Showing results by author "Jon Walter" in All Categories

For millennia, the Shaa have subjugated the universe, forcing the myriad sentient races to bow to their joyless tyranny. But the Shaa will soon be no more. The Dread Empire is in its rapidly fading twilight, and with its impending fall comes the promise of a new galactic order...and bloody chaos. A young Terran naval officer marked by his lowly birth, Lt. Gareth Martinez is the first to recognize the insidious plot of the Naxid - the powerful, warlike insectoid society that was enslaved before all others - to replace the masters’ despotic rule with their own.

Working on opposite sides of the galaxy - one in deep space, the other undercover on an occupied planet - and haunted by personal ghosts, Captain Gareth Martinez and Lieutenant Lady Caroline Sula fight to save the Empire from the vicious alien Naxid. In a desperate, audacious bid to stop the Naxid fleet, Martinez makes a move that could win the war…and lose his career. Meanwhile, Sula’s guerilla tactics may not be enough to stop the Naxid - until she tries one deadly final gambit.

The Dread Empire of the Shaa is no more, following the death of the last oppressor. But freedom remains elusive for the myriad sentient races enslaved for 10 centuries, as an even greater terror arises. The Naxids - a powerful insectoid species themselves subjugated until the recent Shaa demise - plan to fill the vacuum with their own bloody domination and have already won a shattering victory with superior force and unimaginable cruelty. But two heroes survived the carnage at Magaria: Lord Gareth Martinez and the fiery, mysterious gun pilot Lady Caroline Sula.

Aiah has fought her way out of poverty and discovers a limitless source of plasm, the mysterious substance that powers the world-city. Her discovery soon involves her with Constantine, the charismatic, dangerous, seductive revolutionary who plans to overthrow the government and upend the cosmic order.

“Investments” finds Gareth Martinez has accepted a meaningless post as Inspector General of Chee, a newly settled world. Intending nothing more than a pleasant vacation with his family, he first stumbles across a murderous conspiracy. In “The Stickpin,” set in the Naxid War, Caroline Sula leads the resistance against the Naxid occupiers, and shows how a pleasant afternoon stroll can have deadly consequences to the enemy. Then in Impersonations, Caroline Sula has been posted to the planet Earth, a dismal backwater where careers go to die.

Captain Favian Markham, USN, is a man surrounded by secrets. Secrets that will be revealed when he is court-martialed for losing his ship. Secrets held by his mistress Caroline. The secrets of enemy spies signaling to British ships over the horizon. And the greatest secret of the War of 1812, a secret which will be revealed once Favian breaks the enemy blockade in the Macedonian, a frigate stolen from his own government.

In a frigate stolen from his own navy, Captain Favian Markham races to New Orleans with the dispatches he’s captured from a British warship—dispatches making it clear that the city will soon be the target of a British fleet and an invading army. But Favian finds New Orleans a city of intrigue, where Creoles conspire against the Americans, streetfighters cloak their murders under the Code Duello, the pirate Jean Laffite defies the Navy, and a cabal of elite soldiers conspire to hand the city to the enemy—and where two sensuous Creole women, Eugenie and Campaspe, vie for his favor.

Favian Markham is a rising young American officer during the War of 1812. As commander of the small, slow brig Experiment, he must break the British blockade and take his outgunned vessel on a daring raid into the Narrow Seas of England. On his desperate journey he faces duels, rivalries, ambitious politicians, yardarm-to-yardarm combat, and the deadly beauty of a foreign courtesan. Yet his greatest battle is not with the enemy, but with his own divided nature….

Quillifer has risen high at court. The butcher’s son is now a lord, and now is the confidential agent of the state, the caretaker of the kingdom’s secrets, and the secret lover of the young and brilliant Queen Floria. He finds himself surrounded by perils. The nobles are at odds with one another, but united in despising Quillifer. Someone has brought deadly poison into court, and Quillifer fears the Queen may be the intended victim. Another assassination plot is aimed at Quillifer himself, and an enemy nation has landed troops intending to topple Floria by force.

Devastated by the loss of his family, Gideon Markham has retreated to his ship and the life of the sea. Heir to a privateering tradition, he brings his schooner into the Gulf of Mexico to wage unremitting war on the British who threaten America’s freedom. But the puritanical Gideon finds the Gulf a strange and threatening place, and soon he must face Jean Laffite’s pirates, a mutiny, an attack by Red Stick Creeks, and a British invasion…none of which he finds as baffling and alarming as Maria-Anna de Suarez.

The American Revolution is throwing up a new breed of hero, Yankee privateers who dare the might of the Royal Navy to slash at British commerce. Foremost among them are the three Markham brothers, Jehu, Josiah, and Malachi, who link their destiny to that of their young nation and seek their fortune in the cannon’s mouth.

With the publication of his debut novel, The Privateer, in 1981, Walter Jon Williams began one of the most varied and prolific careers in contemporary popular fiction. But much of Williams' best work takes place in the shorter forms, as this generous volume, filled to overflowing with award-winning and award-nominated stories, clearly proves. The Best of Walter Jon Williams reflects its author's affection for - and mastery of - the novella form.

Rogue. Joker. Lover. Reluctant conspirator. The ambitious young Quillifer was been knighted for services to the crown, but was then banished from court by a queen who finds him obnoxious. Now, after a two-year voyage to improve his fortunes, Quillifer returns to court and is plunged immediately into a maelstrom of intrigue that triggers duels, plots, amours, and rollicking adventure. Bounding back and forth from the high councils of state to the warm bed of his mistress, Quillifer must exert every ounce of seductive charm and low cunning in order to survive.

Steward is a clone, a beta. His memories are 15 years old, because his alpha never did have a brain-scan update. And in those 15 years, the entire world has changed. An alien race known as The Powers has established relations with humanity, and the Orbital Policorp that held his allegiance has collapsed.

Short novels are movie length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This audio collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2012 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form.

Orphans of deep space... They're outlaws now. Created to serve a function grown obsolete, haunted by the holographic ghost of their father, Ubu and Maria have lived their entire lives skating along the edge of extinction. Now they and their ship, Runaway, are in flight both from the law and from a predatory clan of competitors. They're going to come back rich or not at all. But what they find in the depths of space isn't wealth, but a secret so startling that Ubu and Maria will need every last reserve of guile, cunning, and intelligence just to survive.

The time of reckoning is close at hand. Events in the New York Times bestselling Star Wars The New Jedi Order series take a decisive turn, as the heroes of the New Republic prepare for their most volatile clash yet with the enemy—from without and within. In the war against the ruthless Yuuzhan...

Well-mannered Samuel and his mischievous younger brother, Joshua, are free black boys living in an orphanage during the end of the Civil War. Samuel takes the blame for Joshua's latest prank, and the consequence is worse than he could ever imagine. He's taken from the orphanage to the South, given a new name - Friday - and sold into slavery. What follows is a heartbreaking but hopeful account of Samuel's journey from freedom to captivity and back again.

Quillifer is young, serially in love, studying law, and living each day keenly aware that his beloved homeport of Ethlebight risks closure due to silting of the harbor. His concerns for the future become much more immediate when he returns from a summery assignation to find his city attacked by Aekoi pirates, leading to brigands in the streets and his family and friends in chains.

Ex-fighter pilot Cowboy, "hardwired" via skull sockets directly to his lethal electronic hardware, teams up with Sarah, an equally cyborized gun-for-hire, to make a last stab at independence from the rapacious Orbitals.