As Orlandos third-largest theme park, Empire Realm, prepares to celebrate its twentieth anniversary, a public relations disaster strikes. In a span of three weeks, two tourists are found dead, victims of strangulation. Enter Kevin Lonnegan, cop-turned-private investigator. Going undercover as a park employee in the brutal Florida summer still has to be better than the seedy workers comp cases and messy divorces usually thrown his way.

After losing all that he cared about, Paul finds himself working in a mine on a planet named Hell. He is determined to survive his contract and even finds love. But even after many years, his connection with Hell is far from over…

I was once a mighty Paladin of Darkness, mother of all the Elements. The one and only of my kind. Some called me the chosen one, a savior destined to rescue the world; others insisted I would be its downfall. I never got the chance to discover who was right. Society conspired with the traitors to trap me in the deadly Element of Time. But a year later, I managed to break free . . . wait, how has it been 700 years?

Head peace officer Anya Savelova believed her people, living on a hostile planet in the ice-bound city of Novayarkha, were the last of humanity. Until the day she learned they weren't. When a starship from an Earth thought long dead appears in orbit over her world, Anya imagines an explosion of possible futures, offering her people the freedom to transcend the limiting environment of the planet they'd thought was their last refuge. In the starship's crew, Anya finds creativity, diversity, innovation–all things the colony has had to inhibit to survive.

Max Reddick, a novelist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter, has spent his career struggling against the riptide of race in America. Now terminally ill, he has nothing left to lose. An expat for many years, Max returns to Europe one last time to settle an old debt with his estranged Dutch wife, Margrit, and to attend the Paris funeral of his friend, rival, and mentor Harry Ames, a character loosely modelled on Richard Wright.