A decade ago, the alien Creepers came to Earth, dropping asteroids to drown our coastal cities, detonating nuclear weapons overhead to destroy our communications, power and computer systems, and to set up their network of killer stealth satellites to kill anything on our planet that used modern technology. In a matter of days, Earth was driven back to a nineteenth century existence.

Then the war really began, as the Creepers descended and set up domed bases that were impervious to everything save a nuclear bomb.

For ten years then, the battered and surviving members of humanity have fought against the Creepers and their mechanized exoskeletons, until something unexpected has happened: a chance for victory.

Sixteen‑year‑old Randy Knox has the usual problems of a teenage boy: getting along with his father, dating his sweetheart, and trying not to fail his junior year of high school. But Randy also has other demands on his time, as a sergeant in the N.H. National Guard, attached to the U.S. Army, and fighting the invading Creepers.

Randy has dim memories of a time of electric lights, laptop computers, television screens and above all, plenty of food at every meal. On his twelfth birthday, he enlisted in the Army to carry on the fight, since most of the world’s adults have been killed off and it’s up to the younger generations to serve. But now, as a veteran of the Creeper war and with his K‑9 partner Thor, Randy has learned to focus on the essentials: the best way to kill a Creeper, scrounge through abandoned buildings for old canned goods, and to avoid being turned into “barbecue bait.” He has earned the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and the Combat Infantryman Badge. Endless war is all he knows.

But now change has drastically come to his life. The current President of the United States—a former Assistant Secretary of Defense—has announced that scattered remnants of the Air Force have destroyed the Creeper’s Orbital Base, ensuring victory over the alien invaders. Those surviving Creepers on the Earth’s surface will be hunted down and exterminated, as a weary and wary population celebrates victory.

Yet Randy is assigned a new mission: to escort a secret representative from the Governor of New Hampshire to the nation’s capital, to meet with the President. And at the last moment, a fellow teen soldier—the beautiful Serena Coulson and her mute younger brother Buddy—are assigned to join Randy.

This secretive mission proves to be the most dangerous assignment of his life, as Randy tries to protect his charges from rampaging Creepers and criminal humans. And as he fights to reach the capitol with a vital mission, Randy learns that all of his skills in combating aliens may not be enough to survive the dark conspiracies of his fellow humans.  

When the diplomatic embassy from the United States of Europe was freed from the Tower of London during the Baltic War, most of its members returned to the continent. But some remained behind in Britain: Oliver Cromwell and a few companions, including the sharpshooter Julie Sims, her Scot husband Alex Mackay, and Cromwell’s Irish-American self-appointed watchdog Darryl McCarthy.

Soon, the hunt is on for the most notorious rebel in English history, with King Charles himself demanding Cromwell’s head. The new chief minister Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, brings over from Ireland a notorious crew of cutthroats led by the man called Finnegan to track down and capture the escapees from the Tower.

The hunt passes through England and into Scotland, where the conflict between Cromwell and his companions and their would-be captors becomes embroiled in Scotland’s politics, which are every bit as savage and ruthless as Finnegan and his men. To make things still more conflicted and confused, the time Darryl McCarthy spends fighting alongside Cromwell forces him against his will to admire and respect—and even like—the man, despite Cromwell’s demonic reputation among all self-respecting Irish nationalist families like Darryl’s own.

It’s a Gordian knot anywhere you look—until Julie Sims brings out her rifle. Now it’s the turn of Scot partisans and English lords and Irish toughs to learn the lesson already learned on the continent:

A safe distance isn’t what you think it is. Not after the American angel of death spreads her wings.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Due to a fluke of quantum mechanics, no one can remember Nat Morgan for more than a minute after he's gone. It's a useful ability for his career as a CIA agent, even if he has to keep reminding his boss that he exists.

Nat's attempt to steal a quantum chip prototype is thwarted when a former FSB agent, Yelena Semyonova, attempts to steal the same technology for the Russion mob.

Along with a brilliant Iranian physicist who wants to defect, Nat and Yelena must work together to stop a ruthless billionaire from finishing a quantum supercomputer that will literally control the fate of the world.

When the diplomatic embassy from the United States of Europe was freed from the Tower of London during the Baltic War, most of its members returned to the continent. But some remained behind in Britain: Oliver Cromwell and a few companions, including the sharpshooter Julie Sims, her Scot husband Alex Mackay, and Cromwell’s Irish-American self-appointed watchdog Darryl McCarthy.

