Cirrus@Austlit

'For three months, Cory and his team have hung with Asto's military in orbit, watching as drone armies attacked Earth.

'They could have helped more had Nations of Earth communicated with the fleet or if they could only find out where these drones come from, who controls them and from where. The enemy is smart, enmeshed with sections of Earth's population and Asto's military severely hamstrung by Nations of Earth playing chicken.

'Three months ago, the president contacted Cory asking for help. The connection was interrupted and never re-established.

'It's as if they don't want help.

'Cory's got gamra breathing down his neck with the requirement that Nations of Earth officially approves the presence of Asto's military in orbit.

'Something has to give.

'He and his team return to a battle-scarred Earth on a hare-brained mission to talk to Nations of Earth, to check on the president, to get him to sign for approval. Getting there is hard. The state of the Nations of Earth assembly is deeply troubling. But getting out, that's where it gets truly interesting.' (Publication summary)

'Tina and her crew finally arrive on Olympus, the world that holds the Federacy Assembly. Her initial plan was to go there to present the data the left in a locker on Kelso Station fifteen years earlier, but many things have changed.

'For one, rather than wait for someone else to do it, she and the scientists they collected at Aurora Station have been working on a cure for the infection that turns people into grey-skinned mutant pirates.

'Secondly, they're bringing a stricken war ship and a few of its remaining crew members who were rescued from pirate captivity.

'Little has gone to plan. After a few attempts, they don't yet have a cure. And while the infection does horrendous things to people besides giving them a long, but miserable, life, it seems that the only way it spreads is through human intervention.

'Tina and her friends are about to make a few discoveries about power, who wields it, and how it is used in this conclusion to the Project Charon series. The betrayal runs much deeper than anyone has predicted. Those in power are not going to take their uncovering lying down.' (Publication summary)

'Cory has made several commitments to members of the Asto inner circles. He needs to spend time with Thayu’s son. He has also been asked to give a favour to a boy of the Azimi clan.

'What better to do with a couple of pre-teens than to visit the theme parks that are historic relics from the 21st century on Earth?

'Of course he has a hidden agenda. On a previous trip to the south of Barresh, Cory and his team found disturbing evidence that people from the former Southern California Air Corps made it to Ceren about fifty years ago. He needs to find out about them.

'Except this is 2125, and the former city of Los Angeles is in Mexico, and the interesting places are across the heavily guarded and impenetrable border in America Free State.

'While he’s investigating, while he’s being shadowed and occasionally threatened, while the kids are having old-fashioned fun going on rides and starting rebellions (oops), something is about to come to a spectacular crash.

'It’s not that the highly armed rebels of America Free State want to take back land that they consider theirs, although they do.

'It’s not the fact that Nations of Earth president Simon Dekker hates Cory and the fact that he’s poking around in what Dekker considers his territory, although he does.

'It’s that the Southern California Air Corps is about to pull a very large and nasty surprise.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Both stations they can visit are in pirate hands. They have to make a toss-up which would be the safest. They choose the bigger station.

'But while they’re in the dock, trying very hard not to be noticed until they can negotiate the ridiculous supply wait times before they leave again, Tina finds out that her daughter Evelle is a prisoner at the station.

'Trying to free her brings Tina much closer to the pirates than she ever wanted to get.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'The shop makes a modest profit, but when a creditor turns up wanting his money back, everything goes pear-shaped.

'She needs money, and needs it fast. Another creditor is impossible to find. That leaves her one option: to return to the world she fled fifteen years ago and Kelso Space Station, where her spaceship has languished for over fifteen years, and finally sell the thing.

'Tina worked as scientific officer in the Federacy Force’s top secret Project Charon, and was forced out when she rang alarm bells about particles that escaped out of a rift to another universe.

'As it turns out, the alien dust has been infecting people in her absence, causing profound changes in human behaviour.

'When Tina re-surfaces at Kelso, her presence is a threat to those who still defend the project, including her ex-husband, and they want to shut her up, but her continued silence may well mean the end of civilisation.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Jonathan and Gaby arrive at the ice moon Miranda to work with a local researcher and find that adventurists have snuck into an area infected with alien bacteria and have gotten themselves in trouble.

'Do these people have to be stopped because they’re about to spread a bacterial infection to the human settlements or are there other factors at play? A tale of petty vindictiveness, competition and jealousy. Oh, and a wedding.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Astoria Station stopped responding to everything except automated messages. Jonathan and Gaby, familiar with disease and habitat collapse, offer to help.

'But not even they are prepared for what they find, or the efforts by some to sweep it under the carpet.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Ceren, the world that's the home of the city of Barresh, has vast swathes of untamed wilderness, most of it tribal land belonging to meta-human tribes like the Pengali.

