Book eight in the New York Times bestselling series Now that the news of Horus's Treachery is in the open, a time of testing has come. Some Legions have already declared allegiance to the Warmaster, while the loyalty of the others lies firmly with the Emperor. As Horus deploys his forces, loyalist Astartes learn that the Wordbearers are sending a fleet to Ultramar, home of the Ultramarines. Unless they can intercept and destroy it, the Ultramarines may suffer a blow from which they will never recover. Battle for the Abyss continues the epic tale of the Horus Heresy, a galactic civil war that threatened to bring about the extinction of humanity.

“The Cold War . . . was a fight to the death,” notes Thomas C. Reed, “fought with bayonets, napalm, and high-tech weaponry of every sort—save one. It was not fought with nuclear weapons.” With global powers now engaged in cataclysmic encounters, there is no more important time for this essential, epic account of the past half century, the tense years when the world trembled At the Abyss. Written by an author who rose from military officer to administration insider, this is a vivid, unvarnished view of America’s fight against Communism, from the end of WWII to the closing of the Strategic Air Command, a work as full of human interest as history, rich characters as bloody conflict. Among the unforgettable figures who devised weaponry, dictated policy, or deviously spied and subverted: Whittaker Chambers—the translator whose book, Witness, started the hunt for bigger game: Communists in our government; Lavrenti Beria—the head of the Soviet nuclear weapons program who apparently killed Joseph Stalin; Col. Ed Hall—the leader of America’s advanced missile system, whose own brother was a Soviet spy; Adm. James Stockwell—the prisoner of war and eventual vice presidential candidate who kept his terrible secret from the Vietnamese for eight long years; Nancy Reagan—the “Queen of Hearts,” who was both loving wife and instigator of palace intrigue in her husband’s White House. From Eisenhower’s decision to beat the Russians at their own game, to the “Missile Gap” of the Kennedy Era, to Reagan’s vow to “lean on the Soviets until they go broke”—all the pivotal events of the period are portrayed in new and stunning detail with information only someone on the front lines and in backrooms could know. Yet At the Abyss is more than a riveting and comprehensive recounting. It is a cautionary tale for our time, a revelation of how, “those years . . . came to be known as the Cold War, not World War III.”

Eighteen-year-old Cas Leung struggles with her morality and her romantic relationship with fellow pirate Swift as she and the Minnow crew work to take down wild sea monsters, dubbed Hellbeasts, who are attacking ships and destroying the ocean ecosystem.

Mustering for war against the orks, the Ultramarines Legion is attacked by the Word Bearers on the planet of Calth, and the forces of Chaos openly reveal their part in the Heresy. Unaware of the wider Heresy and following the Warmaster’s increasingly cryptic orders, Roboute Guilliman returns to Ultramar to muster his Legion for war against the orks massing in the Veridian system. Without warning, their supposed allies in the Word Bearers Legion launch a devastating invasion of Calth, scattering the Ultramarines’ fleet and slaughtering all who stand in their way. This confirms the worst scenario Guilliman can imagine – Lorgar means to settle their bitter rivalry once and for all. As the traitors summon foul daemonic hosts and all the forces of Chaos, the Ultramarines are drawn into a grim and deadly struggle in which neither side can prevail.

Cassandra Leung’s been a sea monster trainer ever since she could walk, raising genetically engineered beast to defend ships crossing the NeoPacific ... until pirates snatch her from the blood-stained decks.

The story of the fate of two cousins in sixteenth century northern France. The younger, sixteen-year-old Henry Maximilian, has set out to become a soldier and a poet. The elder, twenty-two-year-old Zeno, has left the seminary to make himself an alchemist-philosopher.

Continue to explore the sprawling metropolis of Varangantua! Quillon Drask is a haunted man, wrestling with the daemons of his past. With a reputation that draws only the strangest cases, he is intimately familiar with the malevolent underbelly of Varangantua. Yet nothing that has gone before could have prepared the probator for the horrors which now blight the southern district of Polaris. Faced with a savage crime with grisly implications, Drask is thrust into a hidden game of corrupt conspiracy, warring families and blasphemous revelations. Only by mastering the bitter lessons of his career and his own tortured insight can Drask hope to bring the perpetrators to justice, and curb the monstrous hunger which stalks the city.