Librarian Note: Older cover of B00LH3Q0X0. Earth is gone. Centuries have passed since life ended on the blue planet. Humanity's survivors are now dispersed among distant colonies, thousands of light years from the barren, frozen rock that was once their home. At a time when power means everything, the ultimate power, the imperium, rests with the Consulate Magistratus. In return for its protection, citizens must concede their rights absolutely. The Magistratus controls interstellar travel, access to technology, even procreation. Every citizen is implanted with a device to monitor their location, health and emotions. Freedom, religion and self-determination are anachronisms. Humanity's true history survives only in whispers of a secret archive. Yet there are those who preach a new religion and who want to be free. In the cold of a winter's night, a small village is the subject of a brutal attack. A fourteen-year-old boy, Jordi, sees armed men approaching and manages to wake his family. He and a handful of survivors flee into the frozen, snow-covered forest to wait for the preacher who told them their way of life was based on lies. Shepherd, a freighter-tramp and smuggler, is commissioned to deliver illicit medical supplies to a hostile border planet near the Wall. He is dragged into a fight he does not believe in and a desperate struggle to protect his life, his ship and the lives of the persecuted few who seek only freedom. A revolution is coming... The Heretic is the acclaimed first book in an epic, hard science fiction space opera about the future of humanity and the discovery of the truth of its past.

The darkness in the human heart is infinite. Earth is gone. Centuries have passed since life ended on the blue planet. Humanity's survivors are now dispersed among distant colonies, thousands of light years from the barren, frozen rock that was once their home. At a time when power means everything, the ultimate power, the imperium, rests with the Consulate Magistratus. In return for its protection, citizens must concede their rights absolutely. The Magistratus controls interstellar travel, access to technology, even procreation. Every citizen is implanted with a device to monitor their location, health and emotions. Freedom, religion and self-determination are anachronisms. Humanity's true history only survives in whispers of a secret archive. The murder of a man in the lowest caste is seen as inconsequential, but Weaver, one of the few Caesteri lawmen who still believes in justice, refuses to ignore it. Fighting his own indoctrination, and the voice inside his mind that forces him to ignore his conscience, he follows the trail of evidence all the while struggling to hang on to the thin thread of his humanity. The killer he hunts is violent and unstable, and haunted by her own callous ghosts. A woman who sells her body to fuel her drug addiction. She possesses an almost supernatural ability navigate the wormholes which connect humanity's distant colonies - an ability the Magistratus fears and must eradicate. Weaver will follow her to a planet the Magistratus has abandoned, where the only law is that of criminals. And then to the furthest reaches of space, where the truth that awaits them leads to the corrupt heart of the Republic - a truth the Magistratus will do anything to conceal. The war to control humanity's future is about to begin... Defiancé is the second book in the Beyond the Wall series, an epic, hard science-fiction space opera about the future of humanity and the discovery of the truth of its past.

If war shapes the universe, truth destroys it. A criminal becomes a leader, hiding a tiny colony of survivors from the savagery of twisted men. A smuggler harbours refugees from a brutal attack on their defenceless village. A young boy, wracked by loss, now seeks revenge. A servant of the Magistratus, a lawman who once believed in justice, searches for the truth behind the planet his masters will kill to hide. A stim-addicted navigator, haunted by her past, wants answers. Why she was chosen to ride with a salvage crew destined to die in a remote, nameless part of space. And a spy is blackmailed into informing against those he serves. What he knows could bring about the end of the Republic. All will be drawn together by hidden forces, and their lives shattered by cataclysmic events they can neither predict... nor escape.

Some sentences are not meant to be served behind bars. Some criminals must atone for their crimes in a different way. Lahm’s own freedom depends on him finding those who must have theirs taken away. He receives only the barest details of those he hunts and never asks why. Or what will happen to them. But when he is sent back to his home planet to hunt a child and her family, he must confront the horror of his past and question whether he can ever truly be free. This is a standalone novella. The story and characters within its pages are set in the Beyond the Wall universe, but you need not have read the Beyond the Wall series to enjoy this book. However, in reality, you’ll probably enjoy it more if you have. If you do wish to read it in its optimal placing within the series, where I intended it to come, it is set in the time between A Shroud of Night and Tears and the final book of the series, Into A Silent Darkness.