A one-way journey to Mars may be a mistake. Welcome to the first book of the On Mars series, a story of our near-future. Before you volunteer to settle on Mars, read Emma's struggle to slip the bonds of Earth and survive on a hostile planet. There are eight settlers on Mars until the colony's psychologist walks out an airlock to die on the cold, airless sands. Emma and her crewmates, the next mission of settlers, launch from Spaceport America despite the tragedy and despite their own misgivings. They take a tabby kitten with them, as requested by the survivors on Mars, and hope to revive the shocked colony. Emma leaves everything she knows behind, including a sometimes-boyfriend who's dropped from the next mission - all for a chance to explore the Martian surface in her robotic walkabout suit. Her arrival on Mars isn't welcomed by all the colonists, and the mission loses more lives and vital supplies in a crash landing that may not be an accident. Crippled by an inexplicable sense of desolation, they face an unforgiving planet and even Earth may hold danger. The question isn't if the colonists will explore, but if they'll survive at all.

It's bad luck to be born on Mars. Welcome to the second book of the On Mars series, a story of our near-future. Journey with Jake, born in the first Martian colony, as he seeks help from the only other humans on Mars. But Earthers are as dangerous as the hostile planet. The colonists need resources - metals and minerals - to survive, but their prospecting efforts have failed. A second generation Mars-born, Jake's lucky to avoid the sicknesses that plague the settlement, but refuses to father any children in the doomed colony. He joins a team to explore beyond the Tharsis Plain, but his first trip ends in near-disaster. Half a planet away, new-comers from Earth start a second colony, but refuse all attempts at communication. Jake, with his friend Martha, plots a way to contact them and perhaps find help for his family and friends. He continues to prospect despite the risk on Mars' hostile surface, and waits for the enigmatic Sino-African colony to respond. But greater dangers await if they do. Read this book to discover if humans can claim Mars as home.

When it comes to Mars, the focus is often on how to get there: the rockets, the engines, the fuel. But upon arrival, what will it actually be like? In 2013, Kate Greene moved to Mars. That is, along with five fellow crew members, she embarked on NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawai'i. For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates and gaining incredible insight into human behavior in tight quarters, as well as the nature of boredom, dreams, and isolation that arise amidst the promise of scientific progress and glory. In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Greene draws on her experience to contemplate humanity’s broader impulse to explore. The result is a twined story of space and life, of the standard, able-bodied astronaut and Greene’s brother’s disability, of the lag time of interplanetary correspondences and the challenges of a long-distance marriage, of freeze-dried egg powder and fresh pineapple, of departure and return. By asking what kind of wisdom humanity might take to Mars and elsewhere in the Universe, Greene has written a remarkable, wide-ranging examination of our time in space right now, as a pre-Mars species, poised on the edge, readying for launch.

A search for a scientist who disappeared while exploring the Martian desert. He is Alwyn Stafford and as the search progresses it becomes clear he has discovered something which other people want kept hidden. A new alien civilization? A first novel by a Mars astronomer.

Colony One Mars All contact is lost with the first human colony on Mars during a long and destructive sandstorm. Satellite imagery of the aftermath shows extensive damage to the facility. The fifty-four colonists who called it home are presumed dead. Three years later, a new mission sets down on the planet surface to investigate what remains of the derelict site. But, it's not long before they realize the colony is not as lifeless as everyone thought. Someone is still alive -- hiding out somewhere. Yet, before they can find the elusive colonist a strange illness starts to affect the crew. Pressure now mounts on Biologist, Dr. Jann Malbec, to locate the source and find a way to fight it. However, as she investigates she begins to suspect a dark and deadly secret lurking within the colony. A secret that threatens not just the crew but the entire population of Earth. With limited resources and time running out, she must find some answers and find them fast. Because if she doesn't, none of them will be going home. Colony Two Mars The only survivor of the ill-fated ISA mission is now stranded on Mars. Having been designated a bio-hazard by Earth, any hope of returning home is all but gone. She is alone, isolated, and abandoned. That is, until another human shows up in the main colony airlock. However, he's barely alive and soon dies without regaining consciousness. More disturbing though, a DNA test identifies him as a colonist who has already died, several years earlier - impossible as that may be. Nevertheless, there is only one place he could have come from, the mine on the far side of the Jezero crater - Colony Two. An outpost they had presumed was long dead. But if he survived, maybe there are others still alive? She now has no choice but to attempt the dangerous journey across the crater to investigate. Because if she doesn't find some answers soon, her only future is to die alone on Mars. Colony Three Mars Now that the truth of the genetic experiments on Mars has been revealed, new missions are on their way to gain control of this extraordinary technology. In the process, they seek to exploit and enslave the colonists-turning them into nothing more than lab rats. Worse, these newcomers are well armed, and prepared to go to war with each other to win control of the colony and its people. But Dr. Jann Malbec has a secret, one that she could use to spare the colony and save the colonists from this fate. However, by using it she will almost certainly doom Earth to a planet-wide pandemic of apocalyptic proportions. Yet she must choose. Earth or Mars-which is is going to be?

In this first novel of the Incarnations of Immortality, Piers Anthony combines a gripping story of romance and conflicting loyalties with a deeply moving examination of the meaning of life and death. This is a novel that will long linger in the reader's mind. Shooting Death was a mistake, as Zane soon discovered. For the man who killed the Incarnation of Death was immediately forced to assume the vacant position! Thereafter, he must speed over the world, riding his pale horse, and ending the lives of others. Zane was forced to accept his unwelcome task, despite the rules that seemed woefully unfair. But then he found himself being drawn into an evil plot of Satan. Already the prince of Evil was forging a trap in which Zane must act to destroy Luna, the woman he loved. He could see only one possible way to defeat the Father of Lies. It was unthinkable—but he had no other solution!