Lois McMaster Bujold
1) Falling Free
When engineer Leo Graf arrives at a free fall station circling a mining planet to teach welding, he's in for his first shock: the genetically engineered inhabitants have an extra set of arms in place of legs. A second shock comes when the company that owns these four-armed "quaddies" decides to abandon them, and Leo must use all his ingenuity to respond to this new crisis.
Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and a Hugo Award finalist.
After failing entry to the Barrayaran Military Academy, Miles Vorkosigan chances on an obsolete jumpship with a rebellious pilot and arranges to take over the ship. Events escalate wildly from there, and soon Miles reinvents himself as Admiral Naismith of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. "The pace is breathless, the characterizations thoughtful and emotionally powerful... Highly recommended," writes Booklist.
Captain Ivan Vorpatril is happy with his relatively uneventful bachelor's life of a staff officer to a Barrayaran admiral. Ivan, cousin to Imperial troubleshooter Miles Vorkosigan, is not far down the hereditary list for the emperorship. Thankfully, new heirs have directed that headache elsewhere, leaving Ivan to enjoy his life on Komarr, far from the Byzantine court politics of his home system. But when an old friend in Barrayaran intelligence
...4) Cryoburn
Miles Vorkosigan is back!
Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death. Barrayaran Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan can hardly disapprove—he's been cheating death his whole life, on the theory that turnabout is fair play. But when a Kibou-daini cryocorp—an immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its all-too-mortal frozen patrons into an unknown future—attempts to expand its franchise into the Barrayaran
...In this sequel novella to Mira's Last Dance, Temple sorcerer Penric and the widow Nikys have finally reached safety in the duchy of Orbas when a secret letter from a friend brings frightening news: Nikys' mother has been taken hostage by her brother's enemies at the Cedonian imperial court, and confined in a precarious island sanctuary.
Their own romance still unresolved, Nikys, Penric, and of course Desdemona must infiltrate the hostile
...On his way to his betrothal, young Lord Penric comes upon a riding accident with an elderly lady on the ground, her maidservant and guardsmen distraught. As he approaches to help, he discovers that the lady is a Temple divine, servant to the five gods of this world. Her avowed god is the Bastard, "master of all disasters out of season," and with her dying breath she bequeaths her mysterious powers to Penric. From that moment on, Penric's life is
...7) The Vor Game
Miles Vorkosigan graduates from the Barrayaran Military Academy with expectations of ship command, so he is disappointed with the assignment of meteorologist to an arctic training camp. But his tenure in the snow-covered north is cut short when he narrowly averts a massacre between the trigger-happy base commander and mutinous recruits.
Miles is reassigned to investigate a suspicious military buildup near a wormhole nexus. Reviving his
...In his thirtieth year, Penric fell in love with light ...
Learned Penric, a sorcerer and divine of the Bastard's Order, travels across the sea to sunlit Cedonia on his first covert diplomatic mission, to attempt to secure the services of a disaffected Cedonian general for the Duke of Adria. However, nothing is as it seems: Penric is betrayed and thrown into a dungeon, and worse follows for the general and his kin.
Penric's narrow escapes
...In a world where malices, remnants of ancient magic, can erupt with life-destroying power, only soldier-sorcerer Lakewalkers have mastered the ability to kill them. But Lakewalkers keep their uncanny secrets—and themselves—from the farmers they protect. So when patroller Dag Redwing Hickory rescued farm girl Fawn Bluefield, neither expected to fall in love, marry, and defy both their kin to seek new solutions to the split between their
...Lord Miles Vorkosigan, youngest Imperial Auditor to be appointed by the Emperor since the Time of Isolation, has a problem that all his new power can't solve: unrequited love for the beautiful Vor widow Ekaterin Vorsoisson. Ekaterin is violently allergic to marriage as a result of her first exposure. But as Miles learned from his late career in galactic covert ops, if a frontal assault won't do, go to subterfuge.
