Search Worlds Without End

The word in the year 2239 is that the human race is doomed. With the Earth groaning beneath the weight of 200 billion people and with the limit of derivable scientific knowledge frighteningly close at hand, scientists believe the human race will crash, burn and vanish by the end of the twenty-third century.

The last hope of humanity travels with Captain Virginia Vonzell Qing-an, her androgynous lover, and eleven other crew members aboard Earth's first starship, Mother Night, on a colonizing mission to Alpha Centauri--the closest, most likely place to find worlds suitable for human habitation. It is the adventure of a lifetime, but plagued from the onset by programming errors, structural damage and irresponsible death.

But a different kind of plague could doom the assignment and, ultimately, the civilization that conceived it. A terrorist group, Indigo, has infiltrated the ship--single-minded true believers convinced that the only cure for their world's population problems is rampant, viral-induced, sexually transmitted sterilization.

And the stakes are about to reach astronomical proportions. Because an artifact exists on a rocky moon called Atalanta, an impossibly ancient remnant of an alien race that offers possible solutions to humanity's gravest dilemma--and a hope and knowledge beyond present mortal comprehension--but only if Mother Night's besieged mission can somehow, miraculously, be salvaged.

This short story originally appeared in Amazing Stories, March 1989. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection (1990), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The 1990 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha.

From Daryl Gregory, whose Pandemonium was one of the most exciting debut novels in memory, comes an astonishing work of soaring imaginative power that breaks new ground in contemporary fantasy.

Switchcreek was a normal town in eastern Tennessee until a mysterious disease killed a third of its residents and mutated most of the rest into monstrous oddities. Then, as quickly and inexplicably as it had struck, the disease--dubbed Transcription Divergence Syndrome (TDS)--vanished, leaving behind a population divided into three new branches of humanity: giant gray-skinned argos, hairless seal-like betas, and grotesquely obese charlies.

Paxton Abel Martin was fourteen when TDS struck, killing his mother, transforming his preacher father into a charlie, and changing one of his best friends, Jo Lynn, into a beta. But Pax was one of the few who didn't change. He remained as normal as ever. At least on the outside.

Having fled shortly after the pandemic, Pax now returns to Switchcreek fifteen years later, following the suicide of Jo Lynn. What he finds is a town seething with secrets, among which murder may well be numbered. But there are even darker--and far weirder--mysteries hiding below the surface that will threaten not only Pax's future but the future of the whole human race.

Surreal, ambitious, and exquisitely conceived, The Doll's Alphabet is a collection of stories in the tradition of Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood. Dolls, sewing machines, tinned foods, mirrors, malfunctioning bodies many images recur in stories that are in turn child-like and naive, grotesque and very dark. In "Unstitching", a feminist revolution takes place. In "Waxy", a factory worker fights to keep hold of her Man in a society where it is frowned upon to be Manless. In "Agata's Machine", two schoolgirls conjure a Pierrot and an angel in a dank attic room. In "Notes from a Spider", a half-man, half-spider finds love in a great European city. By constantly reinventing ways to engage with her obsessions and motifs, Camilla Grudova has come up with a method for storytelling that is highly imaginative, incredibly original, and absolutely discomfiting.

Table of Contents:

• Unstitching
• The Mouse Queen
• The Gothic Society
• Waxy
• The Doll's Alphabet
• The Mermaid
• Agata's Machine
• Rhinoceros
• The Sad Tale of the Sconce
• Edward, Do Not Pamper the Dead
• Hungarian Sprats
• The Moth Emporium
• Notes from a Spider

Among the universe's civilizations, some conceive of the journey between stars as the sailing of bright ships, and others as tunneling through the crevices of night. Some look upon their far-voyaging as a migratory imperative, and name their vessels after birds or butterflies....

This story can be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 17 (2012), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and Aliens: Recent Encounters (2013), edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo. It is included in the collection Conservation of Shadows (2013).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

In The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a work of heartbreak and horror, a novel about how far we will go, and the sorrows we will endure, in order to protect our families.

A terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children's speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. At night, suburban side streets become routes of shameful escape for fathers trying to get outside the radius of affliction.

With Claire nearing collapse, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther, who laughs at her parents' sickness, unaware that in just a few years she, too, will be susceptible to the language toxicity. But Sam and Claire find it isn't so easy to leave the daughter they still love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a world beyond recognition.

The Flame Alphabet invites the question: What is left of civilization when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love? Both morally engaged and wickedly entertaining, a gripping page-turner as strange as it is moving, this intellectual horror story ensures Ben Marcus's position in the first rank of American novelists.

Fantasy author Patricia A. McKillip, the 21st century's response to Hans Christian Andersen, has mastered the art of writing fairy tales -- as evidenced by previous works like The Tower at Stony Wood, Ombria in Shadow, and In the Forests of Serre. Alphabet of Thorn is yet another timeless fable suitable for children and adults alike.

In the kingdom of Raine, a vast realm at the edge of the world, an orphaned baby girl is found by a palace librarian and raised to become a translator. Years later, the girl -- named Nepenthe -- comes in contact with a mysterious book written in a language of thorns that no one, not even the wizards at Raine's famous Floating School for mages, can decipher. The book calls out to Nepenthe's very soul, and she is soon privately translating its contents. As she works tirelessly transcribing the book -- which turns out to be about the historical figures of Axis, the Emperor of Night, and Kane, his masked sorcerer -- the kingdom of Raine is teetering on the brink of chaos. The newly crowned queen, a mousy 14-year old girl named Tessera who wants nothing to do with matters of state, hides in the woods as regents plot revolution. The queen's destiny, however, is intertwined with Nepenthe's ability to unravel the mystery of the thorns.

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in If, July 1965. It is included in the Van Vogt collection More Than Superhuman (1971).

With a mighty twist, the Space Ship Carden lunges into overdrive and shoots out into space. Ahead lies Alpha C IV, eerie world of three suns. But the Carden arrives on Alpha C right in the thick of a revolution against Earth. Treason! Then young cadet Larry Stark finds himself caught up in the revolution... on both sides!

What would happen if the ancient prophecy of the End of Days came true? It is certainly the last thing Eric Katz, a secular archaeologist from Los Angeles, expects during what should be a routine dig in Jerusalem. But perhaps higher forces have something else in mind when a sign presaging the rising of the Third Temple is located in America, a dirty bomb is detonated in downtown Tel Aviv, and events conspire to place a team of archaeologists in the tunnels deep under the Temple Mount. It is there that Eric is witness to a discovery of such monumental proportions that nothing will ever be the same again.

Vanguard from Alpha

The spy team from Earth knew they were looking for trouble when they secretly landed in Luna Area 101 - dangerous Rosk territory. But the fearless trio got more than they bargained for at the hands of these hostile guests of Earth. Tyne and Murray escaped with their lives. The third man was dead, and Tyne suspected that Murray had murdered him in cold blood.

Ready to confront him with his charge, Tyne discovered that Murray had disappeared somewhere in the banned area. But when he followed him, he discovered something vastly more dangerous than Murray's guilt or innocence--the Rosks threatened imminent invasion of Earth. And only Tyne now held the secret that could deflect their hordes of death.

The Changeling Worlds

On the gold-symbol world of Beresford's Planet, Richard Kirby lived in total luxury. As a member of "The Set" his life was a never-ending round of planetary party-hopping. The only restriction imposed on him - that he never put down on any world marked with a red or black symbol - was something that he had always accepted without question.

That is until his brother Alec was murdered in cold blood! Alec had been an undercover agent to these forbidden planets, and in order to avenge him, Kirby had to find out for himself what was really happening there.

But with the start of his investigation, Kirby found out quickly that the authorities meant business when they said "Hands off!" The secret they were protecting was of vital importance, and it now became a matter of life and death, not only to Kirby, but to all the inhabitants of the Changeling Worlds.

Alpha Centauri or Die!

Robot alert - stop that starship!

