New Frontier — D.L. Harrison

Alicia Jones has a life that just keeps getting more complicated and ever more dangerous.

Toward the Rim of the Orion arm lies the unknown. She's tasked to start exploring it, and Earth's leaders don't want to wait a couple of years to build the fleets first.

Then there are the Seltan, a race that lives in the core, they could attack at any time.

Technology is another struggle, as she continually pushes herself for the next breakthrough in both new fields, and redesigns of the old. Especially as she starts to grasp the truth behind the design of those that seeded the galaxy with life.

It's a good thing she flourishes under pressure, of course there is one more thing that might be more disturbing and dangerous than all the rest that she'll need to deal with. Politics.