Miles has a cunning plan,
...11) Passage: Passage
Filled with magic, heroism, and all-too-human characters, Bujold's Sharing Knife saga is both a gripping adventure and a poignant romance. In this third volume, Fawn, the young farm girl, and Dag, the seasoned soldier-sorcerer, set off to find fresh solutions to the perilous split between their peoples and encounter new hazards both human and uncanny.
The farmers and riverfolk have long distrusted the power of the mysterious and aloof Lakewalkers,
...12) Legacy: Legacy
Fawn Bluefield, the clever young farmer girl, and Dag Redwing Hickory, the seasoned Lakewalker soldier-sorcerer, have been married all of two hours when they depart her family's farm for Dag's home at Hickory Lake Camp. Having gained a hesitant acceptance from Fawn's family for their unlikely marriage, the couple hopes to find a similar reception among Dag's Lakewalker kin. But their arrival is met with prejudice and suspicion, setting many in
...The popular adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, a clever and outlandish science fiction hero for the modern era, continue in these three tales. In "The Mountains of Mourning," Miles is dispatched to a backcountry region of Barrayar, where he must act as detective, judge, and executioner in a controversial murder case.
In "Labyrinth," Miles adopts his alternate persona as Dendarii Mercenary Admiral Naismith for an undercover mission to rescue
...A man broken in body and spirit, Cazaril returns to the noble household he once served as page and is named secretary-tutor to the beautiful, strong-willed sister of the impetuous boy who is next in line to rule. It is an assignment Cazaril dreads, for it must ultimately lead him to the place he most fears: the royal court of Cardegoss, where the powerful enemies who once placed him in chains now occupy lofty positions.
But it is more than
...15) Shards of Honor
When Cordelia Naismith and her survey crew are attacked by a renegade group from Barrayar, she is taken prisoner by Aral Vorkosigan, commander of the Barrayan ship that has been taken over by an ambitious and ruthless crew member. Aral and Cordelia survive countless mishaps while their mutual admiration and even stronger feelings emerge. A science fiction romance by a Hugo and Nebula Award winning master.
Bujold's SHARDS OF HONOR is the first
...A NEW NOVEL IN THE AWARD WINNING SERIES FROM MULTIPLE NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD! Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan returns to the planet that changed her destiny.
FUTURE TENSE
Three years after her famous husband's death, Cordelia Vorkosigan, widowed Vicereine of Sergyar, stands ready to spin her life in a new direction. Oliver Jole, Admiral, Sergyar Fleet, finds himself caught up in her web of plans in ways he'd never
...Komarr—Miles Vorkosigan is sent to Komarr, a planet that could be a garden with a thousand more years of terraforming; or an uninhabitable wasteland, if the terraforming project fails. The solar mirror vital to the project has been shattered by a ship hurtling off course, and Miles has been sent to find out if it was an accident, or sabotage. But once there, he uncovers a plot that could exile him from Barrayar forever—and
...18) Penric's Demon
On his way to his betrothal, young Lord Penric comes upon a riding accident with an elderly lady on the ground, her maidservant and guardsmen distraught. As he approaches to help, he discovers that the lady is a Temple divine, servant to the five gods of this world. Her avowed god is The Bastard, "master of all disasters out of season", and with her dying breath she bequeaths her mysterious powers to Penric. From that moment on, Penric's life is
...Some eight months after the events of Penric and the Shaman, Learned Penric, sorcerer and scholar, travels to Easthome, the capital of the Weald. There he again meets his friends Shaman Inglis and Locator Oswyl. When the body of a sorceress is found in the woods, Oswyl draws him into another investigation, and they must all work together to uncover a mystery mixing magic, murder, and the strange realities of Temple demons.
20) Demon Daughter
A six-year-old shiplost girl draws the kin Jurald family of Vilnoc into complex dilemmas, and sorcerer Learned Penric and his Temple demon Desdemona into conflict—with each other. It will take all of Penric's wits, his wife Nikys's wisdom, and the hand of the fifth god's strangest saint to untangle the threads of their future.