Showing results by narrator "Patty Jansen" in All Categories

Melati escaped New Jakarta Space Station when it fell into Allion's hands. Her family was left behind the enemy lines. She signed up for active duty with the International Space Force in the hope they would liberate the station. Instead, they chose to maintain a crippling siege that has lasted for 10 months.

Tina had no choice but to escape Aurora Station on board the Starfighter Manila: The ship was about to blow up and would have killed the entire station. But they're in deep trouble. They have less than half the crew number necessary to fly the ship safely, the engines are damaged and Tina's travel companions are on a different ship. Aurora Station fell into pirate hands, so returning is not an option and the ship isn't safe to fly long distances. On top of that, several crew members may have been exposed to genetic treatment by the pirates.

They came from the poorest cities on Earth. They were promised free food and housing. They didn't know that they, or their children, would never see Earth again. A few years ago, a military doctor walking the corridors of New Jakarta Space Station saved Melati's life. She signed up for the International Space Force to pay back her moral debt to him.

After having escaped from Kelso Station, Tina and her crew run low on supplies. Both stations they can visit are in pirate hands. They have to make a toss-up decision on which would be the safest. They choose the bigger station. But while they’re in the dock, trying very hard not to be noticed until they can negotiate the ridiculous supply wait times before they leave again, Tina finds out that her daughter, Evelle, is a prisoner at the station.

On the backwater world of Cayelle, Tina Freeman runs a shop with her son Rex, 15 years old, half-human, half-android with a massive chip on his shoulder about having been born without arms or legs. The shop makes a modest profit, but when a creditor turns up wanting his money back, everything goes pear-shaped. She needs money, and needs it fast.

Verona Rupes, on the ice moon Miranda, is the tallest cliff in the solar system. If you jump off the top, it takes 700 seconds to reach the bottom. What can you do in the most important 700 seconds of your life? Jonathan and Gaby arrive at the ice moon Miranda to work with a local researcher and find that adventurists have snuck into an area infected with alien bacteria and have gotten themselves in trouble. Do these people have to be stopped because they're about to spread a bacterial infection to the human settlements or are there other factors at play?

If Miran had princesses, Ellisandra Takumar would be one. Smart, pretty, engaged to a high-profile man, everything a high-class Mirani woman should be. But things are not well in Miran. Many years of boycotts have taken their toll on society, and the regime becomes more desperate to keep its citizens under control. Revolt is brewing. As director of the state theatre, Ellisandra has been asked to stage a violent traditional play which stands stiff with threatening political messages for the populace.

Queen Johanna's position in Saardam is fragile. The barons and kings of the countries in the hinterland are not happy that she helped the royal family to survive and is now about to ensure the next generation. They vow to teach this little upstart country a lesson for once and for all. Johanna knows that if it came to a fight Saardam could never survive, so she has invited all the heads of state and other important people for talks to invest in the city's shattered infrastructure for the benefit of all.

En route to a job in the asteroid belt, the transport ship that Jonathan and Gaby are travelling on is required to give assistance to a space station in trouble. Astoria Station stopped responding to everything except automated messages. Jonathan and Gaby, familiar with disease and habitat collapse, offer to help. But not even they are prepared for what they find, or the efforts by some to sweep it under the carpet.

Johanna, Roald, Nellie, and Loesie return undercover to the devastated city of Saardam. In the months since they fled, the Fire Wizard Alexandre has ruled the town with campaigns of death and fear, focused on the eradication of the Church of the Triune, the former state church of Saarland that doesn't allow magic and that is more popular with the common people than with nobles. Johanna meets up with underground members of the church, even though her little gift of magic makes her feel ambivalent about it.

While space biologists Jonathan Bartell and Gaby Larsen attend a conference held at a base in the asteroid belt, a man approaches Jonathan in great distress. He's been asked to take over command of a previously commercial research station, but strange things started happening: plants glowing in the dark, lights turning themselves on and off, computers misbehaving. He discovered the cause, but Section Command issues a gag order on the issue. This is strange, because the Force is investing big in research.

She is lost on an alien planet. He said he'd help her get home. He lied. Jessica's plane develops engine trouble over the dry Australian inland - and crashes in thick, unfamiliar rainforest. A group she thinks is a search party shows up, but it consists of large-eyed not-quite people who kill all survivors except Jessica and a long-haired hippie named Brian. No one is going to come to rescue her. In fact, they're not even on Earth. While the pair wrestle their way through the forest in search for help, Jessica becomes ever more suspicious of Brian.

Mikandra Bisumar is useless to her father: She carries the curse of infertility that plagues the Endri people of Miran. Forced to work in the hospital to pay her duty to her proud nation, she dreams of becoming a Trader, one of the people who bring great prosperity to Miran. To her surprise Iztho Andrahar, from the city's most prestigious Trading family, has agreed to take her on. That is where her troubles begin.

Self-published authors are coming to realize that a stable career is about a backlist of titles and keeping that backlist selling. But how do you do this? Invariably, advice given by other authors includes holding promotions and lowering the price of the first book in series, or even making it free. However, few people mention one of the most powerful ways to keep your backlist selling: the author mailing list.

An army of 7000 artificial soldiers accidentally received the same brain implant. A space fleet with 7,000 artificial human marines hurtles through space at near-light-speed to an interstellar war...Dr. Charlotte West, the neuro-technologist responsible for the soldiers’ artificial brains, travels in the support fleet. Two months before the arrival at the war site, the marines start fighting each other and disobeying commands. When they are brought in for tests, Charlotte finds that someone has made a mistake that endangers the entire space fleet. They're all in love with her.

The last thing Steven remembers was waiting in a prison cell for the results of an appeals trial. His crime: speaking out against unfair treatment of workers. His opinion of his sentence: it's political. Next thing he wakes up on a commercial ship run by the Merlin Company, where he meets Luciane, Rollo and Jack, fellow prisoners of an inconveniently political nature, and the four will be sent down to a planet where a research team has vanished. Everything needed to survive and return is on the abandoned base, and all the company wants is to know what happened to twelve scientists.

Picture this: you've somehow come into the possession of a dragon (long story--you can listen to the previous book if you really want to know, but it's kinda embarrassing, so you don't need to). And you need to return that dragon to the place it came from. You've tried putting it on a truck--but it destroyed the truck. You've tried putting it on the train--but it destroyed the carriage. Now you've put the dragon in a warehouse while you figure out what to do, but--You guessed it: the dragon destroys the warehouse.

A fisherwoman finds a dead man on a tiny offshore island, with no clue about how the man got there. A camel driver deep in the northern desert rescues a man who speaks no known language, but is clearly well-educated. An ancient sect that was considered close to extinct sucks in all the land's young people and creates tension that may well lead to a civil war.

After many years in space, Jonathan receives the message he's been dreading: his father has taken a fall. He can no longer live by himself and Jonathan's cousin has managed to get him into a care home. Jonathan is an only child, he is no longer in contact with his mother, and a deep sense of guilt forces him to return to Earth to look after his father's wellbeing.

Ravi has left Tiverius with Dana, who knows far more than she will tell him about the mysterious people who have rekindled interest in the coastal "Gathering" movement. Tylve is an adherent of this movement as her family has been through the generations. She doesn't understand the influx of new people. Since fleeing her village after her home was searched, she has arrived in the City of Glass, where a fateful meeting brings her in contact with a spy. Meanwhile, Kotori has gone to investigate the "lights in the sky" that he's kept secret for over twenty years.