Thriller

"The Moldy Dead" is one of the powerful and poignant "Creation Myth" stories for Sara King's overwhelmingly popular Legend of ZERO series. It is the history of Congress' First Contact with the sentient species known as the Geuji, and the unspeakable tragedy that befell their entire species in the early history of Congress.

Chronicles of the Lazarene is a companion piece to The Endless Vessel. Think of it as something like the ship’s log for the voyage you see in The Endless Vessel, telling stories of the ship's adventures that didn’t fit into the main novel’s narrative. Chronicles tells its own full story, and it’s a hell of a read in its own right. The story is told from the perspective of a man named Luis Pedrona, who signs onto the ship featured in The Endless Vessel (it’s called the Lazarene). Luis experiences its journeys firsthand, and keeps a diary recording everything that happens over two full centuries. Wait - two hundred years? How could one guy keep a diary for two hundred years?

First Contact didn't go as expected. Now they own us. Earth has been conquered by a massive galactic empire, and its war machine needs soldiers. In a cruel twist of fate, 14-year-old Joe Dobbs accidentally ends up on a ship carrying Earth's children to an alien training planet. To make it out alive, he must survive an apathetic bureaucracy that sees humans as little more than spare rations. Meat with guns. Or, if they're really unlucky, servants. The oldest of the children drafted from humanity's devastated planet, Joe unwittingly becomes the centerpiece in a millennia-long alien struggle for independence. Once his training begins, one of the elusive and prophetic Trith gives Joe a spine chilling prophecy that the universe has been anticipating for millions of years: Joe will be the one to finally shatter the vast alien government known as Congress. And, the Trith cannot lie.…but first, Joe has to make it through boot camp.

From Jeff Menapace, bestselling author of the Bad Games trilogy, comes Hair of the Bitch, a disturbing psychological thriller with tongue firmly planted in cheek… until it's ripped out. Calvin Court is a massage therapist with a few secrets. He battles depression. He medicates with too much booze. And he's got the hots for one of his clients. She claims the feeling is mutual… until she frames Calvin for murder and blackmails him. The price? Not much. Calvin just has to do her bidding in a black-market industry catering to the very rich and the oh so very disturbed. Maybe he's just better off at the bar. Jeff Menapace is the winner of the 2011 Red Adept Reviews Indie Award for horror. ©2014 Jeff Menapace (P)2015 Jeff Menapace

Two turns after the events of Forging Zero, Rat and Joe finally finish their PlanOps training and get orders to their first duty station--a hellhole Bagan planet called Blekk--but first, a little good old fashioned R&R! Joe and Rat get set loose on the Ueshi pleasure planet of Kaleu with fourteen days and five turns' worth of credits burning a hole in their pockets, and they plan to make full use of it! But this wouldn't be a Legend of Zero if Zero didn't do something legendary, now would it? One would certainly think that a 15 day vacation to an Ueshi pleasure planet would be nothing but peace and relaxation... However, when Baga are involved, a lot can go sideways--especially when one of Joe's groundmates is a numbers-crunching, gambling-obsessed savant fixated on beating the house! Kidnapping, assassination, a splash of gratuitous violence, nailbats... Can Zero save his teammates from the bowels of a casino and salvage his vacation before time runs out? Will Rat get her revenge, or will her competitive streak go too far? Come enjoy the latest installment in the Legend of ZERO!

Planetside Ueshi don’t live long enough to train to be pilots—Congress doesn’t find it cost effective with their short lifespans.  Arius, who knows Ueshi are faster and have better reflexes than the rest of Congressional species, is determined to change that. He joined the Congressional Space Force and collected stellar marks all through basic training—only to be flatly told to pick something else as his specialty. What is a young, cockpit-obsessed Ueshi prodigy to do?  This is the story of how the first Ueshi pilot got his wings, setting the gold standard for all Space Corps flyboys who came after! Parting Gift The Huouyt weren’t the only sentient species that evolved on the Huouyt homeworld. While the Huouyt evolved in the oceans, the single massive continent was home to the Vanun, a species that spent untold millennia in constant struggle with their shape-shifting natural enemies. This is the story of the final days of the war between the Vanun and the Huouyt and how it was brought to an end forever.

The Baga are under attack. When the savage, bloodthirsty miga continue to multiply on the planet Blekk, Ifan fears for the survival of his much smaller, meeker race, the Baga. When strange new visitors arrive in odd flying shelters and speaking a language Ifan does not understand, they save him from the miga, but he knows nothing of their intentions … Little does Ifan know, these visitors are on Blekk looking for a sentient race. If they do not find one, the planet will be terra-formed with all life forms to be wiped out – save for a small sample of each native species to be sent to the intergalactic Naturals Preserve. Of course, the Baga are sentient. Unlike the stupid miga. It’s up to Ifan to figure out a way to communicate with these visitors and prove his sentience and that of his people. If he can’t, his home, race, and entire planet will be annihilated. On the plus side, so would the miga. But that’s a large price to pay …

The most fearsome aliens in existence just allied with the universe's most deadly psychopaths, and all hell is breaking loose. It's been 53 turns after the legendary Commander Zero graduated as a Congie warrior. Joe, now a battle hardened veteran, has spent his life surviving wars he had no right to survive. Yet his real test is coming: New forces are conspiring to start a great war like the universe has never seen, one that would rip apart the very fabric of Congress. Joe is conscripted to fight the very war everyone has been fearing since the rise of the Dhasha—the war against the legendary Dhasha Vahlin. Unfortunately for Joe, at the same time, other ruthless powers are conspiring to kill him before he fulfills the prophecy of the Trith. To fight the Vahlin, a desperate Congress comes up with a tactic it abandoned millennia ago—the use of multi-species groundteams. Joe, now a Prime Commander, is given command of his own team of misfits and pitted against the Vahlin’s forces in a war whose casualties are millions-to-one. Can Joe keep his group of aliens from killing each other long enough to make them into a battle-ready team? Will he survive long enough to kill the Vahlin? Or is he destined to destroy Congress, as the Trith have prophesized about him?

An artist enjoying a meteoric rise and an engagement to a perfect-on-paper financier, Hope Stanfield believes she is finally on her way to achieving the life she’s always wanted. But when an uneaten cheese plate and whispers of her dark past threaten to expose the cracks in her impeccable facade, Hope’s docile demeaner gives way to something far more sinister.

Earth is in the middle of an apocalyptic time-out. PlanOps Prime veteran, universal hero, and living legend Joe Dobbs has become an icon of heroism to the Congressional citizenry—but his real adventure is only just beginning. Humanity, unwillingly drafted into the alien Congress during its invasion of Earth seventy-four turns before, has done the unthinkable; building devastating genetic weapons that can kill even the oldest Dhasha with ease, planning to take the fight for its freedom to the very Regency itself. Before it can, however, the alien government discovers Humanity’s plans and retaliates swiftly, killing the experiments, destroying the labs, and reducing Earth’s technologies back to its Stone Age days to serve a Sacred Turn of penance for its sins. …Or does it? As Joe discovers, one lab gets overlooked in the chaos of Judgment. Its leader, Twelve-A, is determined to keep his fellow experiments alive—even if it means coercing a jaded, iron-faced Congie into helping them…

It's late. Jack is driving home from a networking event when he loses control of his car. After smashing into a ditch, he begins to experience something strange.