Soon, the hunt is on for the most notorious rebel in English history, with King Charles himself demanding Cromwell’s head. The new chief minister Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, brings over from Ireland a notorious crew of cutthroats led by the man called Finnegan to track down and capture the escapees from the Tower.

The hunt passes through England and into Scotland, where the conflict between Cromwell and his companions and their would-be captors becomes embroiled in Scotland’s politics, which are every bit as savage and ruthless as Finnegan and his men. To make things still more conflicted and confused, the time Darryl McCarthy spends fighting alongside Cromwell forces him against his will to admire and respect—and even like—the man, despite Cromwell’s demonic reputation among all self-respecting Irish nationalist families like Darryl’s own.

It’s a Gordian knot anywhere you look—until Julie Sims brings out her rifle. Now it’s the turn of Scot partisans and English lords and Irish toughs to learn the lesson already learned on the continent:

A safe distance isn’t what you think it is. Not after the American angel of death spreads her wings.

When the first contact between humans and aliens from another planet happens, will they say, “Take me to your leader,” or is “Surrender, puny primitive bipeds” more likely? Or maybe, “Hello there, I’m selling the latest edition of the Galactic Encyclopedia, and no planet should be without a set,” might be the first words from the alien visitor.

Ever since H.G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds, science fiction writers have speculated on what the first contact might be like. From attacking invaders to wise and benevolent visitors who are ready to solve all our problems for us, from horror stories to hilarious satire, with all the stops in between, including plenty of tales in which the aliens are the ones who wish they’d stayed at home and never come across Earth and its inhabitants.

With stories by such science fiction masters as Poul Anderson, David Drake, William Tenn, Sarah A. Hoyt, Tony Daniel, and more, this is a collection filled with chills, thrills, and laughter, all reporting on what happens when First Contact turns into Worst Contact.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Due to a fluke of quantum mechanics, no one can remember Nat Morgan for more than a minute after he's gone. It's a useful ability for his career as a CIA agent, even if he has to keep reminding his boss that he exists.

Nat's attempt to steal a quantum chip prototype is thwarted when a former FSB agent, Yelena Semyonova, attempts to steal the same technology for the Russion mob.

Along with a brilliant Iranian physicist who wants to defect, Nat and Yelena must work together to stop a ruthless billionaire from finishing a quantum supercomputer that will literally control the fate of the world.

A decade ago, the alien Creepers came to Earth, dropping asteroids to drown our coastal cities, detonating nuclear weapons overhead to destroy our communications, power and computer systems, and to set up their network of killer stealth satellites to kill anything on our planet that used modern technology. In a matter of days, Earth was driven back to a nineteenth century existence.

Then the war really began, as the Creepers descended and set up domed bases that were impervious to everything save a nuclear bomb.

For ten years then, the battered and surviving members of humanity have fought against the Creepers and their mechanized exoskeletons, until something unexpected has happened: a chance for victory.

Sixteen‑year‑old Randy Knox has the usual problems of a teenage boy: getting along with his father, dating his sweetheart, and trying not to fail his junior year of high school. But Randy also has other demands on his time, as a sergeant in the N.H. National Guard, attached to the U.S. Army, and fighting the invading Creepers.

Randy has dim memories of a time of electric lights, laptop computers, television screens and above all, plenty of food at every meal. On his twelfth birthday, he enlisted in the Army to carry on the fight, since most of the world’s adults have been killed off and it’s up to the younger generations to serve. But now, as a veteran of the Creeper war and with his K‑9 partner Thor, Randy has learned to focus on the essentials: the best way to kill a Creeper, scrounge through abandoned buildings for old canned goods, and to avoid being turned into “barbecue bait.” He has earned the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and the Combat Infantryman Badge. Endless war is all he knows.

But now change has drastically come to his life. The current President of the United States—a former Assistant Secretary of Defense—has announced that scattered remnants of the Air Force have destroyed the Creeper’s Orbital Base, ensuring victory over the alien invaders. Those surviving Creepers on the Earth’s surface will be hunted down and exterminated, as a weary and wary population celebrates victory.

Yet Randy is assigned a new mission: to escort a secret representative from the Governor of New Hampshire to the nation’s capital, to meet with the President. And at the last moment, a fellow teen soldier—the beautiful Serena Coulson and her mute younger brother Buddy—are assigned to join Randy.

