Kirjahaku

The isolation of Moon base Daedalus has ended after twelve years, and Katlin has left for college on Earth. Her home planet is not the dream that evolved from her childhood memories, though, and when news arrives that the base's liberator, Namazi, has been apprehended, she sets off with her only friend, Beau, to save him. Earth has turned its eyes on Daedalus's vast platinum store, however, and powerful forces are maneuvering to grasp the helpless prey, with Namazi playing a key, if unwilling, role. As Katlin and Beau are swept up into the violent storm, Van and the rest of the base's nexgens are finding that lunar life on their own is fraught with its own perils.

Divorced, broke, and jobless, Caleb believes he's found a reprieve from a life on the streets when he answers an ad calling for volunteers in an extended university study. Along with a dozen others, he trades his clothes for a simple uniform and boards a bus for an undisclosed destination. As the driver takes them higher and higher into the remote California mountains, the hapless volunteers debate what exactly they've signed up for. Just before their phones are confiscated, they find a paper published by the study's sponsor professor, predicting the effects on groups when confronted with dire dangers. As Caleb watches miles of wilderness glide past, he wonders if he should have settled for a life under a city overpass. A Select Group is a taught thriller that explores the tribal tendency within us all--and the dark potential of a few--when groups are threatened. Against the doomed us-versus-them defense, stands one woman determined that people can rise above primal instincts to cooperate and persevere against those that seek to capitalize on human frailties.

One morning a pet ferret wakes up a self-aware sentient being. He has no memory of what came before, but understands that he is far different than any other ferret. He quickly bumps up against built-in restraints such as an inability to harm people or to sleep during the day as other ferrets would do, and, most peculiarly, he is compelled each evening to review the day's events. Perhaps the strongest inherent taboo, however, is against doing anything that would reveal his abnormal intelligence, and against this he struggles as he finds trouble, and trouble finds him and his faithful owner, Joanne.

Rook wants what any young man strives for, to be recognized as a capable provider by his tribe. One day, while confronting a cougar, he's saved by a terrifying giant boat that travels between the stars, far above, where there's no air. Rook is grateful, but then dismayed to find that everybody he ever knew will be long dead when the boat returns to Earth in a thousand years. The enigmatic space vessel explains that they need Rook's help when they finally do return. And so begins a sequence of visits to his home planet where the "help" that he provides spawns their own puzzling questions. Unbeknownst to Rook and his hosts, however, a rival alien race lurks just beyond the stellar horizon.