When the strange fossil she's discovered had ended up giving her a trip to Mars, Helen Sutter thought she'd gone about as far as any paleontologist would ever go in her lifetime. But when you've also married A.J. Baker, overconfident super-sensor expert for the only private agency in space--the Ares Corporation--and your best friend is a former secret agent who's just signed on as the chief of security for the newly created and already emabttled Interplanetary...

With the corrupt and brutal Empire on the verge of collapse, exiled philosopher Adrian Gellert struggles to mold the barbarian tribes of the south into a powerful nation that can replace the Empire.

Stranded humans must adapt alien technology to survive on a dangerous planet. Lost in the dark, half a year into their journey to the colony world of Tantalus, Sakura Kimei, her family, and her best friend, the alien "Bemmie" nicknamed Whips, are torn from the safety of their colony ship. In a crippled lifeboat, they had one chance to find a habitable world. But even then, they would find that their apparent salvation was a world of a thousand secrets....