author : James S. A. Corey

On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine which will one day become the drive that fuels humanity’s journey into the stars.

On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners is oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them.

On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off-planet.

On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home.

All these stories and more are featured in this unmissable collection set in the hardscrabble world of the Expanse.

Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artefact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding – with Holden’s destruction at its core.

Independent settlers stand against the overwhelming power of a corporate colony ship with only their determination, courage and the skills learned in the long wars of home. Innocent scientists are slaughtered as they try to survey a new and alien world.

James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are sent to make peace in the midst of war and sense in the heart of chaos. But the more he looks at it, the more Holden thinks the mission was meant to fall.

The Free Navy has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets. As the chaos grows, the crew of the Rocinante must undertake a desperate mission to Medina station.

But in the uncanny spaces past the ring gates, the choices of a few damaged and desperate people may determine the fate of more than just humanity.

In the thousand-sun network of humanity’s expansion, new colony worlds are struggling to find their way, and the crew of the ageing gunship Rocinante have their hands more than full keeping the fragile peace.

The inner planets and the Belt have formed a tentative alliance, but on the lost colony world of Laconia a hidden enemy has a new vision for all of humanity and the power to enforce it.

As old and new technologies collide, the tones unleashed have their own price. A price that will change the shape of humanity – and of the Rocinante – unexpectedly and for ever …

Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy, but the mysteries and threats to humanity only grow deeper.

In the dead systems where there are stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of an ancient genocide.

At the heart of the empire, Teresa Duarte embraces the burden of her father's godlike ambition – but the scientist Paolo Cortázar and the sinister prisoner James Holden are only two dangers in a palace thick with intrigue.

Meanwhile, the scattered crew of the Rocinante fights a brave rear-guard action against Duarte’s authoritarian regime. Memory of the old order falls away, and a future under Laconia’s eternal rule seems more and more certain. And with it, a battle that humanity can only lose…

The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the thirteen hundred solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again.

In the dead system of Adro, Elvi Okoye leads a desperate scientific mission to understand what the gate builders were and what destroyed them. And on the Rocinante, James Holden and his crew struggle to build a future for humanity out of the shards and ruins of all that has come before.

As nearly unimaginable forces prepare to annihilate all human life, Holden and a group of unlikely allies discover a last, desperate chance to unite all of humanity, with the promise of a vast galactic civilisation free from wars, factions, lies and secrets if they win. But the price of victory may be worse than the cost of defeat.