'For many years, illegal organisations have seen these tribes as inroad into the lucrative gamra economy, abusing the local population with next to no payment, inflicting damage on their society. Sadly, Cory knows far too much about this, having studied Earth's history.

'The conflict has brewed for generations, until it has become too big to handle.

'Cory and his association finally return to Asto on the invitation of his father-in-law, for his official induction ceremony into the Domiri clan. They are housed in a magnificent villa overlooking a valley, away from the hustle of cities or the military base.

'Take an adolescent boy. Make him angry. Add dragons.

'Saving Prince Bruno from the church crypts hasn't turned out the way Nellie had planned. The boy is morose, angry, hellbent on revenge, and incapable of wielding the power he has been given.

'A young prince, an evil wizard, and a city that no longer seems to care.

'Cast out from the palace, Nellie survives in the streets of Saardam with the poor and destitute and a dragon whose behaviour she can't control, but is the key to finding the last member of the royal family. The pompous Regent is hell-bent on finding the person who has killed his court advisor and he has decided the dragon is guilty. If he doesn't find a culprit, his main source of money is at stake. The guards comb the city. It's only a matter of time before they find Nellie.

'She has a dragon, and she’s not afraid to use it.

'Nellie Dreessen is a kitchen maid in the palace of Regent Bernard of Saardam. She has worked for two kings and two regents, has seen two royal families murdered through magic, has seen ghosts and demons, and kept her head down like a good girl.

'Queen Johanna's position in Saardam is fragile. The Barons and Kings of the countries in the hinterland are not happy that she helped the royal family to survive and is now about to ensure the next generation. They vow to teach this little upstart country a lesson for once and for all. Of course it is not so much about petty rivalry, but about access to the sea port that connects the hinterland with the lucrative ocean trade. Johanna knows that if it came to a fight Saardam could never survive, so she has invited all the heads of state and other important people for talks to invest in the city's shattered infrastructure for the benefit of all. As a congregation of royal families gathers such as the lowlands have never seen, the magicians travelling with the esteemed guests prepare the final and most insidious attempt to get control of the upstart little country and its usurper, commoner queen: through her baby daughter.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The tyrant Alexandre is gone from Saardam, but a new menace has come: the eastern traders in a ship of metal that is said to have been forged with dragon magic. They bring a chest of gold to buy an office in the city. The people don't want them in their town. The Church of the Triune, which forbids magic, has increased its hold on the population, despite the Red Baron's efforts to stamp it out. Newly-crowned queen Johanna is staring into the empty coffers after the extravagant spending by her husband's father before his death. King Roald is off in the garden to catch frogs, and she faces condemnation by the church in the knowledge that Saarland will need both money and magic to defeat the Red Baron's army.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Johanna, Roald, Nellie and Loesie return undercover to the devastated city of Saardam. In the months since they fled, the Fire Wizard Alexandre has ruled the town with campaigns of death and fear, focused on the eradication of the Church of the Triune, the former state church of Saarland that doesn't allow magic and that is more popular with the common people than with nobles. Johanna meets up with underground members of the church, even though her little gift of magic makes her feel ambivalent about it. She knows that ousting Alexandre will require a powerful magician, something she and her followers do not have. What is more, Alexandre's men discover the group, and the band of resistance fighters faces the showdown with the tyrant long before they're even close to ready for it.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Johanna, Roald, Nellie and Loesie have come to Florisheim finding many of their kinsmen there. The survivors from the burning of Saardam who have come here are the nobles who were never great supporters the old king, and it is likely that they won’t support his son either, even if he was normal. They support his marriage to Johanna even less and Johanna’s position as the new king’s wife would be improved immensely if she produced an heir, but so far that’s not happening. Florisheim is alive with evil magic, and that magic is starting to affect the Saarlanders who are unused to it. They suffer apparitions of ghosts, people driven to injure themselves, or taken prisoner to work in a mysterious hole in the ground. Johanna knows that they have to get out of that evil place, but where can they go when the violence covers the entire known world?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'After fleeing from the burning ruins of Saardam, Johanna, Prince Roald, Loesie and Nellie have been captured by a group of bandits and are being taken to a place unknown through a forest rife with magic. Loesie, struck mute by an unknown but powerful sorcerer, is behaving increasingly strange. The friends try to escape, but is Loesie helping them or is she a danger to them?

'Every step they take through the ghost-ridden forest brings them closer to the duke who is rumoured to be the source of the evil magic, the necromancer whose anger against Saarland’s royal family has lain the world to waste.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.