Showing results by author "Kristine Kathryn Rusch" in All Categories

His name: Miles Flint. His occupation: Retrieval Artist. His job: find the Disappeared - outlaws on the run, wanted for crimes against alien cultures. The catch: Flint isn't working on the side of the law anymore.

Who better to narrate today's best science-fiction stories than today's favorite science-fiction stars? This exciting collection features many.

As a Retrieval Artist, Miles Flint helps the Disappeared, saving the lives of those oppressed under the Earth Alliance regime. He owes his livelihood and his very sense of honor to a woman known as Paloma. It was she who was responsible for setting him on this path. And now she has been murdered.

What would the world be like if the space race started during World War II? If Teddy Roosevelt had fought in World War I? If Joseph McCarthy had been elected President? Those and other questions are answered in these nine stories of alternate histories, when the world as we know it might have turned out different than it is today, if only one minor (or major) change had occurred in history.

Forensic anthropologist Aisha Costard has been summoned to Mars to examine skeletal remains recently discovered beneath a building erected by the Disty aliens. The bones belong to a human woman who vanished 30 years ago with her children.

Retrieval Artists help the lost find their way back home, whether they like it or not. Specialized private detectives, they investigate the most unusual crimes in the galaxy. But Miles Flint isn't a Retrieval Artist. He's just a cop, trying to do his job.

Watch out - the Earth just fell into a dark sun's orbit! Or maybe you'd rather visit a theme park called Hell? These are just two of the strange and unnerving tales you'll find in this collection of great science fiction and fantasy stories.

As a young recruit, brilliant engineer Nadim Crowe accidentally destroys an entire Scrapheap full of ships. Now, decades later, he ends up on the crew of the Renegat, the only ship in the Fleet ever sent on a mission backward to investigate an ancient Scrapheap. Something invaded that Scrapheap, and the Fleet wants to know what. Or who. The Renegat: The only ship the Fleet dares risk. The Renegat: A ship of misfits and screw-ups sent on an impossible mission. All alone in deep space. 

Strange things have always happened in Seavy County, the most rugged stretch of Oregon's coastline. Violent storms spring up like magic, even when the rest of the state enjoys sunshine; unearthly beings are sometimes glimpsed in the twilight; and those who live there understand that a rare enchantment still lives in the world, although they seldom speak of it. For Seavy County is home to not just animal life, but to fantasy life as well: mythical creatures long vanished from the rest of the planet.

For Amelia's second marriage, Gram gives her a visit to a wedding counselor. Not a marriage counselor, but someone who will advise how to achieve a perfect marriage through the perfect ceremony. Superstitious nonsense, Amelia thinks, but she doesn't want to offend Gram. But as the meeting progresses, Amelia realizes what the perfect wedding means - and why Gram wants her to have one.

Are vampires a bloodthirsty menace to mankind? Or simply misunderstood creatures struggling to survive? After hearing these seven stories, you'll be able to decide for yourself. From the horrifying to the humorous, some of today's finest authors share stories about one of mankind's oldest imagined evils, the vampire. From F. Paul Wilson's title story to Esther Friesner's comic tale of rival teens trying to best one another, these stories bring vampires to (un)life, in all their majesty and terror.

Hadad Yu "recovers" things for a living. Things, not people, not animals. Things. Until he gets in trouble and must work for the alien Gyonnese. They want a person to answer for her crimes, and they want to use Yu to get her. He reluctantly agrees, and sets off events that will change his life and the lives around him forever.

Leaving Boss behind to continue diving the Boneyard, Ivoire Engineer Yash Zarlengo returns to the Lost Souls Corporation’s headquarters to analyze the data from the runabout they discovered there. Convinced the experience in the Boneyard proves the Fleet still exists, Yash buries herself in her work, interested in little else. Ivoire Captain Jonathan “Coop” Cooper notices Yash’s growing obsession with finding the Fleet and joins her in her search. For the first time in six years, the crew of the Ivoire feels real hope. Coop and Yash know all too well the dangers hope can pose. 

When the captain and senior crew abandon the Renegat, linguist Raina Serpell assumes command. She needs to get the ship and remaining crew home. As the ship comes under attack from the planet below, Raina must first figure out how to operate the ship’s firepower. Harder still, she must battle her own past to become captain in more than just name alone.

On Jupiter's moon, Callisto, a mysterious Recovery Man kidnaps Rhonda Shindo after he terrorizes and then abandons her brilliant 13-year-old daughter, Talia. While authorities on Callisto search for Rhonda, her employers at the Aleyd Corporation try to gain custody of Talia. Somehow, Callisto authorities realize, she's part of the crime, even though she was left behind.

Ten people signed up to help Squishy in her fateful mission. Only five returned. Paired up in teams of two, they set out across the Enterran Empire to infiltrate and sabotage the Empire’s bases used to back up their stealth tech research. But what exactly happened on those bases? Who survived? Squishy’s Teams provides the answers to those burning questions and reveals twists to the ongoing saga no one sees coming.

Boss loves to dive historical ships, derelict spacecraft found adrift in the blackness between the stars. Sometimes she salvages for money, but mostly she's an active historian. She wants to know about the past--to experience it firsthand. Once she's dived the ship, she'll either leave it for others to find or file a claim so that she can bring tourists to dive it as well. It's a good life for a tough loner, with more interest in artifacts than people.

Captain Tory Sabin knows all too well the dangers of the anacapa drive, and that sometimes ships enter foldspace never to return. The ships simply disappear, taking their crews with them. Responding to a distress call from Captain Jonathan "Coop" Cooper, Sabin knows she must race against time to find him and his ship. Because although the Ivoire becomes the latest ship to enter foldspace and not return, she refuses to give up hope. She resolves to find the Ivoire. But her search for answers will lead to truths that will change her life forever.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch's novel Diving Into The Wreck spawned a universe so vast that one novel can't contain it. The Spires of Denon doesn't involve Boss or her crew. Instead, this powerful short novel follows Meklos Verr, hired to guard an archeological dig near the mysterious Spires of Denon. There, Verr encounters the prickly Gabrielle Reese who heads the dig, and he meets some cave divers who aren't quite what they seem.

Somewhere in the galaxy, millions suddenly perish in a blinding instant of pain, anguish, and despair, a disruption of the Force so shocking, it is felt by Luke at his Jedi academy on Yavin 4 and by Leia at home on Coruscant. It is a deed that rivals the terrifying power of the Death Star, the long-destroyed weapon of the defeated Empire.