Cirrus@Austlit

'A twist on the age-old question: Are we alone in the universe?

'Kai Astada is a member of the Journer caste, a once-respected class whose members are responsible for piloting passengers and freight across Pedora. Now, however, the Journer wards have been quarantined in a bid to stifle a raging plague that their totalitarian government alleges is being spread by the reckless behaviour of the Journers.

'Two years after graduating from the Lycea, the pilot training academy in Ularon City, Kai is lured by an old friend to the Duck Down Club, an infamous haunt of the lower rank of Journers. Here he is tricked into joining the Resistance, a rag-tag cohort of misfits who charge Kai with the seemingly impossible task of exonerating their caste by disproving the damaging allegations made by the Pedoran government.

'What Kai uncovers in the course of his mission will ultimately turn his world on its head.' (Publication summary)

'A long time ago, Rab learned the secret of the planet he calls home. Now, after years of enslavement under the Feathers, Rab considers an escape with Cloud, hoping to find refuge with the few surviving Top-Siders who still live free in the west. But there have been dire warnings of a new breed of predator in the skies and the Kun, leader of the Feathers, has deployed his human captives to fortify the settlement's defences.

'When the child of Rab's adopted son disappears and the Kun's settlement comes under siege, an unlikely friend surfaces and events are set in motion that will shatter perceptions and radically shift the course of the future.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Ten years ago Rab learned the secret of the planet he calls home – and lost the young girl he’d vowed to protect; traded for a sweater, a set of gloves and a second-hand pair of boots. Since then, he’s wandered the barren surface alone searching for her, returning to the tunnels only when hunger, exhaustion or the inconstant seasons offer him no choice. When a freak accident occurs during the harvest, the death of an old friend finds Rab agreeing to abandon his search and guide Fin, now a tunnel-dweller, and Cloud, a former captive of the Top-siders, back to his old village to deliver a macabre and precious cargo. Although reconciled to honouring his word, Rab is convinced that their reckless journey south will tell him nothing he doesn’t already know and that the secret he has dutifully guarded all these years is in no danger of being exposed. He is wrong.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A protracted volcanic winter has devastated Earth and left only isolated pockets of survivors. With food becoming scarcer and the air growing toxic, Rab sees just one chance for survival: a perilous journey north in search of a fabled city that was rumoured to be one of the many staging areas where ships were launched, ferrying vast numbers of the people of Earth to a salvation planet. But Rab didn’t count on being forced to take along the last three children from his dying village.

'When one of the children breaks his leg, they are rescued by the hostile and sceptical Sunny, and taken by her to an underground refuge where she, her grandfather, and other refugees survive in comparative luxury. But it is a luxury teetering on the edge of collapse, and when Sunny’s grandfather begs to join Rab’s party, Sunny, to Rab’s dismay, insists on coming with them. Leaving two of his party behind Rab heads north again. With him is Gift, the young girl from Rab’s village, Sunny’s grandfather and Kix, the old man’s ancient horse, the last of its kind. Leading the way is Sunny, antagonistic and prickly. Years ago, Sunny had been the lone survivor of a similar quest.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In the byzantine world of The City, Hael is a mere thrall, a low caste servant struggling to keep her mother safe and fed as war creeps ever closer to the great walls of the only home she knows. But Hael has stumbled upon a secret, one which has led her mother into disgrace and her king into prison, and which threatens the very stability of more than one plane of existence. Hael's attempt to help her mother only attracts the attention of the arrogant Lord Micah, who wants to use her secret and her knowledge of the covert paths of The City to his own ends. Soon Hael finds herself reluctantly following her new lord through a portal to a place she's only heard whispered stories of: Earth. Every move they make disrupts the delicate balance between the planes and changes the world of humans - a world where her kind are known as angels. Hael and Micah must find a long-lost angel and bring him home before they are trapped in the human world forever.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Serving his final month of a sentence for genocide, a man is eager to tell his own version of the story.