Michelle Diener

Hunted, captured, taken off-planet . . . As a Special Forces Commander, Ethan Hyt is well aware his duty is to protect the Planetary Head of Defense, Velda Shan ha, but when their ship is shot down and they are taken prisoner, he finds it harder and harder to pretend he's protecting Velda out of duty. Velda knows that as Aponi's Head of Defense, she's a good bargaining chip for her enemies, and she's hoping that fact will keep her and Ethan alive. She and Ethan made a good team before, but their forced proximity has made their connection even stronger, and they'll need each other to take every opportunity to get free. Because if they don't, Velda's afraid they're going to disappear forever.

The Duke of Wittaker has been living a lie ... He's been spying on the dissolute, discontented noblemen of the ton, pretending to share their views. Now he's ready to step out of the shadows and start living a real life...but when the prime minister of England is assassinated, he's asked to go back to being the rake-hell duke everyone believes he still is to find out more. Miss Phoebe Hillier has been living a lie, too ... All her life she's played by society's rules, hiding her fierce intelligence and love of life behind a docile and decorous mask. All it's gotten her is jilted by her betrothed, a man she thought a fool, though a harmless one. But when she discovers her former fianc was involved in the plot against the prime minister, and that he's been murdered, she realizes he wasn't so harmless after all. And now the killers have set their sights on her ... The only man who can help her is the Duke of Wittaker--a man she knows she shouldn't trust. And she soon realizes he's hiding behind a mask as careful as her own. As the clock ticks down to the assassin's trial, the pair scramble to uncover the real conspiracy behind the prime minister's death. And as the pressure and the danger mounts, Phoebe and Wittaker shed their disguises, layer by layer, to discover something more precious than either imagined-something that could last forever. Unless the conspirators desperate to hide their tracks get to them first.

Set in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars, this vivid and romantic historical novel goes from the most elegant ballrooms of London to the city's most tawdry slums, as a spirited young woman helps unravel a plot by Napoleon to bleed England of all its gold. A difficult balance . . . Charlotte Raven escaped the poverty of the London streets, but while she may now mingle with the ton, she lives an uneasy existence between two worlds, unable to turn her back completely on her old life. A dangerous task . . . When Lord Edward Durnham is asked to investigate the alarming movement of gold out of England, his search leads him to the worst stews of London's slums. A dark journey . . . Little could Edward imagine his sister's new friend, Charlotte Raven, someone who saved his nephews from serious harm, would afford him access to a dark world he barely knew existed. As they delve deeper into the underbelly of London, danger lurks at every turn. With the stakes growing ever higher, Charlotte faces a defining choice: continue in the familiar limbo she's lived in for years, or to take a painful and risky leap toward a happiness she never thought possible.

Rose McKenzie is adapting to life with the Grih, and now that the threat of war with the Tecran is over, she's hoping to settle into what passes for a normal life far from Earth and everything she knows. When she gets the chance to join an exploration team who are going down to collect information from a planet in Grihan airspace, she jumps at the chance to stretch her legs and breath some real air. But unknown to the Grih, someone is already on the planet, and they don't want anyone to know what they're up to. They ambush the exploration team and take them prisoner, but they don't realize they didn't get everyone. They didn't get Rose.With her partner, Dav, and his spaceship the Barrist lured away by a distress signal, Rose and Sazo, along with a furry friend Rose has made, are the exploration team's only hope of rescue.Note: DARK AMBITIONS is a novella set in the Class 5 series and occurs after the events in DARK MATTERS, book 4 in the series.

A step into the unknown . . .Rose is looking forward to meeting the Fisone as part of the United Council's outreach mission. Since the Tecran were defeated, and the full scope of their crimes were uncovered, the UC has wanted to find the Tecran's victims and extend the hand of friendship. The fact that Rose is close to having her baby is just another element to the adventure of finding the Fisone's planet and seeing if they could be potential allies.A explorer's dream . . .Dav Jallan has been captain of the Barrist for a few years, but this is the first time he's headed for a planet inhabited by advanced sentients. The Fisone exist-that is indisputable-and every part of this mission is why he became an explorer in the first place. The goal is to find them, form alliances, and make friends. The fact that he's about to become a new father simply adds to his sense of excitement.A collision course with reality . . .When Sazo's Class 5 and the Barrist enter the Fisone's airspace, what they find is far from the uncomplicated meeting they had envisioned. The Fisone are divided, carrying a grudge, and are sure the Grih are no different from the Tecran they encountered the year before. When they take Rose as a hostage, both Dav and Sazo focus everything they have on finding her, and as the Fisone's actions create more and more danger, ideas of alliances, friendship, and cooperation become less and less important.The only comfort both Dav and Sazo have to draw from is that Rose has been taken by others before, underestimated before, and her abductors have lived to regret it. They are counting on history repeating itself.