This secretive mission proves to be the most dangerous assignment of his life, as Randy tries to protect his charges from rampaging Creepers and criminal humans. And as he fights to reach the capitol with a vital mission, Randy learns that all of his skills in combating aliens may not be enough to survive the dark conspiracies of his fellow humans.  

When an experiment on an orbiting space station went wrong—bad wrong—ripples in time washed over the Earth bringing global disaster. The survivors, beginning to rebuild, learned that they were now able to travel into the past, utilizing the remnant time strings. But first, the time strings had to be mapped.

That was the job of the brave pioneers known as time scouts. Their occupation was only slightly less dangerous than front line combat, and when it was discovered that a time traveler who wasn’t extremely careful could zap himself out of existence, elaborate rules to prevent that evolved, and it was the job of the time scouts to enforce them. 

Time Scout:
Kenneth “Kit” Carson was one of the best, if not the best, time scouts in the business. But he has collected more than a few scars, both physical and mental, while poking around back in time, and trying not to draw the dangerous attention of the natives, not always successfully. Nowadays, he runs a small hotel at Time Terminal 86, and just wants to be a hotelier renting rooms to tourists on their way to see the Roman Circus Maximus or Victorian London firshand . . . until a cartain red‑headed girl flounces out of his life through an illicit gate that may collapse and leave her lost eternally in the corridors of time . . . 

Wagers of Sin:
Time Travel stations have become big business, with wealthy tourists taking vacations back in time. For Skeeter Jackson, one of Time Terminal 86’s least honest residents, scamming those tourists is a way of life. A man’s got to follow his calling, even a con man, and Skeeter might be a dyed‑in‑the‑wool thieving scoundrel, but he freely admits it and relishes the crisp, cool feel of cash in hand—until one of his scams went terribly wrong, and he was in more trouble than even his quick wits and crooked tricks could get him out of again . . . 

Sasha Naradnyo had come a long way from the slums of Crack City on the planet Peezgtaan—from Human gangster to head of security for Tweezaa e‑Traak, the Varoki heiress to the largest fortune in the history of the Stellar Commonwealth. Then the largest nation on the Varoki home world collapsed into riots and civil war, a murderously anti‑human Varoki fanatic made his bid for power, and the head of the Secret Police decided to take a personal interest in Sasha.

Now Sasha must navigate the violence and anarchy of a growing revolution, come to grips with ghosts from his past who have suddenly turned up alive, make common cause with resistance fighters who want him dead, expose a conspiracy which will shake the Commonwealth to its foundations . . . and do it all without losing his soul.

Book Three in the View from the Imperium series from humorous SF master Jody Lynn Nye. Lieutenant Lord Thomas Kinago and his trusty constant companion, the unflappable Parsons, are back. And this time they've got a planet to save.

The Zang, an elder race of the galaxy, may be a shrinking population, but they're also intelligent, curious, and powerful. What's more, they practice a most unusual art form: they bonsai star systems. Eager to witness this first hand, Lieutenant Lord Thomas Kinago, accompanied as always by his personal assistant Parsons, sets out on a several-week jaunt to see the Zang destroy a moon to enhance the beauty of a star system. 

But the trip is sidelined when Kinago's uncle offers to take him to the seldom seen human homeworld, Earth. Unable to resist, Kinago goes along, only to find on his return that the planet he's just visited may be in danger of being eradicated. Earth lies within the protective sphere of the Zang, but enemies of the Imperium are lobbying to have Sol system turned over to them.

It is up to Kinago and Parsons to save Earth. Kinago has the key, but will he be able to persuade the Zang to spare the human homeworld before it's too late?

DEBUT SOLO NOVEL FROM THE CO-AUTHOR OF DEAD SIX. Air Force weapons expert Mike Kupari, co-author of Dead Six and Swords of Exodus, offers up a science fiction adventure. When privateer Captain Catherine Blackwood is enlisted to rescue her brother from a treacherous warlord, she finds herself on her most dangerous mission yet.

It's been years since Catherine Blackwood left the stodgy, repressive colony world of Avalon. Now the captain of the privateer vessel Andromeda, she is the master of her own destiny. But Catherine soon finds herself back on Avalon after receiving a plea for help from a most unlikely source: her estranged father, esteemed Avalon Council member Augustus Blackwood.

