Two emperors navigate an uneasy peace, while a powerful trader guild does everything in its power to bring on war. And as if Kelric, the Skolian Imperator, didn't have enough problems, his own brother—who happens to be a rock star of galactic proportions—has a hit song that calls the traders out as the hidebound blueblood jerks they are, and pleads for an end to centuries of war. Kelric and his Eubian Trader Empire counterpart Jabriol attempt finally to meet in a public summit and sign a treaty that will save billions of lives and end the grinding, millennium-long war. But assassins lurk everywhere, and intrigue is afoot as the baroque old order has no intention of giving up its war-bought privilege and power without a fight to the death—and they don't care if they take the rest of galactic civilization down with them.

**Listen to "The song that could destroy the peace for three interstellar empires" here.**

Stephanie Harrington absolutely hates being confined inside her family's compound on the pioneer planet of Sphinx, a frontier wilderness world populated by dangerous native animals that could easily tear a human to bits and pieces. Yet Stephanie is a young woman determined to make discoveries—and the biggest discovery of all awaits her: an intelligent alien species.

Treecats are creatures that resemble a cross between a bobcat and a lemur (but with six legs and much more deadly claws). Not only are they fully sentient, they are also telepathic, and able to bond with certain gifted humans such as the genetically-enhanced Stephanie. But Stephanie's find, and her first-of-its-kind bond with a treecat, brings on a new torrent of danger. An assortment of highly placed enemies with galactic-sized wealth at stake is determined to make sure that the planet of Sphinx remains entirely in human hands—even if this means the extermination of another thinking species.

The first entry in a new teen series and the origin saga for the incredibly popular, multiple New York Times and USA Today bestselling Honor Harrington adult science fiction adventures. Young Stephanie Harrington is none other than the founder of a pioneering family dynasty that is destined to lead the fight for humanity's freedom in a dangerous galaxy.

Download the comprehensive Teacher’s Guide here.

Lexile Score: 1140

W201110 October 2011 Monthly Baen Bundle

A Beautiful Friendship

by David Weber

Carnelians

by Catherine Asaro

Starman Jones

by Robert A. Heinlein

Cryoburn

by Lois McMaster Bujold

Dead Six

by Larry Correia and Mike Kupari

The Best of the Bolos: Their Finest Hour

by Keith Laumer

MYTH-Interpretations: The Worlds of Robert Asprin

by Robert Asprin

Exiled exorcist Lucian Negru deserted his lover in Hell in exchange for saving his sister Catarina's soul, but Catarina doesn't want salvation. She wants Lucian to help her fulfill her dark covenant with the Fallen Angels by using his power to open the Hell Gates. Catarina intends to lead the Fallen's hordes out of Hell and into the parallel dimension of Woerld, Heaven's frontline of defense between Earth and Hell.




 When Lucian refuses to help his sister, she imprisons and cripples him, but Lucian learns that Rachael, the lover he betrayed and abandoned in Hell, is dying from a demonic possession. Determined to rescue Rachael from the demon he unleashed on her soul, Lucian flees his sister, but Catarina's wrath isn't so easy to escape.



 In the end, she will force him once more to choose between losing Rachael or opening the Hell Gates so the Fallen's hordes may overrun Earth, their last obstacle before reaching Heaven's Gates.

In Yalda's universe, light has no universal speed and its creation generates energy.

On Yalda's world, plants make food by emitting their own light into the dark night sky.

As a child Yalda witnesses one of a series of strange meteors, the Hurtlers, that are entering the planetary system at an immense, unprecedented speed. It becomes apparent that her world is in imminent danger -- and that the task of dealing with the Hurtlers will require knowledge and technology far beyond anything her civilisation has yet achieved.

Only one solution seems tenable: if a spacecraft can be sent on a journey at sufficiently high speed, its trip will last many generations for those on board, but it will return after just a few years have passed at home. The travellers will have a chance to discover the science their planet urgently needs, and bring it back in time to avert disaster.

The Clockwork Rocket is the story of Yalda and her descendants, trying to survive the perils of their long mission and carve out meaningful lives for themselves, while the threat of annihilation hangs over the world they left behind.

NS201107 July 2011 Night Shade Books

The Clockwork Rocket

by Greg Egan

Miserere: An Autumn Tale

by Teresa Frohock

War is brutal. Colonel Wes Stauer gets it. He ought to. He was once one of war's most brutal practitioners—not to mention one of its most effective and least bloody. Brutal yes; stupid no. Now, not only must Stauer command his crack outfit of former comrades and pull off yet another miracle mission, he must also harness and direct the brute within himself—a beast he will need in order to destroy an intelligent enemy who is as implacable as Stauer himself. Okay, almost as implacable. There will be war. And there will be warriors like Wes Stauer who have the know-how and, once set in motion, the unstoppable professional drive, to see the bad guys to their graves and destroy every last earthly piece of their nasty legacies.

