Adventure Space Opera

While the crew of the starship Flying Dutchman have been trying to assure that hostile aliens do not have access to Earth, the UN Expeditionary Force has been stranded on the planet they nicknamed "Paradise". The Flying Dutchman is headed back out on another mission, and the UN wants the ship to find out the status of the humans on Paradise. But Colonel Joe Bishop warns that they might not like what they find, and they can't do anything about it without endangering Earth.

Think there's an unbridgeable gulf between human and alien thought? Not so! There's a common tongue, all right - and Nicholas Van Rijn speaks it fluently: trade. For behind the buffoonish blarney and bawdy bonhomie of the Falstaffian Van Rijn is a man who gets things done. A born wheeler-dealer who usually leaves both sides better off in the bargain. (While pocketing a hefty cut of the profits himself, of course!)

After years of waiting in the shadows, Darth Sidious is taking the first step in his master plan to bring the Republic to its knees. Key to his scheme are the Neimoidians of the Trade Federation. Then one of his Neimoidian contacts disappears, and Sidious does not need his Force-honed instincts to suspect betrayal. He orders his apprentice, Darth Maul, to hunt the traitor down.

Seb thought he had it all: a dream ship, a crew of beautiful women, and enough credits to get them by. All he had to do was work for the very corporation that caused his incarceration 10 years ago. But with war breaking out across the galaxy, Seb gets a unique opportunity to free himself from his employer's yoke. One last impossible job: find a way to turn the tide of war. Seb and his crew will travel all over the galaxy, crash eccentric parties of the elite, and explore ancient ruins. But the journey won’t be without peril, as bounty hunters are pursuing the reward still on Seb’s head.

Dropping out of subspace into the wrong galactic sector, Sethran Kada wakes up with a headache and an extraordinary alien aboard his ship. She implores him to help stop the abductions of her people, a newly evolved species emerging from subspace. Their dangerous potential has caught the attention of rebel factions as well as the ruling Commonwealth. When contact with her kind turns pilots into casualties, the Governors fear an imminent invasion engineered by their rebel enemies.

The Interbeing League had been formed to make contact with new intelligent races in the galaxy and offer them membership. But when the League encountered the Hokas, furry creatures strongly resembling the teddy bears of Earth, the league's agent, Alexander Jones, could have been excused for wishing he had a simpler assignment than making sense out of the Hokas - such as singlehandedly stopping an interstellar war.

The planet Korwar was a glittering jewel of a world, inhabited by the galaxy's wealthiest, visited by the upper classes of other worlds in search of diversion. The jewel had a flaw: the Dipple, its name coming from a contraction of "displaced person", where the misfits, the hopeless, the penniless eke out a wretched existence on the dole. Two young men hoped to escape from the Dipple.

One man retires from Republican Shipworks, stealing certain classified technology on his last day. The man subsequently known as the Time Thief ends up on the same prison van as certain gang leaders on their way to Max Lock Prison. But Star League assassins have other plans for all those onboard . . . Don't miss the latest installment of this fast-paced, action-packed space opera! Featuring space marines, high-tech weaponry, espionage and gripping thrill rides, Assignment Diego marks the third novel in this rapid-release series!

Building a new nation is not a simple task, and it's made even harder with every nation on the planet wanting the Solarian Union's advanced technology, no matter the cost. But when terrorists unleash a devastating, genetically engineered plague into the world, that advanced technology is the only thing standing between humanity and the annihilation of our species. Michael and those following him have done what they set out to do—they have colonized space. But they cannot cut all the ties to their ancestral home, and the sufferings of its peoples.

Chiku Akinya, great granddaughter of the legendary space explorer Eunice and heir to the family empire, is just one among millions on a long one way journey towards a planet they hope to call their new home. For Chiku, the journey is a personal one, undertaken to ensure that the Akinya family achieves its destiny among the stars. The passengers travel in huge self-contained artificial worlds - holoships - putting their faith in a physics they barely understand.

The desert planet Arrakis, called Dune, has been destroyed. Now, the Bene Gesserit, heirs to Dune's power, have colonized a green world—and are tuning it into a desert, mile by scorched mile. Chapterhouse Dune is the last book Frank Herbert wrote before his death: A stunning climax to the epic Dune legend that will live on forever.

They are sleek, swift, and deadly. They are the X-wing fighters. And as the struggle rages across the vastness of space, the fearless men and women who pilot them risk both their lives and their machines. Their mission: to defend the Rebel Alliance against a still-powerful and battle-hardened Imperial foe in a last-ditch effort to control the stars!

The lines. Mysterious yet familiar: the key to controlling every ship in the galaxy. Once they were thought of as tools, but since linesman Ean Lambert discovered strange new lines in an alien vessel, they have become so much more - symbols of a power too great to ignore.

The war has finally come home. Fresh off his battles in Pact space, Commander Zeris must now return to defend the Dominion from the relentless Dowd onslaught. With their new anti-psionic weapons, the faceless aliens threaten everything, even the precious Golden Worlds. But an Immortal is never out of the fight. Aided by his loyal crew—and his loyal women—Kal concocts a dangerous plan to end the war once and for all.

Noah, an orphan from Earth's last days who, as a child, was smuggled to safety across the stars, is now nearly a man and a leader to the young enclave of Earthborn who reside on Sora. When the tranquility of their settlement is shattered by a shocking assassination attempt, Noah turns to his combative younger brother, Erik, Lucas and Asha's only child by blood, for aid.

SSI Agent Blackmark is resigned to his fate on a backwater planet. Then he is abruptly sent by Lead Tetrarch Jade Thrall to Euripides in an effort to take back its quadrant for the League. Assassin-class ships sneak him in, but he lands in a prison. Before he can leave, he has to deal with Remington Rennison, who is trying to break in at the same time he is trying to leave ... Don't miss the latest installment of this action-packed space opera! See who wins, who loses and who dies with the fate of the galaxy in the balance!

The first book of best-selling sci-fi author Jack Campbell’s new series Beyond the Frontier returns to find Captain John “Black Jack" Geary, the hero of the Lost Fleet series, awoken from cryogenic sleep to take command of the fleet. Geary’s legendary exploits have earned him the adoration of the people—and the enmity of politicians convinced that a living hero can be a very inconvenient thing.

The Merry Band of Pirates offered the bad guys a ceasefire. We won’t mess with them, if they don’t mess with us. Easy, right? No. The aliens chose to do things the hard way. So, the Pirates are racing around the galaxy to clean up the threat to Earth. The infant UN Navy has their own mission with the Alien Legion: Get humanity some allies in the fight. And the Ethics & Compliance Office might have to do something...ethical. Unless they can find a way around it.

Inmate 5313 reached the end of his sentence after 10 grueling years. That is, until the wrong question led to a beating with an exclusive stay in the fridge. Before the badges manage to lock him into cryostorage for a nightmare-fueled nap, several explosions send the prison barge plummeting into a frozen planet in unclaimed space. This is the first day of Seb’s freedom, an ill-starred future that includes banding together with cutthroat mercenaries, bartering with sordid information brokers, and fighting against the galaxy's ruthless corporations.

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.