It seems Catherine's brother, the heir to the Blackwood aristocracy, has gone off in search of treasure on the failed, chaotic world of Zanzibar. But Cecil Blackwood's plans have gone very, very wrong, and he has been taken hostage and held for ransom by a fearsome local warlord. Augustus, knowing his daughter is the only one who can be trusted to return his son safely, swallows his pride and hires Catherine to bring her brother home.

Catherine takes the job—but it won't be easy. Just getting to Zanzibar proves treacherous. And once she arrives, things only get worse. If she is to save her brother, Catherine Blackwood must face down danger at every turn and uncover a mystery four million years in the making.

TOP AUTHORS PAY TRIBUTE TO A MASTER. David Drake has left an indelible mark on the science fiction and fantasy genres. He is considered the Grand Master of Military Science Fiction. Now, top authors in the field pay tribute to the man and his work in this all-new collection of stories and essays.

David Drake has left an indelible mark on the science fiction and fantasy genres. Now, top authors in the science fiction and fantasy field pay tribute to the man and his work in this all-new collection of stories and essays.

Best-selling author David Drake has been creating topnotch military science fiction, space opera, and fantasy novels and stories for decades. In this all-original collection that appears as Drake is a Special Guest of the 2015 World Fantasy Convention, a stellar line-up of writers pays tribute to Drake with stories as broad in range as his own fiction. Each one comes with an illuminating afterword explaining the connection of the story to Drake and his work.

In Eric Flint’s “A Flat Affect” a king is no match for a pair of storytellers

Gene Wolfe takes us to a strange and wondrous future in “Incubator”

Larry Correia examines what it’s like to face Hammer’s Slammers from “The Losing Side”

S.M. Stirling offers an insider’s view of “Working with Dave, or, Inmates in Bellevue”

Mur Lafferty shows what happens when a fairy visitor receives an unexpected welcome in “The Crate Warrior, the Doppelganger, and the Idea Woman”

The book also features two new pieces from Drake himself: “The Great Wizard, Cabbage,” a comic historical fantasy, and “Save What You Can,” the first new Hammer’s Slammers story in nearly a decade!

With more stories from editor Mark L. Van Name, Cecelia Holland, T.C. McCarthy, Barry N. Malzberg, Sarah Hoyt, Tony Daniel, John Lambshead, Hank Davis, Eric S. Brown, and Sarah Van Name, as well as appreciations from Baen Publisher Toni Weisskopf and Tor founder and Publisher Tom Doherty, Onward, Drake! is a collection that fans of Drake’s fiction—and anyone who enjoys a good story—will not want to miss!

NEW STORIES OF THE FUTURE OF SPACE EXPLORATION. Original anthology of stories about near-future space exploration from top authors. Includes stories by Jack McDevitt, Michael F. Flynn, Sarah A. Hoyt, Ben Bova, Mike Resnick, and many more.

In Mission: Tomorrow, science fiction writers imagine the future of space exploration with NASA no longer dominant. Will private companies rule the stars or will new governments take up the call? From Brazilians to Russians to Chinese, the characters in these stories deal with everything from strange encounters, to troubled satellites and space ships, to competition for funding and getting there first. Nineteen stories of what-if spanning the gamut from Mercury to Pluto and beyond, assembled by critically praised editor Bryan Thomas Schmidt.

Table of Contents:
"Tombaugh Station" by Robin Wayne Bailey
"Excalibur" by Jack McDevitt
"The Race For Arcadia" by Alex Shvartsman
"A Walkabout Amongst The Stars" by Lezli Robyn
"Sunrise On Mercury" by Robert Silverberg
"In Panic Town, On The Backward Moon" by Michael F. Flynn
"The Ultimate Space Race" by Jaleta Clegg
"Orpheus' Engines" by Christopher McKitterick
"Around The NEO in 80 Days" by Jay Werkheiser
"Iron Pegasus" by Brenda Cooper
"Airtight" by Michael Capobianco
"Windshear" by Angus McIntyre
"On Edge" by Sarah A. Hoyt
"Tartaros" by Mike Resnick
"Malf" by David D. Levine
"Ten Days Up" by Curtis C. Chen
"The Rabbit Hole" by James Gunn
"Rare (Off Earth) Elements (A Sam Gunn Tale)" by Ben Bova
"Tribute" by Jack Skillingstead