Empire Games

The Family Trade

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 53 mins)
• By Charles Stross
• Narrated By Kate Reading
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Miriam Beckstein is happy in her life as a successful reporter. When she gets iron-clad evidence of a money-laundering scheme, Miriam thinks she's found the story of the year. But when she takes it to her editor, she's fired on the spot and gets a death threat from the criminals she's uncovered. Before the day is over, she's received a locket left by the mother she never knew - the mother who was murdered when she was an infant. The knotwork pattern within has a hypnotic effect on her.

The Delirium Brief

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 45 mins)
• By Charles Stross
• Narrated By Gideon Emery

Bob Howard's career in the Laundry, the secret British government agency dedicated to protecting the world from unspeakable horrors from beyond spacetime, has entailed high combat, brilliant hacking, ancient magic, and combat with indescribably repellent creatures of pure evil. It has also involved a wearying amount of paperwork and office politics, and his expense reports are still a mess. Now, following the invasion of Yorkshire by the Host of Air and Darkness, the Laundry's existence has become public.

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (24 hrs and 29 mins)
• By Neal Stephenson, Nicole Galland
• Narrated By Laurence Bouvard, Shelley Atkinson, Laural Merlington, and others
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From best-selling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed historical and contemporary commercial novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller combining history, science, magic, mystery, intrigue, and adventure that questions the very foundations of the modern world.

The Collapsing Empire: The Interdependency, Book 1

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 23 mins)
• By John Scalzi
• Narrated By Wil Wheaton
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Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars. Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war - and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

Luna: New Moon

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 36 mins)
• By Ian McDonald
• Narrated By Suzanne Toren, Soneela Nankani, Thom Rivera
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As the leader of the moon's newest "dragon", Adriana has wrested control of the moon's helium-3 industry from the Mackenzie Metal Corporation and fought to earn her family's new status. Now, at the twilight of her life, Adriana finds her corporation, Corta Helio, surrounded by the many enemies she made during her meteoric rise. If the Corta family is to survive, Adriana's five children must defend their mother's empire from her many enemies - and each other.

Revenger

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 40 mins)
• By Alastair Reynolds
• Narrated By Clare Corbett

The galaxy has seen great empires rise and fall. Planets have shattered and been remade. Among the ruins of alien civilizations, building our own from the rubble, humanity still thrives. And there are vast fortunes to be made, if you know where to find them.... Captain Rackamore and his crew do. It's their business to find the tiny, enigmatic worlds that have been hidden away, booby-trapped, surrounded by layers of protection - and to crack them open for the ancient relics and barely remembered technologies inside.

The Atrocity Archives: Book 1 in The Laundry Files

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 57 mins)
• By Charles Stross
• Narrated By Jack Hawkins

Never volunteer for active duty... Bob Howard is a low-level techie working for a super-secret government agency. While his colleagues are out saving the world, Bob's under a desk restoring lost data. His world was dull and safe; but then he went and got Noticed. Now, Bob is up to his neck in spycraft, alternative universes, dimension-hopping terrorists, monstrous elder gods and the end of the world. Only one thing is certain: it will take more than 'control+alt+delete' to sort this mess out...

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 30 mins)
• By Dennis E. Taylor
• Narrated By Ray Porter
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Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

The Stars Are Legion

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 49 mins)
• By Kameron Hurley
• Narrated By Nicole Poole, Teri Schnaubelt
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Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion. Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family.

The Berlin Project

• UNABRIDGED (17 hrs and 10 mins)
• By Gregory Benford
• Narrated By Danny Campbell
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Karl Cohen, a chemist and mathematician who is part of the Manhattan Project team, has discovered an alternate solution for creating the uranium isotope needed to cause a chain reaction: U-235. After convincing General Groves of his new method, Cohen and his team of scientists work at Oak Ridge, preparing to have a nuclear bomb ready to drop by the summer of 1944 in an effort to stop the war on the western front. What ensues is an altered account of World War II in this taut thriller.

Too Like the Lightning: Terra Ignota, Book 1

• UNABRIDGED (20 hrs and 18 mins)
• By Ada Palmer
• Narrated By Jefferson Mays

Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer - a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away.