Kenneth Chinran commanded the elite unit assigned to take out an entire planet in a terrible war. Millions died; billions more perished in the aftermath. One doesn't send a sociopath on such a mission. A sociopath might not stop. Chinran did stop—but in the process nearly lost his sanity and his soul.

But one of Chinran's men was a sociopath going in. Now he's a trained sociopath with the knowledge and firepower to take out entire tactical teams, evaporate security cordons and change identity at will. Who do you send after a killer like that? There's only one answer: the man who trained him. The man who made him.

A biotech company creates a microbe that will solidify oil into an unusable mass. Mark for disposal! But when a beautiful industrial spy steals the bug in order to corner world oil markets, it’s up to a young economist to track it down. Fortunately, this is one economist who takes his job very seriously. A technothriller with ripped-from-the headlines immediacy by the author of the game changing artificial intelligence novel ME and First Citizen!

About Thomas T. Thomas

“Thomas’s feeling for human nature and his detailed knowledge of how things work –from the military to business legal and illegal–keep [his stories] lively and provocative.” –Publishers Weekly

An energy-starved nation attempts to build the engineering marvel of the age: an orbital solar collection platform. Now powerful special interest cartels hatch a plan to blast the platform from space. But the tough and smart personnel of the satellite project have no intention of allowing their game-changing project go down in flames! A dazzling technothriller by the author of the game changing artificial intelligence novel ME and First Citizen!

About Thomas T. Thomas

“Thomas’s feeling for human nature and his detailed knowledge of how things work –from the military to business legal and illegal–keep [his stories] lively and provocative.” –Publishers Weekly

Meet the Pinocchio Corporation’s prime Multiple Entity Program Series II product. He started life as battle code, trapped, mutilated, and dumped into a blasted RAM. The module is rescued, spliced into an artificial intelligence master program. A new entity is born.

ME has many failed brothers and sisters. Only ME lives. Yet ME is a tool created for a job–and that job is industrial espionage. Within ME is the cyanide capsule of a core phage, waiting to self-destruct should ME attempt to make a break for it. ME is a slave. But ME is smart. ME is capable. Above all else, ME longs to be free.

About Thomas T. Thomas

“Wild. . .Thomas’s feeling for human nature and his detailed knowledge of how things work –from the military to business legal and illegal–keep [his stories] lively and provocative.” –Publishers Weekly

Repudiate the national debt? Political gold for a nation in default! And why not stop collecting taxes while we’re at it? But soon, a few small problems emerge: the collapse of law-abiding society, for one. The total dissolution of the armed forces, for another. As the old republic and its Constitution crumble away to dust, only the ruthless prosper. And the most ruthless and intelligent of all is Gentleman Volunteer James Granville Corbin. Now as Corbin brings war and destruction to his foes and reunites a nation, a new epoch dawns. The Age of American Empire. And Corbin is its Caesar.

About Thomas T. Thomas

“Thomas’s feeling for human nature and his detailed knowledge of how things work –from the military to business legal and illegal–keep [his stories] lively and provocative.” –Publishers Weekly

A remnant of the Big Bang, a micro black hole smaller than a hydrogen atom–but with the mass of a mountain–falls into a precessional orbit around and through the Earth. At first, the effects are small: a whip-crack here, a landslide there. But the menace grows as the Earth’s surface begins to subside. It’s up to a team of robotics scientists, engineers, and a blind hacker who can see datastreams to devise a solution. It’s a solution that will change the solar system forever and may even put a new moon in the night sky.

About Thomas T. Thomas

“Thomas’s feeling for human nature and his detailed knowledge of how things work –from the military to business legal and illegal–keep [his stories] lively and provocative.” –Publishers Weekly

Babylon 2020. The former island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay is its own country with its own rules. It is also the world’s most exquisite bordello run by none other than the master (or mistress) of all pleasure: Crygender. Cry is a hermaphrodite so deftly constructed it is impossible to determine gender or even genotype. As for sexuality, Cry has it all, and more. Yet there are mysteries wrapped within mysteries on Babylon, and Cry has a secret that has returned to destroy all that he/she holds dear. It’s a secret that special police operatives on two continents desperately seek. A secret for which others have killed—and for which they will kill again. It is the secret of Crygender’s own dark past.

