Books
All the books, arranged by universe and series with notes on their recommended reading order.
New and Next
Here is where all the latest and upcoming books are listed. Some pre-release titles may only be available to industry reviewers and my mailing list subscribers. The Details pages explain who can get the title and how.
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Contract and Custom (ARC)
View full detailsBook 1 of the Contract and Custom arc of the Freeman Universe stories. Occurs decades before the events of the Quite Possibly Alien and Impossibly Alien arcs.
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Beneath the Hidden Gyre
View full detailsBook 1 of the Fogbound Realm series. Not a new book, but new cover art. You don't need this book if you already own Beneath the Hidden Gyre.
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Space Opera - Reading Order
Freeman Universe
If you're new to the universe, start with Contract & Custom.
If you want to dive into the deep end, start with Quite Possibly Alien. This series wants to be read in order.
Impossibly Alien takes off after the Quite Possibly Alien series ends. Think of the Impossibly Alien series as a second-stage booster that kicks in after the separation of Singularity Sun.
Quite Possibly Alien Series
The three main titles of the Quite Possibly series of books comprise one long story. The individual stories chronicle the adventures of three Merchant Academy roommates as they enter the workforce and discover the truth. The wider world doesn’t operate as described in the course catalog. There’s a fourth main character, Wisp, the cat, but none of the stories are written from the cat’s point of view. Maybe someday.
Quite Possibly Alien
Book 1
This one follows Ciarán. Ciarán mac Diarmuid finds himself apprenticed to Aoife nic Cartaí, the black sheep of the powerful nic Cartaí merchant clan. Aoife commands a mysterious sentient starship, a sinister relic excavated from beneath a glacier on the interdicted planet Murrisk. On this, his novice cruise, aboard a starship that is quite possibly insane, with a crew that are quite possibly pirates, Ciarán realizes he will most certainly die. They are headed into a war zone on a secret mission, and both he and his cat will need to level up to survive.
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Quite Possibly True
Book 1.5
This one follows Ciarán. Freemen are a motley mess of spacefaring outcasts packed together in aired-up cans. To avoid resurrecting feuds, grievances, and unsettled scores, they don’t talk about the past and they don’t name names. They say, “Don’t wake the dead,” and mean it like a law. But a clever merchant apprentice can find a way to bend custom until it springs back to bite him.
You don’t need to read this story to enjoy the rest. But if you do, you’ll learn things about Ciarán you’ll find nowhere else.
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Quite Possibly Allies
Book 2
This one follows Macer and Ciarán. Macer Gant lands his dream job as associate engineer aboard a Truxton in-system tug, a vessel with a secret he doesn’t know is a secret. When a dead hull plunges into the system on a murder course, Macer can pretend he doesn’t know the truth and thousands will die. He can stop the destruction but only if he changes jobs. To mutineer.
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Quite Possibly False
Book 2.5
This one follows Maris. Senior Captain Maris Solon is lured to the planet Sampson by the head of League security, where the foundations of her world are kicked out from under her. All of accepted history is laid bare and refuted. Either the evidence before her is the most elaborate hoax ever devised, or everything she believes is based upon a lie.
If you’re the sort of reader who likes to discover the world alongside the main characters, then don’t read this story. You will not be able to unlearn what Maris learns. If you need to know what Ciarán and friends don’t know, then this is the story for you.
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Quite Possibly Heroes
Book 3
This one follows Seamus, and Macer and Ciarán. Seamus, golden boy and scion of his clan, lands the berth he deserves, only to return from his apprentice cruise maimed, disgraced, and branded a slaver. Disowned and tossed down the Trinity system gravity well, he might as well be dead. But there is an evil spreading from star to star, and Seamus knows more about that evil than any man alive. It can’t be defeated alone. He’ll need help. And he knows where to find it.
Ciarán’s and Macer’s and Seamus’s adventures converge. Three Academy roommates. Three different paths to a single moment of truth. All one story.
