Lone Cone Library

The next frontier in space exploration is Mars, the red planet--and human habitation of Mars isn't much farther off. Now the National Geographic Channel goes years fast-forward with "Mars," a six-part series documenting and dramatizing the next 25 years as humans land on and learn to live on Mars. This companion book to the series explores the science behind the mission and the challenges awaiting those brave individuals. Filled with vivid photographs...

"A cranky old oxygen farmer on the Moon stumbles onto a century old secret that threatens to derail the first mission to Mars, destroy the Luna colony, and maybe even life on Earth" -- Provided by publisher.

Enlisting in the army on his seventy-fifth birthday, John Perry joins an interstellar war between Earth and alien enemies who would stake claims on the few existing inhabitable planets, unaware that the conflict involves much more than he understands

Pellar is an orphan taken in by Masterharper Zist. Though born mute, Pellar is a gifted tracker, and when Zist sets off to take over as haarper for Natalon's coal-mining camp, Pellar--along with his fire-lizard, Chitter--joins him on a secret mission of his own: to find out if reported thefts of coal are the work of the Shunned, criminals condemned to a life of wandering and hardship.

The Pax Comitus, rulers of Earth, send a spy into the heart of the Empyrean colonies to investigate the mysterious "angels," particles emitted by a nearby black hole, which the Empyreans use to ensure the ethical behavior of their officials.

"The Mimicking of Known Successes presents a cozy Holmesian murder mystery and sapphic romance, set on Jupiter, by Malka Older, author of the critically-acclaimed Centenal Cycle. On a remote, gas-wreathed outpost of a human colony on Jupiter, a man goes missing. The enigmatic Investigator Mossa follows his trail to Valdegeld, home to the colony's erudite university-and Mossa's former girlfriend, a scholar of Earth's pre-collapse ecosystems. Pleiti...

"It is twenty-five years since China established the first colony on the moon, and the lives of three people are about to collide. American Fred Fredericks is making his first trip there, his purpose to install a communications system for China's Lunar Science Foundation. But hours after his arrival he witnesses a murder and is forced into hiding. It is also the first visit to the moon for celebrity travel reporter Ta Shu. He has contacts and influence,...

"Avalon was thriving. The cold sleep colonists from Earth had settled on a verdant, livable world. The fast and cunning predators humans named "grendels" were under control, and the mainland outposts well established. Avalon's new mainland hydroelectric power station was nearly complete, and when on-line would compensate for the nuclear power systems lost in the Grendel Wars. Humans would have power, and with power came the ability to make all the...

"In the outer settlements of the human-occupied solar system, there are rumors about what was found deep under Neptune's frozen seas when a Hungarian billionaire's ship was lost with all hands. But the rumors are far more tame than the reality. When the billionaire's daughter mounts a mission to find the truth, her discoveries will up-end humanity's understanding of our origins on Earth"--