Mars. The red planet. A new frontier for humanity: a civilisation where humans can live in peace, lord and master of all they survey. But this isn't Space City from those old science-fiction books. It's more like Hell City, built into and from a huge crater. There's a big silk canopy over it, feeding out atmosphere as we generate it, little by little, because we can't breathe the air here. I guess it's a perfect place to live, if you want to live on Mars. At some point I must have wanted to live on Mars, because here I am.

Escaping conflict on Earth, an idealistic group of settlers arrive on a distant planet - Pax - with plans for a perfect society. The world they discover is rich with life, but this is not the Eden they were hoping for. The plants on Pax are smart - smart enough to domesticate, and even slaughter, its many extraordinary animals. To survive, the colonists realise that they must strike bargains of their own. But if they are to make Pax their home, they must go further, searching for a way to communicate and coexist with these utterly alien intelligences.

Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five. But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare travels to the Teixcalaanli Empire’s interstellar capital, eager to take up her new post. Yet when she arrives, she discovers her predecessor was murdered. But no one will admit his death wasn’t accidental – and she might be next. Now Mahit must navigate the capital’s enticing yet deadly halls of power, to discover dangerous truths. And while she hunts for the killer, Mahit must somehow prevent the rapacious Empire from annexing her home: a small, fiercely independent mining station. 

The multiverse business is booming, but there's just one catch: no one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara. Of the 382 realities that have been unlocked, Cara is dead in all but eight. On this earth, however, she survived. Identified as an outlier and a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the wastelands and given a job and a comfortable apartment in the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. Cara knows what it's like to feel hungry and scared, so she's more than happy to reap the benefits of her new position.

Lee thought she’d lost Mal, but now she’s miraculously returned. But what happened that day on the moors? And where has she been all this time? Mal’s reappearance hasn’t gone unnoticed by MI5 officers either, and Lee isn’t the only one with questions. Julian Sabreur is investigating an attack on top physicist Kay Amal Khan. This leads Julian to clash with agents of an unknown power - and they may or may not be human. His only clue is grainy footage showing a woman who supposedly died on Bodmin Moor.

A ruined city of the future lives in fear of a despotic, gigantic flying bear, driven mad by the tortures inflicted on him by the Company, a mysterious biotech firm. A scavenger, Rachel, finds a creature entangled in his fur. She names it Borne. At first Borne looks like nothing at all - a green lump that might be a discard from the Company. But he reminds Rachel of her homeland, an island nation long lost to rising seas.

The sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, Shadrapar is a museum, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity. Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new is Stefan Advani: rebel, outlaw, survivor. This is his testament, an account of the journey that took him into the blazing desolation of the western deserts and into the labyrinths and caverns of the underworld. 

On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. Here begins the epic story of a small African nation, told by a mysterious swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis. The tale? A playful panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction. The moral? To err is human. In 1904, in a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. 

The spectacular debut novel nominated for every major science fiction award in 2014, Ancillary Justice is the story of a warship trapped in a human body and her search for revenge. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Nebula Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, a James Tiptree Jr. honour and a Kitschie. Currently shortlisted for the Hugo Awards. They made me kill thousands, but I only have one target now.

Renata Ghali believed in Lee Suh-Mi's vision of a world far beyond Earth, calling to humanity. A planet promising to reveal the truth about our place in the cosmos, untainted by overpopulation, pollution and war. Ren believed in that vision enough to give up everything to follow Suh-Mi into the unknown. More than 22 years have passed since Ren and the rest of the faithful braved the starry abyss and established a colony at the base of an enigmatic alien structure where Suh-Mi has since resided alone.

A space salvager and her partner make the discovery of a lifetime that just might change the universe in this wild, big-ideas space opera from multi-award-winning author Elizabeth Bear. Haimey Dz thinks she knows what she wants. She thinks she knows who she is. She is wrong. A routine salvage mission uncovers evidence of a terrible crime and relics of a powerful ancient technology, just as Haimey and her small crew run afoul of pirates at the outer limits of the Milky Way and find themselves both on the run and in possession of ancient, universe-changing technology. 

In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. Upon its rooftops and amongst the shadows of its cobbled streets wait the Gatherers - the keepers of this peace. Priests of the dream-goddess, their duty is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe...and kill those judged corrupt. But when a conspiracy blooms within Gujaareh's great temple, Ehiru - the most famous of the city's Gatherers - must question everything he knows. Someone, or something, is murdering innocent dreamers in the goddess' name, stalking its prey both in Gujaareh's alleys and the realm of dreams.

The city states of the Lowlands have lived in peace and prosperity for decades: bastions of civilisation and sophistication. That peace is about to end. In far-off corners, an ancient Empire has been conquering city after city with its highly trained armies and sophisticated warmaking.... And now it's set its sights on a new prize. Only the ageing Stenwold Maker, spymaster, artificer and statesman, can see the threat. It falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of his people - as soon a tide will sweep down over the Lowlands and burn away everything in its path.

A triumph of the imagination, The Raven Tower is the first fantasy novel by Ann Leckie, New York Times best-selling author and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards.