A Union ship headed for the spaceways seems a perfect vehicle for Elizabeth Yeager's escape, until she learns the ship is the bait in a plot to eliminate a group of space pirates

Financial analyst Caroline Cassandra "CC" Williams is determined to prove her worth to her corporate masters by discovering why a mining venture on an asteroid isn't profitable.

Zoe Goodwin wanted to start her career as an ensign in the Navy with a low-key mission. But with a raging invasion of AI starships in progress, pushing the Empire naval forces back at every battle, the handwriting is on the wall - humans will soon be obsolete. With the enemy attacking on all fronts, Zoe is assigned to a last-ditch mission to the Galaxy Core. Soon the young naval officer finds everything she knew about her history was built upon a lie. As the survival of her civilization becomes tied to her own, Zoe Goodwin realizes she must stand in defiance, prepared to give her life for the salvation of the Rim - or her entire civilization will go down in flames!

The enemy killed everyone on her ship. Except her. That was their mistake. Forty years after the Battle of Orinoco, Orien Satra - son of Jake and Andrea - is the XO of a heavy cruiser in the Rim Defense Force. His sister Ligeia is the Prime Minister of RimFed; and Ligeia's daughter Miranda is a newly commissioned ensign on the distant scout ship Troublemaker. In a crazy-quilt pattern of war, treachery, and the razor's edge of survival, their destinies are about to smash together. Ambushed by a sinister enemy, the Troublemaker is destroyed. More than 1,100 lights from home, badly injured, alone in a lifeboat - somehow, Miranda survives. Little does the young ensign know her destiny holds the key to the future of the entire Rim - and the lives of billions!

Derek Calver touches down on Lorn and is determined to join the Rim Runners to explore desolate planets. He joins the crew of Lorn Lady and sets forth for Mellise, inhabited by intelligent amphibians; for Groller, where the natives have just qualified as humanoids; for Stree with its tea loving lizards; and for Tharn, home of a pre-industrial civilization.