An explorer-tug captain, Alex Racine spends years in space, harvesting ice asteroids for New Terran's water-hungry outposts. His existence is both routine and solitary...until his ship's computer detects a damaged alien craft drifting into system. Recognizing a once in a lifetime opportunity to make first contact, Alex pulls off a daring maneuver to latch on to the derelict. When Alex boards the Reveur, he encounters the ship's AI. The entire craft is riddled with holes, damage that could only have come from a fight. While confronting the AI for answers, Alex is shocked to learn that eighteen survivors, trapped in stasis, are on board. Like the New Terrans, the Meridiens are human-both settlements originating from colony ships sent from a dying Earth-but oddly the Meridiens' technology is hundreds of years ahead, which makes their story all the more terrifying. The Reveur was attacked by an unknown craft, the first of its kind ever encountered. The mysterious silver ship made no contact before firing its beam weapon, and its attack was both instant and deadly. Intrigued by the Meridiens' story, and even more so by their leader, the exotic Renee de Guirnon, Alex decides to help them repair their ship and return home...but not without the means to protect themselves. For, he was haunted by one thought: where there was one, there might be many."

Nine years of tranquility came to an abrupt end when a Meridien starship entered the Hellebore system, sounding a dire warning for Alex Racine, the Haraken president. Unwanted visitors had arrived again. But this time, they're not alien; they're human. Claiming to have followed the course of a colony ship launched a millennium ago when Earth wrestled with resource wars and climate change, the mission commander, Antonio Garcia, requests a meeting with the planet's leaders. The Earthers profess a kinship with all humans, and their great desire is to have Meridien join their United Earth (UE). Alex Racine journeys to Meridien to investigate and uncover the Earthers' intentions. In the Haraken world, SADEs (self-aware digital entities) have been freed from their boxes aboard the Meridien-built starships. The mobile SADEs are powerful players in Alex's strategies, inventing ingenious methods to investigate the Earthers and their ship. Complicating matters, the Meridien leadership is in turmoil. The Council Leader insists her people ignore the Earthers, but this path has costs. As tensions escalate, Garcia sends a request for support to his superiors back on Earth, lest his discovery of the rich, Meridien worlds, boasting unbelievable advanced technology, slip through his grasp. A UE battleship heeds the call, escalating the pressure for action. Join the journey as the Harakens and Meridiens work together to protect their planets and their way of life from the newest invaders."

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • Publishers Weekly New Hyde Hospital’s psychiatric ward has a new resident. It also has a very, very old one. Pepper is a rambunctious big man, minor-league troublemaker, working-class hero (in his own mind), and, suddenly, the surprised inmate of a budget-strapped mental institution in Queens, New York. He’s not mentally ill, but that doesn’t seem to matter. He is accused of a crime he can’t quite square with his memory. In the darkness of his room on his first night, he’s visited by a terrifying creature with the body of an old man and the head of a bison who nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It’s no delusion: The other patients confirm that a hungry devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down. Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to fight back: Dorry, an octogenarian schizophrenic who’s been on the ward for decades and knows all its secrets; Coffee, an African immigrant with severe OCD, who tries desperately to send alarms to the outside world; and Loochie, a bipolar teenage girl who acts as the group’s enforcer. Battling the pill-pushing staff, one another, and their own minds, they try to kill the monster that’s stalking them. But can the Devil die? The Devil in Silver brilliantly brings together the compelling themes that spark all of Victor LaValle’s radiant fiction: faith, race, class, madness, and our relationship with the unseen and the uncanny. More than that, it’s a thrillingly suspenseful work of literary horror about friendship, love, and the courage to slay our own demons. Praise for The Devil in Silver “A fearless exploration of America’s heart of darkness . . . a dizzying high-wire act.”—The Washington Post “LaValle never writes the same book and his recent is a stunner. . . . Fantastical, hellish and hilarious.”—Los Angeles Times “It’s simply too bighearted, too gentle, too kind, too culturally observant and too idiosyncratic to squash into the small cupboard of any one genre, or even two.”—The New York Times Book Review “Embeds a sophisticated critique of contemporary America’s inhumane treatment of madness in a fast-paced story that is by turns horrifying, suspenseful, and comic.”—The Boston Globe “LaValle uses the thrills of horror to draw attention to timely matters. And he does so without sucking the joy out of the genre. . . . A striking and original American novelist.”—The New Republic

The Omnian expeditionary fleet sails for the faraway place they call "the wall." The worlds of humankind have consolidated their resources to create a powerful armada to confront the alien federation. During the Omnians' previous encounter with an alien fleet at the wall, the Nua'll comm sphere spoke to them in multiple languages. When the messages were deciphered by SADEs, the humans' digital friends, the Omnians realized two things. One, they would face a vast empire composed of hundreds of races, and, two, the Nua'll were not the leaders of the federacy. They had spoken of masters. Multiple challenges faced Alex Racine, the Omnian leader, to cobble together the fleet he required. The Confederation, which was composed of many colonies, could produce ships, but most of its people lacked the will to fight. Haraken and New Terra were worlds with limited material production capability. But they produced individuals who were anxious to deliver a blow against the federation. A debate raged over whether humans should flee, wait, or fight the onslaught of giant spheres, which ravaged humankind's worlds, and the probes that spied on them. It was Alex Racine's choice to confront the alien race. Anything less was only delaying the inevitable. The Omnians knew nothing about what they would find beyond the wall, where the federation's enormous empire lay. Alex knew he couldn't defeat the federacy in a long series of protracted engagements. His plan was to attempt to conquer and divide. He just needed to find the right sentient race for his idea to work.

From one of the bestselling memoirists of all time comes a stunning and heartbreaking novel about an intrepid girl who challenges the injustice of the adult world in a triumph of imagination and storytelling.

The 1950s was a fascinating decade for the great liners. After the global devastation of two decades of war and Depression, shipyards were creating one new liner after another, it seemed, to rebuild and renew passenger ship services all over the world. There were the likes of the Kungsholm and Oslofjord from Scandinavia, the French Flandre and a succession of new liners from P&O-Orient, the Italian Line, Messageries Maritimes and many more. The new hopeful era of the 1950s was highlighted by such brilliant, headline-making ships as the speedy United States, breaking records on an unprecedented scale, the engines-aft Southern Cross and the mastless Orsova. Showcased beautifully by the stunning images and nostalgic outlook of prolific maritime historian William H. Miller, this book shines a well-earned spotlight on some of the world's most popular passenger liners.