A warrior enslaved . . .Theo has been bested. On the hunt for missing children, he encounters a man who has more magical weapons than Theo could ever believe existed. And their confrontation may have ended with Theo managing to wound the abductor, but it leaves him spelled in the shape of a goat.A woman trapped . . .Melodie has been living a half-life in Iloa-exploited by her boss, restless at the thought of continuing on her current path, she stumbles into a situation she knows will change her life. When her ability to see spell work, which has led to a life in the shadows, allows her to see a man caged by magic, she has no hesitation in releasing him.A partnership made in desperation . . .When Theo asks her to help him find missing children, to go up against a spell worker who sounds like everything her deceased father tried to protect her from, Melodie accepts. She is tired of keeping herself safe at the expense of the truth, and Theo swears he will be the blade at her back.But neither of them know the danger they will be facing, and how deep a bond they will have to forge with each other to fight an opponent with a heart this dark.

The planet Aponi sits at the outer edge of the Verdant String.For Wren Thorakis, working as an Aponian Special Forces artifacts consultant, it means interesting assignments and unusual discoveries. Being captured and held for ransom by a shadowy cult while working on the moon Ytla was not something she expected, though. However, while escaping her captors, she stumbles across what could be the discovery of her career-one that no artifact consultant could possibly ignore-a genuine ancestral mothership.The mothership isn't just amazing in itself, though. Wren finds herself the recipient of crazy-powerful nanotech. It helps keep her alive and one step ahead of those trying to hide the ship's existence.When Wren starts working out who's behind keeping her discovery secret, and why, she is plunged into a bigger plot than she ever imagined. A shadowy organization has its eye on Aponi, and isn't shy to use the Verdant String's fiercest enemies, the Caruso, to help them take it from the Coalition.When an Aponi Special Forces soldier, Ed Zeneri, who's existence is also inconvenient to Wren's enemies, is lured into a trap with Wren and they both come under fire, Wren's nanotech does whatever it has to to keep her safe-including enthralling Ed to protect her at all costs. Ed knows his reaction to Wren isn't normal, or even sane, but as the compulsion to put himself in front of anything coming at her recedes, he finds he's more than inclined to do it of his own volition. He joins forces with Wren to try to stop the takeover of their home planet, and as they race the clock to find the answers they need, he also has to convince Wren that what he feels for her is real. As real as the enemy battleships hovering in Aponi's nearspace. As real as the deadline to bring them down. As real as it gets.

A dark force at workAva and Luc are asked to head north to Sk ddar, a move necessary to save the alliance they have created with the mountainous country. Something terrible is killing Sk ddar villagers and leaving messages behind with their bodies that the deaths will continue as long as the Sk ddar are in alliance with the Rising Wave. If Ava and Luc can't convince the Sk ddar Collective to stand up for their new friendship in the face of the tragedy, they will lose a vital ally in the region.A dark room to cage a prisonerMassi is deep inside Grimwalt, successful in her mission to find Ava's incarcerated friends, Tomas and Velda. But the two are not being held alone. Massi finds many others being kept with them, as well as a prisoner kept in darkness whose power shines so bright, Massi can't imagine how the Speaker imprisoned him to begin with.A dark cloud that needs to be dispelledDuncan has been held far from his home on the Sk ddar border, and he takes the chance of escape that Massi gives him with both hands. When he and Massi have to part ways, though-Massi to get Ava's friends to safety, him to return to the forest he was ripped away from-he can't deny his attraction to the fierce archer, or his reluctance to let her go.But when he gets home, and finds the power of his domain is being used to commit terrible atrocities, he'll need Massi's help, and those of her friends, to rid Grimwalt of the blight that is trying to take hold.Fate's Arrow is the third book in the Rising Wave series. The series begins with The Rising Wave, a prequel novella, and continues with The Turncoat King and The Threadbare Queen.

Fliss knows all about her ancestors, the Travelers, who were forced to land on Fjern thousands of years ago, but when it comes to the Gyr-the enhanced warriors who protect the people of Fjern from the monsters that inhabit the planet-she's in the dark, even though she is one herself. There's plenty of ceremony and arcane tradition set up around who receives the gyra-the nanotech that makes the warriors the super-protectors that they are-but Fliss doesn't care about any of that, she just wants to brush off the dust of the tiny mining settlement she's been protecting all her life and leave the combative relationship she has with her father far behind her.When the Gyr who offered her a way out of her old life dies in spectacular fashion, though, she comes to the attention of a host of powerful people, both the Gyr and the administrators from the institution that controls them, alike. Fliss is about to find out more about the Gyr-and herself-than she ever dreamed of.Gyr leader, Hannu Kardenian, thought he was being called to investigate the strange death of a fellow warrior, but what he finds instead is a woman who breaks every rule he's ever lived by. Everything about her sets his own gyra on fire, and when she comes to the attention of Gyr Command-the institution that mandates the Gyr's very existence-he is determined to make sure she never ends up in their clutches, even if he has to upend the very structure of Fjern itself.