When he first sets foot on Piatlo's space station, Sarl is close to bursting with plans for solving the planet's economic problems and creating the foundation for the galactic empire.

But nothing goes as planned. Barie, who first loved him, then rejected him, refuses to see the wonders of his new technology.

Then her ship is grabbed by a timeweaving space spider, and he puts imperial dreams aside to search through time and space for the woman he still loves, despite everything.

Thermeon has always been different than his fellows, not only because of his fangs and tail, but because of his visions. He has envisioned himself reaching the world of the gods and doing battle with the Scythe-God whose cruelty oppresses the people of his Stone Age homeland.

No one believes that Thermeon can achieve his goal, but their doubts cannot stop him, for a star has promised him her love, as well as eternal dominion over her celestial realm.

When her home village is burned and its people slaughtered, Morning Glory sets out to find her brother Thermeon, the only family she has left.

Along the way she discovers many secrets, and the most glorious of them is the splinter of a soul-gem, treasured by the galactic empire she has not yet encountered.

Then the man she has been raised to worshop as the Scythe-God claims the splinter along with Morning Glory and her brother. They are his possessions, and there is no escape from the roles he has determined for them. How can Morning Glory defeat this seemingly all-powerful being?

Riemis Horl spent thousands of years ruling the galaxy with an iron fist before he was killed in a mind-duel by his successor, Emperor Thermeon. Restored to life, he has a chance to apply the new philosophy that sprang to mind as he died. Can he become a better, kinder person, while continuing to wield the mindpowers that made him formidable?

His former protege, Thermeon, struggles as galactic emperor, a position for which he is unprepared. Horl wants to help, but when Thermeon finds his trace in the mind-net, he thinks Horl is trying to stage a comeback. To make matters worse, others are plotting to overthrow the new emperor and blaming Horl for their crimes.

Thermeon and his allies and enemies follow Horl to the planet Amugro, all of them seeking to end his second life.

Hunter's people have traveled for generations to wreak vengeance upon the Codeless people who have wronged them, but the monster who leads his enemies, the mindsea Thermeon, will try to subvert Hunter's mind for his own dark purpose.

From Thermeon's perspective, Hunter's people are primitives who will benefit from the galactic technology he will bestow upon them. But his main goal in seeking the capital of the Code Empire is union with their Empress, whom he believes will become the goddess-star of his visions.

Thermeon's daughter Quixa is certain that her father's misguided passion will spread death and destruction across the galaxy, and she has set out on her own mission to stop him.

Their paths will converge on the vast icy world of Meru-Iola.

Maxuas is the shining star of two empires. He wields the mindpowers of his father, Emperor Thermeon of the Common Mind, and the beauty and intelligence of his mother, Empress Burnished Vision of the Code. That is why he is destined to unite the galaxy under his rule.

But disposing of his bestial father isn't as easy as he had hoped. As the war grows ever more desperate, and millions die, a wave of nothingness seems to threaten the stars themselves. A third player of galactic chess lurks in the shadows, ready to step forward once father and son have destroyed one another.

For Katora, love must be all or nothing. She will do anything to find the man whose music has made her love him. Her father tries to make her abandon her quest by having her memories erased, but deep-level impressions cannot be squelched. The memory of a musical composition will resurface to lead Katora to Raggee of Wamatu

Katora has not yet realized that Raggee changed his name when he took the galactic throne. He is now the feared and hated mindsea-emperor Quintillion.

Katora's love for her husband, Emperor Quintillion, is under attack. Quintillion is the most powerful mindsea in the galaxy, and his rivals are reaching into Katora's mind to shake her faith in him.

The first to strike is Quintillion's young stepson, Torm. Far more deadly is his old rival, Thermeon, the former emperor. Supposedly Thermeon died in the coup of '393, but powerful mindseas can twist timelines, choosing an alternate reality in which they live on.

The timeline of imperial history will not be settled until Quintillion and Thermeon face off in a mind-duel.

Crippled by his last mind-duel, former emperor Thermeon dreams of regaining his beauty and power. If only he had a fast ship to take him to the mythical Stairway of Ice that leads to the center of space and time. Reality-warping forces exuded by the Stairway could restore him. But all the humans in the galaxy, starting with the current emperor, his great-grandson Resuvilus, are conspiring to keep him helpless.

Thermeon will call on family, friends, strangers, and even former foes to help him reach his goal. Some of his allies, including Shell, the daughter of the man who crippled him, will find their own powers blooming in the struggle. Others will lose their lives.

Raised as a slave, Puflet treasures freedom more than anything else.

With the help of a monstrous entity that infiltrates her mind during the struggle, Puflet fights her way to freedom and travels to the Mindsea Academy of Ulona, a glittering citadel of the empire's most reality-penetrating studies. There she hopes to find guidance in controlling her new-found powers.

Instead, she is met by enemies and fresh threats to her freedom. She must fight these threats, though she suspects that love, and not battle, is the one thing that will tame her monster.

Born a slave, Puflet has long searched for love. Now at last she has consented to join with Axkorpio, the man who has wooed her since she won her freedom.

Her hopes for happy married life are threatened by the mind-parasite that infests her husband. As its influence erupts, Axkorpio tries to carry out the agenda of murders, coups, and genetic manipulations mandated by the dead mindsea who infects him.