Change Agent: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 2 mins)
• By Daniel Suarez
• Narrated By Jeff Gurner
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New York Times best-selling author Daniel Suarez delivers an exhilarating sci-fi thriller exploring a potential future where CRISPR genetic editing allows the human species to control evolution itself. On a crowded train platform, Interpol agent Kenneth Durand feels the sting of a needle - and his transformation begins....

Void Star

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 57 mins)
• By Zachary Mason
• Narrated By Cassandra Campbell, Tristan Morris, Sean Pratt, and others
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Not far in the future, the seas have risen, and the central latitudes are emptying. But it's still a good time to be rich in San Francisco, where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor.

Ninefox Gambit

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 52 mins)
• By Yoon Ha Lee
• Narrated By Emily Woo Zeller
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To win an impossible war, Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general.

Captain Kel Cheris of the Hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris' career isn't the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the Hexarchate itself might be next.

Cold Welcome: Vatta's Peace, Book 1

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 1 min)
• By Elizabeth Moon
• Narrated By Brittany Pressley

Summoned to the home planet of her family's business empire, space-fleet commander Kylara Vatta is told to expect a hero's welcome. But instead she is thrown into danger unlike any other she has faced and finds herself isolated, unable to communicate with the outside world, commanding a motley group of unfamiliar troops, and struggling day by day to survive in a deadly environment with sabotaged gear. Only her undeniable talent for command can give her ragtag band a fighting chance.

New York 2140

• UNABRIDGED (22 hrs and 34 mins)
• By Kim Stanley Robinson
• Narrated By Suzanne Toren, Robin Miles, Peter Ganim, and others
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The waters rose, submerging New York City. But the residents adapted, and it remained the bustling, vibrant metropolis it had always been. Though changed forever. Every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. Through the eyes of the varied inhabitants of one building, Kim Stanley Robinson shows us how one of our great cities will change with the rising tides. And how we, too, will change.

Children of Time

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 30 mins)
• By Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Narrated By Mel Hudson
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Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.

Six Wakes

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 44 mins)
• By Mur Lafferty
• Narrated By Mur Lafferty
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It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood. At least Maria Arena had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died. Maria's vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn't the only one to die recently....

Space Tripping

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 59 mins)
• By Patrick Edwards
• Narrated By Nick Tecosky

Chuck never thought too deeply about whether aliens existed - not until Jopp, an intergalactic transport pilot, drunkenly crashed on Earth and tried to steal his truck. Now Chuck finds himself unwittingly roped into helping Jopp work off a debt to the universe's most powerful corporation, the Prime Partners Intergalactic Consortium. Through a series of mishaps and misfortune, the duo find themselves in possession of a mysterious black case. In order to survive, they must fend off murderous marauders, an interplanetary police force, and a peculiar crime boss.

Off to Be the Wizard

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 45 mins)
• By Scott Meyer
• Narrated By Luke Daniels
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It's a simple story. Boy finds proof that reality is a computer program. Boy uses program to manipulate time and space. Boy gets in trouble. Boy flees back in time to Medieval England to live as a wizard while he tries to think of a way to fix things. Boy gets in more trouble. Oh, and boy meets girl at some point.

Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi

• UNABRIDGED (2 hrs and 54 mins)
• By John Scalzi
• Narrated By Luke Daniels, Peter Ganim, John Scalzi, and others
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The ex-planet Pluto has a few choice words about being thrown out of the solar system. A listing of alternate histories tells you all the various ways Hitler has died. A lawyer sues an interplanetary union for dangerous working conditions. And four artificial intelligences explain, in increasingly worrying detail, how they plan not to destroy humanity. Welcome to Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 23 mins)
• By Becky Chambers
• Narrated By Rachel Dulude
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Rosemary Harper doesn't expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and, most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman, she's never met anyone remotely like the ship's diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot; chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks, who keep the ship running; and Ashby, their noble captain.

Borne

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 10 mins)
• By Jeff VanderMeer
• Narrated By Bahni Turpin
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In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company - a biotech firm now derelict - and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.

Mutineer: Kris Longknife, Book 1

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 26 mins)
• By Mike Shepherd
• Narrated By Dina Pearlman
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Kris Longknife is a daughter of privilege, born to money and power. Her father is the prime minister of her home planet, her mother the consummate politician's wife. She's been raised only to be beautiful and marry well. But the heritage of the military Longknifes courses through Kris' blood - and, against her parents' objections, she enlists in the Marines.