She was a teacher, not a spy.High school Spanish teacher Marianne Woolsey is happy with her life, until Earth Central Command forces her to sign up for a 26 year assignment light-years from Earth. In spite of herself, from the moment she meets her ne...
Marianne Woolsey is falling apart.The only human on Tolar, linked empathically to their ruler, her life is a bed of roses -- but roses have thorns. Marianne must struggle with a bond-partner who can’t be tamed and a home world plotting to get her b...
Short stories by the author of The Marann.At the beginning of the 25th century, Cassie Johnson is a debt worker just starting a new life on a new planet. When she finds a pest in the basement of a building she’s inspecting, her life changes....
Two short stories from the award-winning author of The Marann and Daughters of Suralia. First Contact Earth's Ambassador to Tolar, Smithton Adler Russell, gets a call in the middle of the night.Field Work The ruler of Monralar is ambitious, ruthl...
An exiled ruler turned hired assassin, Farryn plots his revenge on his home planet while building a criminal empire on the human colony world of Far India. But when his former wife dares to follow him into human space and attracts the attention of Ea...
In this new short story set in Tolari Space, Bertie's in a fine fettle. A Kekrax food fight rages in the cafeteria, unannounced trade ambassadors arrive from Earth, and his boss, the new ruler of Monralar, is mysteriously unavailable for comment. Jus...
For Bertie, love could be fatal.Stationmaster and exiled aristocrat Albert St. John Rembrandt—Bertie to his friends—is in love with a provincial ruler he's always believed he can't have. Finding out the hard way that some Tolari are as po...