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Quite Possibly Final
Book 4
This one follows Ciarán. I originally wrote this book as a book-between-the-books but decided it needed to be part of the main series. It’s the afterword, when Ciarán returns home. He has an adventure on the way, but it’s really about the return, when he’s no longer a boy pretending to be a merchant, but a man, stripped of all pretenses and forced to face, in person and in public, what he has become. The cover blurb focuses on the journey. But I think of this book as being about the destination.
This book doesn’t stand alone. Read the others first.
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Singularity Sun
Book 4.5
This one follows Ciarán. It’s a short bridge story between the events of Quite Possibly Final and Impossibly Alien. A story between-the-stories, it shows Ciarán at home and dramatizes the call to action that sets the next story in motion. There is unfinished business out there in the wider world. And danger has followed him home.
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Impossibly Alien Series
Impossibly Alien
Book 5
This one follows Ciarán. He isn’t exactly on the run but he is making himself scarce. Too curious for his own good, he’s tricked into taking on passengers who aren’t telling him everything they know. Civil war breaks out while he's crossing the League. He can’t turn back and he can’t jettison his unwanted passengers. It’s a mess, and it only gets worse for Ciarán, Impossibly Alien and the crew.
You could start the series here if you wanted. It would be like waking up on a rocket ride after first-stage separation. You’d have a good idea of where you were going but no clue as to how you got there. Still, it’s something to consider. You may want to read Singularity Sun first if you decide to do this. It provides an opinionated but concise historical summary of the world.
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Contract and Custom Series
Contract and Custom
Book 1
This is a new series set decades before the others. It follows the adventures of Detective Danny Brass, government surplus from a panopticon world, and Freeman Matchmaker Orla Lavelle, a judge, jury, and executioner from a culture that has no laws.
This is the first book in the series.
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Grimbright Fantasy - Reading Order
Fogbound Realm
If you are a completist, start with Beneath the Hidden Gyre. It is Book 1 of the series and focuses on Maddy's adoptive parents. Maddy doesn't appear, but the events are central to the series.
For readers who prefer to discover the world alongside Maddy, Maddy Dune and the Baleful Lantern is the place to begin.
Beneath the Hidden Gyre
Book 1
This is the first book in the series and a hard book to categorize. Eventually I decided "A Gothic Tale of Suspense and Redemption" does suit the story. My editor says technically it's a "chivalric romance," but no one writes those anymore.
Eusebius Quille is an enchanter, creating enchanted objects as only humans can. There is a cost to such magic. An enchanter can literally work themselves to death, their lifeless body living on as a sorcerer, powered entirely by their obsessions and deathless will.
Nadine Oortsgarten is a detective inspector in the Department of Criminal Magic, a law-enforcement agency whose sole responsibility is to prevent the practice of death magic. Sorcery is death magic.
Both she and Quille work for the Department. And they have history. When they arrive at the scene of a gruesome sorcerous murder, the ugly truth becomes clear. Quille is being framed for sorcery. And Nadine is the killer's next target.
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Maddy Dune and the Baleful Lantern
Book 2
This is the second book in the series and picks up years later, following the adventures of Quille and Nadine's adoptive daughter. It's an urban coming-of-age and found-family story. One where the neighbors bolt their doors.
Maddy Dune, or Madeleine Oortsgarten-Quille as her mother calls her, is a half-hellhound foundling rescued from crypto-naturalist pirates. When Maddy wins a spell-casting contest, saving the royal heir, she comes to the attention of people she'd rather avoid.
Presented with the beehive-shaped spelling bee trophy and ordered to care for it for a year and a day, Maddy soon discovers the trophy is either cursed or accursed. Opinions differ. Things go from bad to end-of-the-world worse when Maddy investigates.
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Maddy Dune and the Martyr's Crown
Book 3
This is the third book in the series and picks up immediately after Maddy Dune and the Baleful Lantern.
Just as Maddy begins to settle into her new life, a dragon arrives and commandeers the Department of Criminal Magic. Her family is forced to flee to Port Selby, a backwater town outside the fog, where human magic is weak. With her father's magic failing and her mother's Department badge no longer shielding them, Maddy takes the lead. But when she does, she comes face to face with her own worst nightmare. The monster staring back at her from the mirror.
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