Eric Flint and David Carrico serve up the latest entry in the best‑selling alternate history saga of them all, the Ring of Fire!

It is the year 1636. The United States of Europe, the new nation formed by an alliance between the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus and the West Virginians hurled back in time by a cosmic accident, is on the verge of civil war.  His brain injured in the war with Poland, the USE's emperor Gustavus Adolphus is no longer in command. Enter Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna, a leader of aristocratic reaction against democracy.  His goal:  to assemble the forces of the hidebound ruling class in Berlin and drown the revolution in a bloodbath.

In Magdeburg, the capital of the USE, Mike Stearns' wife Rebecca Abrabanel is organizing popular resistance to Oxenstierna's plot. As part of the resistance, the American musician Marla Linder and her company of down‑time musical partners are staging an opera that will celebrate the struggle against oppression. Princess Kristina, the heir to the USE's throne, is now residing in Magdeburg and is giving them her support and encouragement.

But another plot is underway‑‑this one right in the heart of the capital itself, and with murder as its method. The only people standing in the way are a crippled boy and the boxing champion who befriended him, and an unlikely pair of policemen. Can the American detective Byron Chieske and his down‑timer partner Gotthilf Hoch thwart the killers before they succeed in their goal?

Download the Reader’s Group Discussion Guide here.

Listen to the authors discuss the book here on the Baen Free Radio Hour.

The fires are out, but the trouble’s just beginning for the treecats.

On pioneer planet Sphinx, ruined lands and the approach of winter force the now Landless Clan to seek new territory.  They have one big problem—there’s nowhere to go.  Worse, their efforts to find a new home awaken the enmity of the closest treecat clan—a stronger group who’s not giving up a single branch without a fight.

Stephanie Harrington, the treecats’ greatest advocate, is off to Manticore for extensive training—and up to her ears in challenges there.  That leaves only Stephanie’s best friends, Jessica and Anders, to save the treecats from themselves.  And now a group of xenoanthropologists is once again after the great secret of the treecats—that they are intelligent, empathic telepaths—and their agenda will lead to nothing less that treecat exploitation.

Finally, Jessica and Anders face problems of their own, including  their growing attraction to one another.  It is an attraction that seems a betrayal of Stephanie Harrington, the best friend either of them have ever had. 

Download the comprehensive Teacher’s Guide here.

Listen to the authors discuss the book on the Baen Free Radio Hour: Part 1 | Part 2.

Lexile Score: 1000

Eleven new tales set in the legendary worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Most people don’t know it, but the best‑selling American writer of the 1920s wasn’t Hemingway or Fitzgerald, but Edgar Rice Burroughs. Everyone knows that he created Tarzan, but he wasn’t limited to that one classic creation.  There was John Carter, Warlord of Mars.  There was Pellucidar, the wondrous world that exists at the center of the Earth, and  Carson of Venus, the Wrong‑Way Corrigan of space, who set off for Mars and wound up on Venus for four novels and part of a fifth.

Many top science fiction and fantasy writers of today grew up reading Burroughs, and this anthology is their way of “paying back” and thanking him for stirring their imaginations. Join their celebration with these all new tales set in the astounding worlds that Edgar Rice Burroughs brought to life: giving their own spin on the unforgettable characters conceived by one of the great masters of science fiction, adventure, and fantasy.

Listen to the Edgar Rich Burroughs Roundtable Discussion featuring Mike Resnick, and Robert T. Garcia here on the Baen Free Radio Hour.

THE UNIVERSE MAY NOT BE A NICE NEIGHBORHOOD . . .

“The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown,” the grand master of horror, H.P. Lovecraft, once wrote. And the greatest unknown is the vast universe, shrouded in eternal cosmic night. What things might be on other planets—or in the dark gulfs between the stars?

Giving very unsettling answers to that question are such writers as Arthur C. Clarke, George R. R. Martin, Theodore Sturgeon, Tony Daniel, Robert Sheckley, James. H. Schmitz, Clark Ashton Smith, Neal Asher, Sarah A. Hoyt, and more, all equally masters of science fiction and of terror.

One might hope that in the void beyond the earth will be found friendly aliens, benevolent and possibly wiser than humanity, but don’t be surprised if other worlds have unpleasant surprises in store for future visitors. And in vacuum, no one will be able to hear your screams—as if it would do any good if they could . . .

Listen to the authors discuss the book here on the Baen Free Radio Hour.

From the author of the New York Times bestselling Monster Hunter series and an Air Force weapons expert, an edge-of-your-seat military-political thriller. A master thief and a hardhitting mercenary team up to defeat a Central Asian warlord with world-wide destruction on his mind.

On the far side of the world, deep in former Soviet Central Asia, lies a stronghold called the Crossroads. It is run with an iron fist by a brutal warlord calling himself Sala Jihan. He is far more than a petty dictator, for Jihan holds the fate of nations in his grasp. To save a world slipping into chaos, Jihan must either fall or be controlled.

One secret military organization called Exodus plans to see that this happens. For this mission, they need the best of the best. Unfortunately the man they need is rotting in an almost unassailable foreign prison.

Enter Lorenzo, thief extraordinaire. Lorenzo is now retired, happily married and living in paradise. His Achilles heel: an FBI-agent brother who has gone missing—disappeared into the stronghold of warlord Jihan. Exodus promises to give Lorenzo his chance to rescue his brother if and only if Lorenzo will perform one service for them: break Michael Valentine out of a captivity from which no one has ever emerged alive.

And if Lorenzo can accomplish that—well then, the Crossroads awaits the sword of Exodus.

A new breakout fantasy epic filled with strong world building, engaging characters, and wondrous adventure.

Kyri: a highborn young woman whose life is shattered by the murder of her kin. But even as Kyri flees her beloved land Evanwyl, she knows that she is her family's only hope for justice, and Evanwyl's only chance to escape a growing shadow of corruption and destruction.

Now Kyri must venture across Zarathan, a world on the brink of a long foretold Chaos War. It is a struggle that may usher in a long age of darkness— that is, if Kyri and her companions do not succeed in holding back the tide of evil that is rising. Those companions include valiant swordsman Tobimar Silverun, Prince of Skysand, exiled on the turn of a card and a prophecy, who is now seeking his people's lost homeland; and Poplock Duckweed, an unlikely hero whose diminutive size is as much a weapon as it is a weakness.

Kyri's quest is as simple as it is profound: find a legendary ancient weaponsmith, take up the sword and armor of a new order of warrior defenders, and bring the power of justice and vengeance to the evil and corruption that has darkened her native land.