Return of the Aghyrians series
Set in Barresh in contemporary times, about 100 years before the Ambassador series, this is a group of four standalone novels that feature characters that are about to strike out on their own. The books are full of adventure, strange worlds and relationships across cultures.
Watcher’s Web
Return of the Aghyrians 1
She is lost on an alien planet. He said he’d help her get home. He lied.
Jessica’s plane develops engine trouble over the dry Australian inland—and crashes in thick, unfamiliar rainforest.
A group she thinks is a search party shows up, but it consists of large-eyed not-quite people who kill all survivors except Jessica and a long-haired hippie named Brian.
No one is going to come to rescue her. In fact, they’re not even on Earth.
While the pair wrestle their way through the forest in search for help, Jessica becomes ever more suspicious of Brian. Why does he know so much about the world where they have ended up? Why is he so insistent on helping her?
Jessica has always been able to use her mind to tell animals what to do and now she’s hearing voices in her head. Another man is pleading her not to listen to Brian. Except this man can kill someone with a single look, and he uses his mental powers to order people around.
In this utterly strange and dangerous world where people seem to want something from her, who can she trust?
A gritty survival story in the vein of The Hunger Games, set in a Star Wars locality.
Trader’s Honour
Return of the Aghyrians 2
Mikandra Bisumar is useless to her father: she carries the curse of infertility that plagues the Endri people of Miran. Forced to work in the hospital to pay her duty to her proud nation, she dreams of becoming a Trader, one of the people who bring great prosperity to Miran.
To her surprise Iztho Andrahar, from the city’s most prestigious Trading family, has agreed to take her on. That is where her troubles begin.
Her father is so angry with her that she has to leave her home. Worse, the Andrahar Traders have been accused of smuggling. Iztho has disappeared and the business license suspended.
Mikandra has nowhere to go, except try to help Iztho’s brothers prove their innocence.
In her last meeting with Iztho, he mentioned getting married to a woman from neighbouring city-state of Barresh. Iztho’s brothers know nothing of this, and think she is crazy.
Going to Barresh by herself while never having left the country is probably not the smartest idea, but she’s desperate for the family’s licence to be restored, because without her job, she’ll be homeless.
In Barresh she finds strange and creepy people who can read minds and who know things about the Endri people that can both solve their fertility problems and tear apart the ancient foundation on which Miran is built. Iztho had found out these things, which someone is trying to trying to keep secret. This is where her troubles really begin.
Soldier’s Duty
Return of the Aghyrians 3
Izramith Ezmi is many things: a member of the feared, all-female Hedron guards, a war veteran recently returned from a pointless and bloody mission, and impatient, angry and above all, lonely. With her contract about to run out, she may be on her way to becoming a ruthless mercenary, since what she really wants–becoming a mother–is out of the question. Her family carries a gene that causes deeply malicious madness. Her nephew was born with it and her useless sister has left him in the care of an institute. A baby. Two days old.
She wants to ask her uncle, himself born with the condition, if he can do anything for the boy. But her uncle and his band of mad outcasts have gone missing, rumoured to be on the world of Ceren.
So Izramith takes another hired-gun contract in Barresh which is a city-state on Ceren. The job is to provide security at a high-profile wedding. Simple and straight-forward, right? No crawling in mud, no shoot-outs, no mangled bodies and blood-drenched soil. And meanwhile, she can try to find her uncle.
Except he isn’t there, and the job isn’t simple. Izramith and her team discover evidence of an extensive spying ring that threatens the entire city.
Postponing the wedding would be an admission of defeat, so it’s time for desperate measures. Izramith leads a small team in what has to go down as the most hare-brained mission to ever be undertaken in the universe. Much is at stake: peace, the lives of her uncle and her nephew, and her own.
Heir’s Revenge
Return of the Aghyrians 4
If Miran had princesses, Ellisandra Takumar would be one. Smart, pretty, engaged to a high-profile man, everything a high-class Mirani woman should be. But things are not well in Miran. Many years of boycotts have taken their toll on society, and the regime becomes more desperate to keep its citizens under control. Revolt is brewing. As director of the state theatre, Ellisandra has been asked to stage a violent traditional play which stands stiff with threatening political messages for the populace. She hates it, but speaking out would risk that she’d be cast out from the only world she’s ever known.
Next to her house is the burnt ruin of the house of another high-class family, the Andrahar family. They fled Miran for political reasons when Ellisandra was a little girl and the house has lain untouched ever since. One night, she spots a mysterious young man walking around the yard, putting out pegs and pieces of string. He’s re-building the house. That makes no sense, because the family is no longer welcome in Miran, and who is he anyway?
She is curious and investigates. He seems too good-natured and naïve for his own good, so rather than telling her brothers, she tries to shield him from her own society. And so starts the slide that leads to her being cast out from the only life she’s ever known.
Return of the Aghyrians Omnibus
Return of the Aghyrians Omnibus
A space opera series that spans four self-contained stories that add up to a larger tale.
In Watcher’s Web, Jessica is lost on an alien world after a plane crash, or that’s what she thinks. In her efforts to return home, she discovers a horrible truth about herself. Two men are overly keen to help her, but which of them speaks the truth?
In Trader’s Honour, Mikandra has just been accepted as apprentice with an influential Trading family when she sees her life’s dream evaporate from under her. Going to Barresh to locate the family’s missing money sounds simple enough, but she uncovers layers of betrayal by people she trusted.
In Soldier’s Duty jaded soldier Izramith accepts a contract providing security for a an event in Barresh. Privately, she is looking for her uncle who disappeared in the neighbouring nation of Miran. He was not the only one; people like him have been disappearing for years. Attempting to free them from the heart of Miran makes her undertake the most hare-brained operation of all her military career.
In Heir’s Revenge the task of facing the tyrant of Miran is left to the least likely person of all: Ellisandra, a genteel young lady whose normal job it is to run the Mirani state theatre. She has no guns. Her weapons are words and a single public performance of a classic play.