Legend of Lost Earth

Only traitors talk of Terra.

Alpha Yes, Terra No!

The Alphans had been watching Earth for centuries, seeing its technological advances and its moral stagnation. They had erected a barrier against Earth's attempts to enter their system. Finally, they decided that Earth was a canker on the face of the universe, and decreed it's total destruction... The Earth was on trial, would no one defend her.

The Ballad of Beta-2

Centuries ago, the Star Folk had left Earth on twelve spaceships on a generations-long mission to colonize the distant stars. Ten of the ships had reached thier destination. Two had failed--and nobody, in the hundreds of years since the disaster, had the slightest inkling of what had happened.

Joneny, a student of galactic anthropology, was assigned the problem. It had seemed routine to him. Just some faster-than-light travel to the two wrecked ships, a bit of poking around and then writing up his findings.

But he was ill-prepared for what he found in space at the site of the two ancient worlds. One, the Sigma-9, was not subject to the laws of time-stasis (the only exception he knew of), and it was covered entirely with a mysterious green fire that shimmered so much that it seemed alive. And the other ship, the Beta-2, was nowhere to be seen.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1970) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Poor Little Warrior - (1958) - short story by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Moon Moth - (1961) - novelette by Jack Vance
• Testament of Andros - (1953) - novelette by James Blish
• A Triptych - (1969) - short story by Barry N. Malzberg
• For a Breath I Tarry - (1966) - novelette by Roger Zelazny
• Game for Motel Room - (1963) - short story by Fritz Leiber
• Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne - (1967) - short story by R. A. Lafferty
• The Man Who Came Early - (1956) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• The Time of His Life - (1968) - short story by Larry Eisenberg
• The Doctor - (1967) - short story by Theodore L. Thomas
• Time Trap - (1948) - novelette by Charles L. Harness
• The Pi Man - (1959) - short story by Alfred Bester
• The Last Man Left in the Bar - (1957) - short story by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Terminal Beach - (1964) - novelette by J. G. Ballard

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Call Me Joe - (1957) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Goodbye Amanda Jean - (1970) - short story by Wilma Shore
• A Man of the Renaissance - (1964) - novelette by Wyman Guin
• Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night - (1961) - novelette by Algis Budrys
• Faith of Our Fathers - (1967) - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• That Share of Glory - (1952) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Men Return - (1957) - short story by Jack Vance
• The Voices of Time - (1960) - novelette by J. G. Ballard
• The Burning of the Brain - (1958) - short story by Cordwainer Smith
• The Shaker Revival - (1970) - novelette by Gerald Jonas

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Gift of Gab - (1955) - novella by Jack Vance
• Beyond Lies the Wub - (1952) - short story by Philip K. Dick
• Nine Hundred Grandmothers - (1966) - short story by R. A. Lafferty
• Total Environment - (1968) - novelette by Brian W. Aldiss
• Day Million - (1966) - short story by Frederik Pohl
• Aristotle and the Gun - (1958) - novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
• Under Old Earth - - (1966) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• The Shadow of Space - (1967) - novelette by Philip José Farmer
• Come to Venus Melancholy - (1965) - short story by Thomas M. Disch
• Rescue Party - (1946) - novelette by Arthur C. Clarke

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1973) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Casablanca - (1967) - novelette by Thomas M. Disch
• Dio - (1957) - novelette by Damon Knight
• Eastward Ho! - (1958) - short story by William Tenn
• Judas Danced - (1958) - short story by Brian W. Aldiss
• Angel's Egg - (1951) - novelette by Edgar Pangborn
• In His Image - (1971) - short story by Terry Carr
• All Pieces of a River Shore - (1970) - short story by R. A. Lafferty
• We All Die Naked - (1969) - novelette by James Blish
• Carcinoma Angels - (1967) - short story by Norman Spinrad
• Mother - (1953) - novelette by Philip José Farmer
• 5,271,009 - (1954) - novelette by Alfred Bester

