#3 in the science fiction adventure Orphans Legacy series, a saga of spy games and military action on an interplanetary scale. The balance point of interplanetary Cold War II between Earth and monolithic Yavet tips unexpectedly toward peace. Covert ops Captain Jazen Parker and his sharp shooting lover and partner Kit Born slide from world saving hazardous duty to escorting a telepathic alien monster home from Earth to mate. And the two of them are forced to consider a quiet domestic future together. But when old enemies thirsts for power and revenge, Jazens problematic past, and his former girlfriend, upset Jazen and Kits personal balance point, the two cold warriors find their relationship, and their very survival, tested as never before. Lost in space, and from one another, they must each penetrate Yavet, the universes most insular and repressive world, then foil a plot that could turn Cold War II hot and nuclear¾or die trying. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). About Balance Point: "Fans of classic military SF will enjoy the twists and quips . . ."¾Publishers Weekly About Robert Buettner and the Orphan's Legacy Series: _Buettner goes well beyond . . . military science fiction . . . he understands . . . living as a soldier¾the boredom punctuated by terror, the constant anxiety and self-doubt, the random chaos that battle always is, and the emotional glue that holds together people who may have nothing in common except absolute responsibility for one another's lives.Ó ¾Joe Haldeman, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author _[O]nce in a while . . . a contemporary author penetrates to the heart of Heinlein's vision . . . to replicate the master's effects. . . . [O]ne such book [is] Robert Buettner's Orphanage.Ó ¾The Washington Post _Entertaining. Buettner shows the Heinlein touch.Ó ¾Denver Post

Zľie Adebola remembers when the soil of Ors̐ha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zľie's Reaper mother summoned forth souls.

When Robert Penn Warren wrote of his times. "In this century, and moment, of mania,/Tell me a story," doing so in a long poem about the painter. John James Audubon, he might also have been thinking of the poems and characters of Wilmer Mills, who grew up just minutes from where Audubon painted. The two middle sections of this book consist of personal narratives in the voice of a young man coming to terms with his decision not to be a farmer like his father and grandfather. These poems are symbolic of our nation, arguing quietly that, in a way, we are all orphans of the family farm. On either side of his personal account are bookend sections of narrative poems that tell about people from various walks of life. Using the word "orphan" in a broader sense to indicate people who have been marginalized or set apart, either by force or by choice, Mills' poems assert that alienation from a source of meaning in life creates orphans of all ages. Book jacket.