Freebooter at heart, spacer by trade, Beka Rosselin-Metadi doesn't want to hear about how her father whose rugged generalship held back the Mageworlds—or her highborn mother whose leadership has held the galaxy together since. Beka pilots spacecraft—as far from her famous family as possible.Then Beka's mother is assassinated on the Senate floor, and her father offers her the title to Warhammer, prize ship from his own freebooting youth—if she agrees to deliver the assassins to him "off the books." Looking for assassins has a tendency to make assassins look for you. In doing so, Beka's arranged her own very public death and adopted a new identity; now all she has to do is leave a trail of kidnappings and corpses across five star systems, and blow the roof off the strongest private fortress in the galaxy.

While the Net deals with the derelict ship, its dead captain still strapped to the command seat, that has appeared in the barrier zone separating the Republic from the Mageworlds, Beka Rosselin-Metadi plots revenge on the man who killed her mother. Reissue.

Galcen has fallen. The Space Force is broken and scattered. the planets of the former Republic are rushing to make peace with the victorious Mages. All that remains is mopping up. Minor details. A privateer or two, a few Adepts who remain alive and on the run, and the hereditary ruler of a lifeless planet. Beka Rosselin-Metadi, the last Domina of Lost Entibor, possesses little more than a famous name and a famous ship. With them she must salvage what she can from the wreckage of the Republic. Her enemies are too many to count, her friends too few to make a difference. She can trust no one except herself, her crew—and the family she ran away from years before. Beka has resources few suspect: a hidden base, a long forgotten oath, and a dead man's legacy. But she has problems as well; for in a universe gone mad, neither friends nor enemies are all that they may seem. A play that began in treachery and blood five hundred years before has reached its final act. A broken galaxy will be sundered forever, or else made whole.

The Mageworlds are pludering the civilized galaxy, one planet at a time. First, their scout-ships appeared above the outplanets. Raiding parties followed, then whole armadas bent on loot and conquest. The Mages break the warfleets that oppose them. They take entire planets. Who can stop them?Not Perada Rosselin, Domina of Entibor. She's the absolute ruler of a rich world and all its colonies, but Entibor's space fleet is too small to mount a defense. And Perada herself, just back from school on distant Galcen, is almost an outworlder in her own court. Not Jod Metadi, the most famous—or notorious—of the privateers of Innish-Kyl. Jos can fight the Mages and he can best them one on one, but his preferred targets are cargo vessels, not the dangerous and unprofitable ships of war. Metadi stays clear of the Mageworlds' battle fleet—when he can. Not Errec Ransome. He understands the Mageworlds better than anyone. But there are some things he'll never tell—and some things he's sworn to himself that he'll never do again. Now, the Mages have attacked Entibor. That was a mistake.

The Fifth Book of Mageworlds: Welcome to Khesat, glittering jewel of the Central Worlds. Khesat, where decadence is an art form and intrigue is a way of life—and where, more than twenty years after the end of the Second Magewar, power struggles within the ruling family threaten both the Mageworlds and the Republic. The Khesatan crisis has broken the spaceways apart, reviving old alliances and buried rivalries. Warring factions, criminal guilds, and supranormal forces all have their eyes turned toward Jens Metadi-Jessan D'Rosselin, only child to the scapegrace brother of the current—and childless—Highest of Khesat. Whoever controls the heir controls Khesat, and whoever controls Khesat controls the galaxy. Jens doesn't know that he's the first item on a long roll-call of agendas. He's off to see the galaxy in company with his cousin Faral. They're looking for excitement and adventure. Before the dust settles, they'll get more of both than they bargained for... And the civilized galaxy may never be the same again.

The star systems of the Mageworlds are linked by magic. Only when trained Mages have found a Way to a new world can the great colonizing and trading ships follow. But beyond the furthest worlds is a great gap, beyond which, hint the legends, lie vast, rich human worlds long lost to the Mages' trade. Now the most powerful Mage-circle ever is determined to walk to those worlds, to reunite humanity's sundered branches and make a fortune in the process. And young Arekhon sus-Khalgath, scion of the most powerful of the clans of starship builders, has left his inheritance to join them. But immense forces are arrayed against them. Blood will be spilled, and dynasties thrown down, before the worlds of mankind are again united. For the first time in living memory, the Mages will go to war—with themselves.

The new novel in the sweeping Mageworlds series. On the planet Entibor, Arekhon sus-Khalgath sus Peledaen has found shelter and domestic tranquility with his old love, Elaeli Inadi, at the price of what he had left behind: a dispersed and shattered Mage-Circle, an estranged brother who had tried to kill him, and a homeworld on the cusp of massive cultural upheaval. Arekhon finds himself impelled homeward by strange dreams and prophetic visions. The Great Working—the effort to do the unthinkable and reunite a galaxy long sundered by the Gap Between—remains incomplete, left unfinished in the aftermath of the dissolution of Arehkon's Mage-Circle. But too much energy and too many lives have been poured into the Working already; and it cannot end so long as any of the Circle members remain alive and bound into it. Home, unfortunately, isn't a safe place for Arehkon to be at the moment. For Eraasi has changed—and the great fleet families at the center of the Eraasian culture are girding for war.

The early days of space travel - the tragic deaths, the explorers who disappeared without a trace, the many heroisms- were now relegated to a few pages in history textbooks. The Solar System, from Mercury out to the cometary Oort cloud, was as thoroughly domesticated and familiar as anyone's back yard. But other frontiers still beckoned, as distant as the farthest stars themselves, and humankind swarmed out across the galaxy at speeds many times that of light, but still only an amoeboid crawl in comparison to the vast breadth of the galaxy. And once again the statement by a largely-forgotten 20th century scientist was proven true: the universe is not only stranger than we imagine-it is stranger than we can imagine. Stories of interstellar voyagers confronting the infinite by: Gregory Benford, Eric Flint & Dave Freer, James P. Hogan, Debra Doyle & James MacDonald . . . and more.

Tales of mystery and the supernatural have long stirred the human imagination. Here are twenty original stories of diabolical crimes and magical solutions featuring some of today's top science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writers. From the Elizabethan era to the far-flung future, from the interstellar realm of the Eraasian Hegemony to the Las Vegas Strip, these ingenious whodunits (or whatdunits) are sure to baffle and delight every lover of mystery and the fantastic. From WorldCat - Contents: Introduction and Afterword by Rosemary Edghill Piece of Mind by Jennifer Roberson Special Surprise Guest Appearance by ... by Carole Nelson Douglas Doppelgangster by Laura Resnick Mixed Marriages Can Be Murder by Will Graham Case of the Headless Corpse by Josepha Sherman Death in the Working by Debra Doyle Cold Case by Diane Duane Snake in the Grass by Susan R. Matthews Double Jeopardy by M.J. Hamilton Witch Sight by Roberta Gellis Overrush by Laura Anne Gilman Captured in Silver by Teresa Edgerton Night at the Opera by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Tremble in the Air by James D. Macdonald Murder Entailed by Susan Krinard Dropping Hints by Lawrence Watt-Evans Au Purr by Esther Friesner Getting the Chair by Keith R.A. DeCandido Necromancer's Apprentice by Lillian Stewart Carl Grey Eminence by Mercedes Lackey