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1974) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Star Pit - (1967) - novella by Samuel R. Delany
• Baby, You Were Great - (1967) - short story by Kate Wilhelm
• Live, from Berchtesgaden - (1972) - short story by George Alec Effinger
• As Never Was - (1944) - short story by P. Schuyler Miller
• We Can Remember It for You Wholesale - (1966) - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• Yesterday House - (1952) - novelette by Fritz Leiber
• A Man Must Die - (1966) - short story by John Clute
• The Skills of Xanadu - (1956) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• A Special Kind of Morning - (1971) - novelette by Gardner Dozois

Table of Contents:

• Introduction- essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Lost Continent - (1970) - novelette by Norman Spinrad
• Light of Other Days - (1966) - short story by Bob Shaw
• The Secret of the Old Custard - (1966) - short story by John Sladek
• Down Among the Dead Men - (1954) - novelette by William Tenn
• With These Hands - (1951) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• Short in the Chest - (1954) - short story by Margaret St. Clair
• Brown Robert - (1962) - short story by Terry Carr
• The Food Farm - (1967) - short story by Kit Reed
• An Honorable Death - (1961) - novelette by Gordon R. Dickson
• Man of Parts - (1954) - short story by H. L. Gold
• Painwise - (1972) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Dune Roller - (1951) - novelette by Julian May
• Shape - (1953) - novelette by Robert Sheckley
• Transfer Point - (1950) - novelette by Anthony Boucher
• A Galaxy Called Rome - (1975) - novelette by Barry N. Malzberg
• Rejoice, Rejoice, We Have No Choice - (1974) - short story by Terry Carr
• Orphans of the Void - (1952) - novelette by Michael Shaara
• The Luckiest Man in Denv - (1952) - short story by C. M. Kornbluth
• For Love - (1962) - novelette by Algis Budrys
• World War Two - (1973) - short story by George Alec Effinger
• The Night of Hoggy Darn - (1958) - novelette by Richard McKenna

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• A Dusk of Idols - (1961) - novelette by James Blish
• The Human Operators - (1971) - novelette by Harlan Ellison and A. E. van Vogt
• Think Only This of Me - (1973) - novelette by Michael Kurland
• The Short Ones - (1955) - novelette by Raymond E. Banks
• Warm - (1953) - short story by Robert Sheckley
• When the Change-Winds Blow - (1964) - short story by Fritz Leiber
• One Face - (1965) - novelette by Larry Niven
• The Man Who Lost the Sea - (1959) - short story by Theodore Sturgeon
• The Happiest Creature - (1953) - short story by Jack Williamson
• Klysterman's Silent Violin - (1972) - short story by Michael Rogers
• The New Reality - (1950) - novelette by Charles L. Harness

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Dumb Waiter - (1952) - novelette by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• The Monsters - (1953) - short story by Robert Sheckley
• The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World - (1971) - short story by Philip José Farmer
• The Funeral - (1972) - novelette by Kate Wilhelm
• The Book - (1953) - novelette by Michael Shaara
• Dusty Zebra - (1954) - novelette by Clifford D. Simak
• Goodlife - (1963) - novelette by Fred Saberhagen
• Nobody's Home - (1972) - short story by Joanna Russ

Anna, four years a werewolf , raped, beaten, half-starved and handed from one male to another, places a call from Chicago to the wilds of Montana. She reaches the Marrok, North America's werewolf ruler, telling him she's seen a boy, one reported missing and possibly injured. He was in a cage her pack's Alpha keeps for confining new werewolves.

The Marrok says that his enforcer is flying from Montana to O'Hare. Anna meets the plane, and, Charles, enforcer, as well as the Marrok's oldest son, insists on staying with her. He has seen she is not the Submissive she thinks she is. Charles is a supreme Alpha, and she is his antithesis, a rare Omega; her very presence lowers tension, calms and soothes. Despite centuries as a Solitary, Charles would wed young Anna. His brother wolf, he says, has already taken her as his mate.

There are, as investigation and confrontation reveal, reasons both for the capture of the boy and for what has been done to Anna. It's a surprisingly tender story.