Can Puflet free the man who loves her from his malevolent alter ego? When she and Axkorpio summon steeds and lances for a joust in the hyperdimensionl reality of the mindsea academy they founded together, she feels a cold premonition that death is the only answer. But how can she kill the man she loves?

Mana has led a happy and quiet life caring for the empire's legendary Torsa horses, but the sudden, tragic death of the Empress brings an end to her carefree existence.

The glowworm plague and the razing of the capital are only the forerunners of a long-foreseen disaster that threatens the very existence of the empire. The eyes of the galaxy are fixed on the racetrack, where the next emperor or empress will be chosen through a series of dangerous multiverse horse races, and Mana suddenly finds herself elevated from obscurity as the newsers' hyped-up "Chosen One," the one who can avert catastrophe.

It's all just a misunderstanding, of course. There's no way an ordinary person like Mana can prevail against cruel and violent mindseas who will stop at nothing to reach the throne. But she has to try.

An ancient prophecy foretells that time will end when Thermeon embraces his goddess-star. He chooses to believe this means that the galactic empire will become eternal and that humans will achieve immortality.

Thermeon's sister, Morning Glory, and his former enemy Horl know that the woman Thermeon believes to be his goddess-star is lying to him. She intends to betray him, thinking this will teach him a lesson about treating women with respect. But it is a lesson he cannot learn. Thermeon is the most powerful mindsea in the galaxy. He can reach deep into the patternistic makeup of reality to shift probabilities from which the mortal world is built. His rage at the betrayal of his goddess-star will cause him to reach deeper still, transforming him into Spacetime in Ashes, the God of Evil Death. Then he will unravel space and time.

Morning Glory and Horl are determined to prevent the disaster, but Thermeon is impervious to reason and blind to any truth that contradicts his vision of eternal love and everlasting dominion. His false goddess-star, also a powerful mindsea, is just as stubborn. Is the galactic empire doomed?

Coming Soon

Svishal of Two Sisters Detective Agency starts tracking down a missing husband and discovers that her universe has been infiltrated by people from an alternate timeline. Traveling to the infiltraters' timeline, she finds an alternate Empire ruled by a goddess-empress who is part human and part fly. Can Svishal escape the Fly and her minions and get back home in time to warn everyone about the Fly's invasion plans?

Three humans have been killed by unfusing, and it seems that a Deep-level being called Dislocation Creep is responsible. But Deep-level beings can't find their way into any particular human universe unless they are summoned. Svishal of Two Sisters Detective Agency must find out who has been summoning Dislocation Creep and stop them from unleashing it again.

Morning Glory believes a single event is responsible for the Empire's recent wars and cataclysms. She convinces her old enemy Horl, the Empire's foremost temporal engineer, to send her back to change history. Queue crystals inscribed by the soul-gems guiding each timeline will allow travel between them.

When her alternate self reports, Morning Glory learns that the new history has suffered a disaster worse than any known to her timeline. Neither she nor her duplicate can return there, for that timeline has no soul-gem. But Horl suggests that they act through the deeper patternistic levels that enfold multiple timelines. By dancing, they can expand their minds and "seep" into the multiverse.

Horl and the Morning Glories and their partners begin a ritual dance, and others join them. After many nights of dancing, their minds attune to the Deep, and they begin to experience fantastic adventures as multiverse beings. Yet their goal to identify and heal the Empire's dark heart remains elusive.

Carolina hates her life in the dreary Martian colony of New America. When a stranger arrives in their midst, claiming to come from an alternate Mars with cities and canals, Carolina sees hope for better things. New America's leader, Lance, warns her that their visitor is evil and his tales fantasy, but Carolina is determined to escape Lance's oppressive rule, and she makes her plans.

Inspired by Carolina's tales of Focus and by reading about King Arthur, Lance's little brother Ryan leaves New America to go on a quest with two mysterious Martian knights who may be kings in disguise.

Meanwhile, Lance has been pursuing his courtship of Carolina so forcefully that she too flees the colony to rejoin her beloved striped horse in Focus.

Lance follows her, while his parents set out to find Ryan, and all of them find themselves swept up in the knights' quest for the Stairway of Ice that leads to the center of time and space.

United Earth quantum security is unbreakable. It is impossible for two people to swap cards.

What if the impossible happens?

What if one of the cards belongs to the leader of Earth?

All Arnie wants is to get away from his boxlike hab and his mindless job, perhaps to find a girl more likable than his cynical ex-girlfriend.

Things look promising when he meets Nikki on his dream vacation in Swedish Lapland. But then their ski tour goes terribly wrong, and Arnie and Nikki become entangled in murder and intrigue.

Amid the confusion of identity swapping, Arnie is faced with the impossible task of protecting Nikki from threats both external and internal while preventing the takeover of Earth by department heads gone berserk.

Since humanity's dawn, Tara has found herself reborn time and again, her thread of memory always anchored by the hunt of a sabertooth cat and a dance that began with the Neanderthals.

As history sweeps her into an era when science is beginning to unravel the mysteries of time and identity, Tara hopes at last to understand herself.

When time-sculpting technology runs wild, threatening Earth's future, Tara must decide whether her unique perspective can offer a solution.