A Union ship headed for the spaceways seems a perfect vehicle for Elizabeth Yeager's escape, until she learns the ship is the bait in a plot to eliminate a group of space pirates

Financial analyst Caroline Cassandra "CC" Williams is determined to prove her worth to her corporate masters by discovering why a mining venture on an asteroid isn't profitable.

Zoe Goodwin wanted to start her career as an ensign in the Navy with a low-key mission. But with a raging invasion of AI starships in progress, pushing the Empire naval forces back at every battle, the handwriting is on the wall - humans will soon be obsolete. With the enemy attacking on all fronts, Zoe is assigned to a last-ditch mission to the Galaxy Core. Soon the young naval officer finds everything she knew about her history was built upon a lie. As the survival of her civilization becomes tied to her own, Zoe Goodwin realizes she must stand in defiance, prepared to give her life for the salvation of the Rim - or her entire civilization will go down in flames!

The enemy killed everyone on her ship. Except her. That was their mistake. Forty years after the Battle of Orinoco, Orien Satra - son of Jake and Andrea - is the XO of a heavy cruiser in the Rim Defense Force. His sister Ligeia is the Prime Minister of RimFed; and Ligeia's daughter Miranda is a newly commissioned ensign on the distant scout ship Troublemaker. In a crazy-quilt pattern of war, treachery, and the razor's edge of survival, their destinies are about to smash together. Ambushed by a sinister enemy, the Troublemaker is destroyed. More than 1,100 lights from home, badly injured, alone in a lifeboat - somehow, Miranda survives. Little does the young ensign know her destiny holds the key to the future of the entire Rim - and the lives of billions!

Award-winning artist Whelan has illustrated the work of almost every major author in speculative fiction. Here are featured all the artist's major recent paintings, as well as a series of 25 never-before-seen works produced especially for this book. Over 100 full-color reproductions.

Here is the explosive conclusion of the blockbuster trilogy that chronicles the never-before-told story of the young Han Solo. Set before the Star Wars(r) movie adventures, these books chronicle the coming-of-age of the galaxy's most famous con man, smuggler, and thief. The Millennium Falcon is "the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy." So when Han Solo wins it in a game of sabacc, he and Chewbacca become kings of the smugglers--uncatchable, unstoppable. But with the Empire clamping down, Han knows his luck can't last. Still, when an old girlfriend who is now the leader of an insurgent Rebel group offers him a shot at an incredible fortune, Han can't resist. The plan seems a sure thing. The resistance will be light and the take enormous. Han and his friends will divide it equally with the Rebels. Too bad for Han that the planet of Ylesia is far from a pushover, that the Rebels have an agenda of their own, and that smuggler friends can often turn into enemies...quicker than lightspeed.

The reward for rescuing Thermopylae is finally paid, and Calver and his shipmates from Lorn Lady purchase a ship and rename her The Outsider. Two years are spent as a charter to Rim Runners, then six months tramping, before Sonya Verrill reappears and engineers a charter from the Federation Survey Service to look for an alien derelict. She accompanies The Outsider, but proves very disruptive to Jane Calver.

Derek Calver touches down on Lorn and is determined to join the Rim Runners to explore desolate planets. He joins the crew of Lorn Lady and sets forth for Mellise, inhabited by intelligent amphibians; for Groller, where the natives have just qualified as humanoids; for Stree with its tea loving lizards; and for Tharn, home of a pre-industrial civilization.