Charles Cornick is his pack's enforcer and lives a harsh life, doing jobs other wolves can't - or won't. And his most recent task was rescuing Anna Latham from a life of brutality. This leaves him shot and wounded, but he's happy to pay the price. Charles is strongly drawn to Anna, and her growing 'Omega' powers will see his people through dangerous times.

Anna desperately needs her new mountainous home to be safer than the life she's left behind. But when a rogue werewolf starts murdering hikers, Charles and Anna are sent into the winter forests to investigate. Charles is still weak and will need Anna's strength as they discover a web of witchcraft that could drag down the whole pack. Including its leader Bran, Charles's father, head of a vast network of wolves. And if Bran weakens, dark madness could run like a fever through half a continent.

Anna Latham didn't know how complicated life could get - until she became a werewolf. And now she's not just part of any pack, but under the direct supervision of Bran, leader of the North American werewolves. And her mate is his son Charles, the pack enforcer.

With all the advances that have been made in forensics, the werewolves will not be able to hide their existence from humans much longer - and Bran wants their coming out party to be on his terms. But his European counterparts don't see things the same way. Anna and Charles are chosen to represent Bran at a key meeting. But when a French werewolf, one of Bran's most vocal opponents, is found murdered, Charles's reputation shoots him to the top of the suspect list. And among the wolves, there is one penalty for breaking the law: death. The killer must be found, or Charles will take the fall.

When the FBI request a pack consultant on a serial killer case they're following in Boston, Anna and Charles are sent in. They quickly realise that not only the last two victims were werewolves - all of them were.

Someone is targeting their kind. And if Charles and Anna can't get to the bottom of this mystery, they may be next...

For once, mated werewolves Charles and Anna are not traveling because of Charles's role as his father's enforcer. This time, their trip to Arizona is purely personal-or at least it starts out that way...

Charles and Anna soon discover that a dangerous Fae being is on the loose, replacing human children with simulacrums. The Fae's cold war with humanity is about to heat up--and Charles and Anna are in the cross fire.

Mated werewolves Charles Cornick and Anna Latham face a threat like no other - one that lurks too close to home...

They are the wild and the broken. The werewolves too damaged to live safely among their own kind. For their own good, they have been exiled to the outskirts of Aspen Creek, Montana. Close enough to the Marrok's pack to have its support; far enough away to not cause any harm.

With their Alpha out of the country, Charles and Anna are on call when an SOS comes in from the fae mate of one such wildling. Heading into the mountainous wilderness, they interrupt the abduction of the wolf - but can't stop blood from being shed. Now Charles and Anna must use their skills - his as enforcer, hers as peacemaker - to track down the attackers, reopening a painful chapter in the past that springs from the darkest magic of the witchborn...

In the wilds of the Northern California mountains, all the inhabitants of a small town have gone missing. It's as if the people picked up and left their possessions behind. With a mystery on their hands and no jurisdiction on private property, the FBI dumps the whole problem in the lap of the land owner, Aspen Creek, Inc.--aka the business organization of the Marrok's pack.

Somehow, the pack of the Wolf Who Rules is connected to a group of vanished people. Werewolves Charles Cornick and Anna Latham are tasked with investigating, and soon find that a deserted town is the least of the challenges they face.

Death sings in the forest, and when it calls, Charles and Anna must answer. Something has awakened in the heart of the California mountains, something old and dangerous--and it has met werewolves before.

In the postapocalyptic world of Deathlands, the past and its way of life are as obsolete as myth. Now the days are filled with death, violence and little promise. Still, the human spirit endures, and a group of intrepid warrior survivalists dare to believe that out there, something better is on offer. If they live long enough to find it.

Across the flat plains of the Dakotas, an iron horse shrieks and rumbles across refurbished tracks. Inside the boxcars, Ryan Cawdor and his companions face trouble unlike any other. Jak is missing, Krysty is dying and the train is loaded with sec men, whitecoats and a horrifying experiment--a baron with psionic abilities using stolen children to fuel his mad dream for mind control of every living soul in Deathlands.