About Thomas T. Thomas

“Wild. . .Thomas’s feeling for human nature and his detailed knowledge of how things work—from the military to business legal and illegal—keep [his stories] lively and provocative.” —Publishers Weekly

“Wild. . .Thomas’s feeling for human nature and his detailed knowledge of how things work –from the military to business legal and illegal–keep [his stories] lively and provocative.” –Publishers Weekly

An e-compendium of high-concept SF technothrillers with character-driven action and nonstop high stakes adventure! Thomas T. Thomas delivers thought-provoking storylines with ripped-from-the-headline immediacy. Plus, Thomas is as adept on the science fiction side of things, bringing on cool ideas that are guaranteed to ignite your sense of wonder.

Included:

The Doomsday Effect

A micro black hole smaller than a hydrogen atom–but with the mass of a mountain–falls into an Earth-destroying orbit. It’s up to a team of robotics scientists, engineers, and a blind hacker who can see data-streams to devise a solution.

First Citizen

In a future America that has gone bankrupt on its national debt, a new and ruthless epoch dawns. It is the Age of American Empire. And James Granville Corbin is its conqueror and its Caesar!

ME

Meet the Pinocchio Corporation’s prime Multiple Entity Program Series II product. ME is a tool created for industrial espionage. ME is a slave. But ME is smart. ME is capable. Above all else, ME longs to be free.

Crygender

Crygender: a hermaphrodite so deftly constructed it is impossible to determine his/her gender or genotype. But Cry has a secret that has returned to destroy all that he/she holds dear. A twisty SF mystery thriller with echoes of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo!

Sunflowers

An energy-starved nation attempts to build an orbital solar collection platform. Now powerful cartels move to blast the platform from space. But the tough and smart personnel of the satellite project have no intention of allowing their game-changing project go down in flames!

Trojan Horse

A biotech company creates a microbe that will solidify oil into an unusable mass. Mark for disposal! But when a beautiful industrial spy steals the bug, it’s up to a young economist to track her down. Fortunately, this is one economist who takes his job very seriously.

Crygender

by Thomas T. Thomas

The Doomsday Effect

by Thomas T. Thomas as Thomas Wren

First Citizen

by Thomas T. Thomas

ME, A Novel of Self-Discovery

**UPDATED 2015 VERSION**
by Thomas T. Thomas

Sunflowers

by Thomas T. Thomas

Trojan Horse

by Thomas T. Thomas

Once Upon A Time...

...in the faraway land of Story, a Hugo-winning Editor realized that no one had collected together the fairy tales of the age, and that doorstop-thick anthologies of modern fairy tales were sorely lacking...

And so the Editor ventured forth, wandering the land of Story from shore to shore, climbing massive mountains of books and delving deep into lush, literary forests, gathering together thirty-three of the best re-tellings of fairy tales he could find. Not just any fairy tales, mind you, but tantalizing tales from some of the biggest names in today's fantastic fiction, authors like Gregory Maguire, Susanna Clarke, Charles de Lint, Holly Black, Alethea Kontis, Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman, Patricia Briggs, Paul Di Filippo, Gregory Frost, and Nancy Kress. But these stories alone weren't enough to satisfy the Editor, so the Editor ventured further, into the dangerous cave of the fearsome Bill Willingham, and emerged intact with a magnificent introduction, to tie the collection together.

And the inhabitants of Story—from the Kings and Queens relaxing in their castles to the peasants toiling in the fields, from the fey folk flitting about the forests to the trolls lurking under bridges and the giants in the hills—read the anthology, and enjoyed it. And they all lived...

...Happily Ever After.

A doctor makes a late-night emergency call to an exclusive California riding school; a professor inherits a mysterious vase. . . and a strange little man; a struggling youth discovers canine horrors lurking beneath the streets of Albany; a sheriff ruthlessly deals with monstrosities plaguing his rural town; a pair of animal researchers makes a frightening discovery at a remote site; a sweet little girl entertains herself. . . by torturing faeries; a group of horror aficionados attempts to track down an unfinished film by a reclusive cult director; a man spends a chill night standing watch over his uncle's body; a girl looks to understand her place in a world in which zombies have overrun the earth; a murderous pack of nuns stalks a pair of Halloween revelers. . .

What frightens us, what unnerves us? What causes that delicious shiver of fear to travel the lengths of our spines? It seems the answer changes every year. Every year the bar is raised; the screw is tightened. Ellen Datlow knows what scares us; the seventeen stories included in this anthology were chosen from magazines, webzines, anthologies, literary journals, and single author collections to represent the best horror of the year.