Two space expeditions--one American, the other Euro-Chinese--race to be the first on Mars and first to return to Earth. Both teams reach the planet, but with disastrous results. The problem now is not who will return to Earth, but if any of them will return at all. By the author of Cosm.

The Star Quest series continues with Survival. A "human team sent to scout a few hundred light years in front of the death wave encounters a civilization far in advance of our own, a civilization of machine intelligences. The sentient, intelligent machines have existed for eons, and have survived earlier "death waves," gamma ray bursts from the core of the galaxy. They are totally self-sufficient, completely certain that the death wave cannot harm...

Cargo ship captain Eva Innocente and her crew on the La Sirena Negra try to figure out why hundreds of monoliths have appeared in space broadcasting the same looped message to surrender or die.

"For the past year, their close loss in the annual Boarding Games has haunted the NeoG Interceptor Team Zuma's Ghost. With this year's competition looming, they're looking forward to some payback - until an unexpected personnel change leaves them reeling. Their best swordsman has been transferred, and a new lieutenant has been assigned in his place. Maxine Carmichael is trying to carve a place in the world on her own - away from the pressure and influence...

"Fergus is back on Earth at last, trying to figure out how to live a normal life. However, it seems the universe has other plans for him. When his cousin sends him off to help out a friend, Fergus accidently stumbles across a piece of an ancient alien artifact that some very powerful people seem to think means the entire solar system is in danger. And since he's the one who found it, they're certain it's also his problem to deal with. With the help...

"Eight-year-old Archie Morningstar, his taxi driver dad, and a talking cat named Pockets are on an intergalactic mission to save an underwater planet in peril"--

"The Coast Guard must prevent the first lunar war in history. A lifelong Search-and-Rescuewoman, Coast Guard Captain Jane Oliver is ready for a peaceful retirement. But when tragedy strikes, Oliver loses her husband and her plans for the future, and finds herself thrust into a role she's not prepared for. Suddenly at the helm of the Coast Guard's elite SAR-1 lunar unit, Oliver is the only woman who can prevent the first lunar war in history, a conflict...

"Halmey Dz and her partner Connla Kurucz are salvage operators, living just on the inside of the law...usually. Theirs is the perilous and marginal existence--with barely enough chance of striking it fantastically big--just once--to keep them coming back for more. They pilot their tiny ship into the scars left by unsuccessful White Transitions, searching for the relics of lost human and alien vessels. But when they make a shocking discovery about...

Surrounded by strangers all competing for one of the six slots to travel to Jupiter's moon, Europa, Naomi, an Iranian-American science genius, finds a friend in Leo, an Italian championship swimmer, as the training tests their limits.

Generations ago, Convoy Seven and I.C.C. left Earth on a mission that would take them far beyond the solar system. Launched by the Planet United Consortium, a global group formed to pursue cooperative Earth-wide interests in deep space, nine ships headed into the unknown to explore a distant star called LQ Pyx. Eons later, the convoy has returned to LQ Pyx to begin work on the Web, the alien megastructure that covers the star. Is it a Dyson Sphere,...