The shadows have never been darker and the end has never been closer. Turn the key and open the last door; it's time to say goodbye. Omega and Alpha, the final two storylines of the New York Times bestselling series, are collected together to offer a thunderous and compelling conclusion to Locke & Key. An event not to be missed!

When CIA agent Chuck Rittersdorf and his psychiatrist wife, Mary, file for divorce, they have no idea that in a few weeks they'll be shooting it out on Alpha III M2, the distant moon ruled by various psychotics liberated from a mental ward. Nor do they suspect that Chuck's new employer, the famous TV comedian Bunny Hentman, will also be there aiming his own laser gun.

How things came to such a darkly hilarious pass is the subject of Clans of the Alphane Moon, an astutely shrewd and acerbic tale that blurs all conventional distinctions between sanity and madness.

Dirty Harry meets Twilight. #3 in the break-out series and a follow-up to Monster Hunter International and Monster Hunter Vendetta.

Earl Harbinger may be the leader of Monster Hunter International, but he's also got a secret. Nearly a century ago, Earl was cursed to be a werewolf. When Earl receives word that one of his oldest foes, a legendarily vicious werewolf that worked for the KGB, has mysteriously appeared in the remote woods of Michigan, he decides to take care of some unfinished business. But another force is working to bring about the creation of a whole new species of werewolf. When darkness falls, the final hunt begins, and the only thing standing in their way is a handful of locals, a lot of firepower, and Earl Harbinger's stubborn refusal to roll over and play dead.

Introducing Parric: an ordinary civil servant being ground up in a mill of paperwork, who is given a chance to work on an experimental government project -- to live secretly in a town entirely populated by androids -- whose very existence, if it were known, would disrupt society -- something the repressive society does not want.

But Parric is happy in his secret village, protected by a force-field from outsiders, in contact with only a few others in similar positions in other secret villages. Protected, until war breaks out and civilization outside calls in the horrifying Plaguewind. Then the experimental androids, affected by the plague in strange ways, become killers! Parric must escape his village, then trek across the desolated countryside, in danger from the surviving mobs of plague victims, to the control center of the secret android project, in an attempt to join other men in starting a new civilization.

Alpha wolf Selenka Durev's devotion to her pack is equaled only by her anger at anyone who would harm those under her care. That currently includes the empaths who've flowed into her city for a symposium that is a security nightmare, a powder keg just waiting for a match.

Ethan Night is an Arrow who isn't an Arrow. Numb and disengaged from the world, he's loyal only to himself. Assigned as part of the security force at a world-first symposium, he carries a dark agenda tied to the power-hungry and murderous Consortium. Then violence erupts and Ethan finds himself crashing into the heart and soul of an alpha wolf.

Mating at first sight is a myth, a fairytale. Yet Selenka's wolf is resolute: Ethan Night, broken Arrow and a man capable of obsessive devotion, is the mate it has chosen. Even if the mating bond is full of static and not quite as it should be. Because Selenka's new mate has a terrible secret, his mind surging with a power that is a creature of madness and death...

Power, revenge, and justice--prepare yourself for the final battle! In the final chapter of "The Shifters Series", Faythe and her Pride must fight a tyrannical werecat intent on taking over the territorial council, and the south-central Pride in particular. It's down to Faythe to take on the role of Alpha before she feels completely ready for the job. Forced to rise to the occasion, Faythe must balance experience, advice, and the urge for vengeance. She must also finally choose between Marc and Jace... No decisions will be is easy, and not everyone will survive this epic fight to the death.

Moonbase Alpha struggles to survive as past, present and future collide -- and the fate of the universe hangs in the balance!

The first novel in a new trilogy starring veteran New Republic pilots.

On the verge of victory in a brutal war, five New Republic pilots transform from hunted to hunters in this epic STAR WARS adventure. Set after Return of the Jedi, Alphabet Squadron follows a unique team, each flying a different class of starfighter as they struggle to end their war once and for all.

