesweeper. Midway through their cruise, the minesweeper collides with an ancient alien wreck, ripping the sides off the starship. Jack’s team of bots help seal the combined wreck to prevent air loss. Jack and his girlfriend, Sofia, are the only survivors, and air, food, and supplies are critical. The countdown of days to survive is ticking.

'I am with you always, even unto the end of the world . . .' Peter Leigh is a missionary called to go on the journey of a lifetime. Leaving behind his beloved wife, Bea, he boards a flight for a remote and unfamiliar land, a place where the locals are hungry for the teachings of the Bible - his 'book of strange new things'. It is a quest that will challenge Peter's beliefs, his understanding of the limits of the human body and, most of all, his love for Bea.

Earth has joined the Galactic Empire, a vast interstellar society ruled by dragon-like aliens where everybody is immortal. Pain, famine, and disease have been eradicated, but this doesn't mean the end of conflict. A cruel alien Republic has been watching from afar and wants to take the empire's progress for its own. Jian Choumali, ex-British forces and now colonel in the Imperial space force, must fight to keep her friends, family, and fellow citizens in the empire safe.

AD 2150: Chris Randall just lost his job as a bodyguard. That night, after picking up his wife, Bree, from her shift at a local casino, he breaks the bad news. Moments later, thunder cracks the sky, but there’s no lightning. Flaming debris rain across the valley, and a dark mass goes sailing out of the clouds, headed straight for LA. It’s not one of the Union’s starships, because they can’t defy gravity like that. But then, what is it? The answer chills both Chris and Bree to their cores: It’s an invasion.

Lacey Adams lives in the small town of Magic, New Mexico, where she devotes herself to the animals at her Touch of Magic Animal Shelter. The strange assortment of animals helps heal the pain and loneliness inside her since the death of her husband three years before. Frost is a Star Ranger. He travels the star systems, bringing intergalactic fugitives to justice. When a maximum-security fugitive escapes from the mining prison, he is sent after him. Only this time, the fugitive has violated a major law…

Neither cosmic philosopher Lars Soren, hotshot pilot Bianca Petrescu, nor the high priestess Jessica McHugh—Lady Death herself—can say quite where in the galaxy they are. But after an experiment gone horribly wrong, one thing is clear: Asphodel Station isn’t in orbit around Jupiter any longer. Worse, the monsters that live out here—ancient eldritch beings thought only to exist in stories and nightmares—have now been alerted to Earth’s existence.

Reporter Tom Lambert decides to reinvestigate the bizarre events of a decade earlier concerning the ‘cosmic noise’. Believing the whole truth was never revealed, he tracks down the one man who knows it: retired astrophysics professor Dr Hayward Petrie. Told in flashbacks, the story unfolds from Petrie’s recordings of the time when he experienced things that made him doubt his own sanity. Invited to visit his old colleague Campbell McLaren, who is in charge of a radio telescope on a remote Hebridean island, Petrie asks students Clifford Brown and Elizabeth Ryder to join him.

When Quinn Bennett’s exploration ship is attacked, the security chief finds herself abducted by alien slavers. Unable to save her crew, she is taken across the galaxy and sold to a desert scavenger on the lawless planet of Carthago. Driven by her guilt and failure, she’ll do anything to escape and save the other abductees from her ship. Chained and forced into servitude, she’s waiting for her chance to strike, when across a dusty trading post, she comes face-to-face with a big, cyborg gladiator.

Five classic novelisations of TV stories involving space travel and adventure.

Danika Silva can’t stand Lt. Greer Burns. Her roommate’s older brother may be sexy as hell, but he’s also a cold, unfeeling robot. She just wants to graduate and forget about her scowling superior. But when a dangerous mistake lands Danika on probation - under Greer’s watch - she’s forced to interact with the big, hulking jerk. Call him daily to check in? Done. Ride shotgun in his cruiser every night? Done. Try not to climb into his giant, muscular lap and kiss him? Umm....

Aliens are real and they’re eager to Slake. What’s Slaking, you ask? It seems Xilan males go into a voracious heat period every three years, and there aren’t enough females to fulfill the needs of these beastly aliens. Enter me, and some other Earth females who are eager to have children. We travel to a space station, where we’re introduced to brawny alien males in dire need of Slaking. All systems are go until giant spider aliens overrun the station, determined to plant egg sacks within our bodies. No thanks. Me and a cocky alien space pirate, Brune, escape.

RAF tail gunner Harry Wakefield should have died in 1944. Trapped in a flaming bomber over Nazi Germany, he jumped without a parachute—and walked away without a scratch. Twenty years later, an earthquake shakes his remote mountain farm. Harry is convinced a plane has gone down—but what he finds up on the peak isn't a plane. It's something far more advanced. And not of this world. As shadowy government agents move in to bury the truth, Harry is faced with a stark choice.

Esania thought she and her people were escaping to the sanctuary planet of Torandor. Instead, she's ended up on a wild, uncharted nightmare called Khira, where the violet-skinned savages who guard them are just as poisonous as the deadly flora and fauna. And the pale-winged demon who's just dropped from above might be the most dangerous of them all.

Five survivors find themselves on the planet Anyar, including Joseph Colsco, Mark Caldwell, and Heather Chen. Some others have different destinations. Cast away on a planet with bizarre physical features unlike anything on Earth, Dan and Liza Oglethorpe will never again set foot on Earth. They will never again talk with family and friends. They will never again see an ocean. They are thrust into a fantastical fate that eventually leads them, six years later, after dangers are overcome and a measure of peace is achieved, to a morning in a dry valley on an alien planet.

An ancient legend. A snarky sword. And a reluctant hero who’s about to regret everything. Nate Arturi never wanted to save the world. He wanted to graduate, land a decent job, and maybe figure out why his neighbor's corgi keeps climbing onto roofs. But when a deranged alien beacon wakes up on Earth, Nate’s mundane life goes up in smoke—literally. Ambushed by an alien monster, saddled with a sarcastic sword, and scammed by a scruffy wizard claiming to be the Merlin, Nate is thrown into an adventure that’s way above his pay grade.