Young Jim diGriz has but one ambition in life – to become a master criminal, perhaps the greatest that his backwater homeworld, Bit O’Heaven, has ever seen. So that he can learn the ropes, he has to mix with the right people – or rather the wrong people. And for this kind of on-the-job training the best place to meet the worst villains is in prison. But even for a customer as slippery as Jim, getting behind bars isn’t easy.
So Jim does a bank job, very badly, with the avowed intention of getting himself nicked . . .
As the planetoid Thanatos Minor explodes into atoms, a specially-fitted cruiser escapes the mass destruction and hurtles into space only a step ahead of hostile pursuit. On board Trumpet are a handful of bedraggled fugitives from an outlaw world, old enemies suddenly and violently thrown together in a desperate bid for survival.
Among this unlikely crew of allies are Morn Hyland, once a UMC cop, now a prisoner to the electrodes implanted in her brain; her son, Davies, “force-grown” to adulthood by the alien Amnion and struggling to understand his true identity; the amoral space buccaneer Nick Succorso, whose most daring act of piracy could be his last; and Angus Thermopyle, unstoppable cyborg struggling to wrest control of his own mind from his UMC programmers.
Locked in a lethal batter against one another for control of Trumpet, they also find themselves the target of Punisher, a police ship whose human captain, Min Donner, is torn between her duty and her sympathy for the outlaw crew she’s been ordered to capture. Yet as Min races to reach Trumpet in time, Warden Dios, the director of the UMC Police, receives a darker directive from the mysterious, semi-immortal Dragon, ruler of the UMC: Kill everyone aboard Trumpet except for the one person whose blood carries the mutagenic key to ultimate Amnion triumph—the ability to appear perfectly human.
In a final titanic showdown in space, amid uncharted comets, planets, and asteroid swarms, these forces will converge in a contest of skill and survival on which their future—and the future of the galaxy—depends.
Moth was a beautiful planet, the only one with wings -- two great golden clouds suspended in space around it.
Here was a wide-open world for any venture a man might scheme. The planet attracted unwary travelers, hardened space-sailors, and merchant buccaneers -- a teeming, constantly shifting horde that provided a comfortable income for certain quick-witted fellows like Flinx and his pet flying snake Pip. With his odd talents, the pickings were easy enough so that Flinx did not have to be dishonest ... most of the time.
In fact, it hardly seemed dishonest at all to steal a starmap from a dead body that didn't really need it anymore. But Flinx wasn't quite smart enough. He should have wondered why the body was dead in the first place...
From bestselling author Alan Dean Foster, an exciting early Pip and Flinx novel that shows the origins of a certain boy with special powers--and the mini-dragon that becomes his devoted sidekick. . . .
Flinx was just a freckle-faced, redheaded kid with green eyes and a strangely compelling stare when Mather Mastiff first saw him an the auctioneer's block. One hundred credits and he was hers.
For years the old woman was his only family. She loved him, fed him, taught him everything she knew--even let him keep the deadly flying dragon he called Pip. But when Mother Mastiff mysteriously disappears, Flinx tails her kidnappers on a dangerous journey. Across the forests and swamps of the winged world called Moth, their only weapons are Pip's venom . . . and Flinx's unusual talent.
Stranded on the distant planet Tschai, young Adam Reith is the sole survivor of a space mission who discovers the world is inhabited--not only by warring alien cultures, but human slaves as well, taken early in Earth's history. Reith must find a way off planet to warn the Earth of Tschai's deadly existence.
Against a backdrop of baroque cities and haunted wastelands, sumptuous palaces and riotous inns, Reith will encounter deadly wastrels and murderous aliens, dastardly villains and conniving scoundrels.
She came from one of the more disreputable aristocratic families.
Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilization based around the planet Golter. On an island with a glass shore - relic of some even more ancient conflict - she discovers she is to be hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes she is the last obstacle before their faith's apotheosis. She has to run, knowing her only hope of finally escaping the Huhsz is to find the last of the ancient, apocalyptically powerful but seemingly cursed Lazy Guns. But that is just the first as well as the final step on a search that takes her on an odyssey through the exotic Golterian system and results in both a trail of destruction and a journey into her own past, as well as that of her family and the system itself; a journey that changes everything.
Between the seemingly impossible tasks of living up to his warrior-father's legend and surmounting his own physical limitations, Miles Vorkosigan faces some truly daunting challenges.
Shortly after his arrival on Beta Colony, Miles unexpectedly finds himself the owner of an obsolete freighter and in more debt than he ever thought possible. Propelled by his manic "forward momentum," the ever-inventive Miles creates a new identity for himself as the commander of his own mercenary fleet to obtain a lucrative cargo; a shipment of weapons destined for a dangerous warzone.
The second in a mesmeric trilogy that runs the gamut of human experience and emotion from Anne McCaffrey, storyteller extraordinare and New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author. Perfect for fans of David Eddings, Brandon Sanderson and Douglas Adams.
'Anne McCaffrey, one of the queens of science fiction, knows exactly how to give her public what it wants' —The Times
She was one of the Crystal Singers, the élite, mysterious ones, who cut the crystals from the planet Ballybran—precious glittering crystals without which the universe could not function.
Sent to the planet of Optheria to repair the famous crystal organ, she was—at first—accorded all the honour and pomp due to her rank. Then her life became threatened and she found herself isolated at the very heart of the planet, knowing that she alone had the power to confront and destroy the evil that had permeated the world of Optheria.
Would she be able to find the strength she needed?
Captain Pausert thought his luck had finally turned—but he did not yet realize it was a turn for the worse. On second thought, make that a turn for the disastrous*.
Unlucky in love, unsuccessful in business, he thought he had finally made good with his battered starship Venture, cruising around the fringes of the Empire and successfully selling off odd-ball cargoes which no one else had been able to sell. He was all set to return home, where his true love was faithfully waiting for him ... he hoped.
But then he made the fatal mistake of freeing three slave children from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to part with them). They were just trying to be helpful, but those three adorable little girls quickly made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancee, his home planet, the Empire, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango—and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space.
And all because those harmless-looking little girls were in fact three of the notorious and universally feared Witches of Karres.
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