The Emperor is dead. His final weapon has been destroyed. The Imperial Army is in disarray. In the aftermath, Yrica Quell is just one of thousands of defectors from her former cause living in a deserters' shantytown--until she is selected to join Alphabet Squadron.

Cobbled together from an eclectic assortment of pilots and starfighters, the five members of Alphabet are tasked by New Republic general Hera Syndulla herself. Like Yrica, each is a talented pilot struggling to find their place in a changing galaxy. Their mission: to track down and destroy the mysterious Shadow Wing, a lethal force of TIE fighters exacting bloody, reckless vengeance in the twilight of their reign.

The newly formed unit embodies the heart and soul of the Rebellion: ragtag, resourceful, scrappy, and emboldened by their most audacious victory in decades. But going from underdog rebels to celebrated heroes isn't as easy as it seems, and their inner demons threaten them as much as their enemies among the stars. The wayward warriors of Alphabet Squad will have to learn to fly together if they want to protect the new era of peace they've fought so hard to achieve.

Alphabet Squadron's hunt for the deadliest TIE fighters in the galaxy continues in this Star Wars adventure!

News of the New Republic's victory still reverberates through the galaxy. In its wake, the capital ships of the newly legitimized galactic government journey to the farthest stars, seeking out and crushing the remnants of imperial tyranny. But some old ghosts are harder to banish than others. And none are more dangerous than Shadow Wing.

Yrica Quell's ragtag Alphabet Squadron still leads the search for Shadow Wing, but they're no closer to their goal--and the pressure to find their quarry before it's too late has begun to shake them apart. Determined to finish the fight once and for all, Quell works with New Republic Intelligence's contentious Caern Adan and the legendary General Hera Syndulla to prepare the riskiest gambit of her starfighting career--a trap for Shadow Wing that could finish the chase once and for all.

But in the darkness, their enemy has evolved. Soran Keize, last of the Imperial aces, has stepped into the power vacuum at the head of Shadow Wing, reinvigorating the faltering unit in their hour of need. Once adrift in the aftershocks of the war, Keize has found meaning again, leading the lost soldiers of his unit through to safety. The only thing standing in his way? The most mismatched squadron in the New Republic Navy, led by his former mentee: the traitor Yrica Quell.

The aces of the New Republic have one final chance to defeat the darkness of Shadow Wing in this thrilling conclusion to the Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron trilogy!

In the wake of Yrica Quell's shocking decision--and one of the fiercest battles of their lives--the remnants of Alphabet Squadron seek answers and closure across a galaxy whose old war scars are threatening to reopen.

Soran Keize has returned to the tip of Shadow Wing's spear. Operation Cinder, the terrifying protocol of planetary extermination that began in the twilight of the Imperial era, burns throughout the galaxy. Shadow Wing is no longer wounded prey fleeing the hunters of the New Republic. With its leader, its strength has returned, and its Star Destroyers and TIE squadrons lurk in the darkness between stars, carrying out the fallen Emperor's final edict of destruction--as well as another, stranger mission, one Keize has championed not for the dying Empire, but for its loyal soldiers.

Alphabet Squadron's ships are as ramshackle and damaged as their spirits, but they've always had one another. Now, as they face the might of Keize's reborn juggernaut, they aren't sure they even have that. How do you catch a shadow? How do you kill it? And when you're finally victorious, who pays the price?

Charon is dead.

Long live Charon!

The creator of a proscribed network of rogue AIs and androids has been destroyed, his multiple copies deleted. Except for one. Alpha: a female android who seems to possess a conscience--so much so that her execution is delayed. Big mistake. Now on the run, and with her former captor as hostage, Alpha moves to activate a long dormant master-plan -- a plan that may well include the end of humanity and the violent transformation of the world as we know it!

Legends abound of the glorious - or infamous - deeds of the Emperor's sons. Yet almost nothing is known of Alpharius, the most mysterious of them all, for the Lord of the Alpha Legion is unparalleled in the art of obfuscation. Such are his gifts of secrecy and deceit that even his rediscovery has remained an enigma - until now. But when the tale comes from the serpent's mouth, where does the deception end and the truth begin?