Three thousand years from now Earth is mostly desert and is little more than a quaint tourist destination for history buffs. Humans have spread out across the stars colonizing as they went with varied success and even survived first contact with an alien race and the war that followed. That means there are a lot of historic relics just waiting to be found by antiquarian Alex Benedict and his pilot Chase Kolpath. In addition to brokering deals for his wealthy clients Alex spends chasing down rumors of lost colonies, missing ships, and even people for profit. This doesn't make him popular with museums and those who feel he's nothing more than a graverobber. In the eight book series Alex and Chase have dealt with a wide variety of puzzles and frequently narrowly avoid dying because there is always someone who would prefer that those unsolved mysteries remain unsolved.

Author Kristing Cashore made quite a splash in the YA Fantasy genre with Graceling. It's a good book but so standard for the genre that its mostly forgettable except for the world defining gracelings, people blessed with an extraordinary ability with the physical mark that their eyes are two different colors. It can be virtually anything but the most feared are those with mental gifts which brings us to the worst of those, King Leck, who used his Grace to brainwash and control an entire country. His assassination in the book Graceling leaves his daughter Bitterblue as queen of a people who have no idea how much of their past is real and have to live with the horrible things they did under his control. As Bitterblue delves deeper into the secrets of the past she discovers her father was worse than she ever imagined and quite literally a Monster from beyond what they thought was an impassable barrier. The companion novel Fire takes place on the other side of the barrier in a strange land with Monsters instead of Graces with their own story of Leck that will bring the two lands together.

World War III began with Chinese warbots walking out of the ocean near Washington D.C. They were initially held off by the Outlaw Motorcycle Club, who happened to be holding their annual rally outside the city, but the situation just kept escalating both on Earth and in space. For ten years humanity did its worst to destroy both the Earth and themselves until the alien bugs came along and forced peace with their superior technology. The survivors now live in a drastically altered climate with discarded bio-weapons and deadly technology hidden beneath the surface. Thanks to their early heroics, the Outlaws now have a strong relationship with the US government. One of their most well known heroes was a twelve year old girl named Shining Smith who single-handedly brought down one of the Mother Warbots and earned her status as the first female made-man of the Outlaws. Sadly Shining, known as Little Girl to the club, died not long after. Or did she? The club received a distress signal from her old kutte (battle vest) which leads the Enforcer Jagger to a junkyard in the desert formerly known as West Virginia. There he finds a strange woman and her even stranger cats under attack.

A deadly pandemic strikes the world and within days ninety-nine percent of the human population is gone. The survivors all gained a super-human talent in the process but half of them are violent lunatics. The Savage North Chronicles, beginning with The Darkest Winter, follows a small band of survivors from Anchorage, Alaska as they struggle through the outbreak in December and the chaos that follows. In addition to the craziness of a civilization ending apocalypse, there are wilder elements as well, including super human abilities and military scientists who wipe memories and resurrect the dead. The survivors include Elle, who is a cruise ship photographer who wakes up after falling sick and immediately discovers that she can defend herself by summoning fire, and Jackson, who is a state trooper who's pregnant wife is killed by an intruder. Together with four children Elle picked up the group follows Jackson's intuition and sets off for Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. Its a mix of The Walking Dead series, a survival game called The Long Dark, and a lot of conspiracy theories. 

The Osiris Serum changed the world by giving some people magic that they could pass on to their children. The powerful Prime mages are rich, famous, and utterly ruthless in the defense of their Houses. They can create tornadoes, level buildings, or crack the human mind like an egg so everyone else does their best to avoid becoming collateral damage. Nevada Baylor is a private investigator who specializes in insurance fraud and cheating spouse cases to support her family. Her life goes sideways when she is forced to apprehend notorious bad boy Adam Pierce (Fire) who is accused of bank robbery and murder. Her own talent, the ability to detect lies, is useless against a combat mage so it looks like a suicide mission until she's kidnapped by an even more dangerous Prime, Mad Rogan (Telekinesis) and the situation devolves from there. There's a grand conspiracy among the most powerful mages to create anarchy by burning down Houston, TX and Nevada may be the only one who can save the city.

Anne Bishop returns to the world of the Others, an alternate Earth where the Terra Indigene were the apex predators long before Humans came along, with Lake Silence and Wild Country. Lake Silence is unrelated to the original series with all new characters in a small Other controlled town about a middle aged woman who finds herself caught between her scuzzy ex-husband and the surprisingly friendly Others. Surprising because they usually prefer to eat humans rather than help them. The Wild Country returns to the towns of Bennet and Prairie Gold and overlaps with the end of the original series. It turns into an old west style showdown with vampires and wolf shifters squaring off against human outlaws determined to take over Bennet. 

The Six Families made a deal with the Anvarrid invaders. In return for leaving their Fortresses untouched the psychics of the Families would become warriors to guard the Anvarrid. They would share their technology and give up their individual languages. The Families lied and rather than share technology that could be misused they hid it. Also, one promising engineer in each generation was designated the Oathbreaker and taught the language of the Fortress so they could communicate with it. Then the Horn Family discovers a man freezing to death on a glacier within sight of the abandoned Salonen Fortress. A man with no memory, probably a spy sent by a hostile empire, of pure Salonen DNA, and with an instinctive knowledge of engineering. Killing him and burying Salonen would be the safe choice. Or the Horn might risk their independence, the Treaty, and their way of life to recall the technology of the founders and bring Salonen back to life.

North of the river the Moon watches over the Winterlands and her people, the Ugaro. Its a harsh land but the nomadic tribes of the Ugaro are a tough people of strength and endurance. To the south live the tall slender Lau in the Summerlands where the Sun is stronger, the Moon weak, and the Stars are only a faint glimmer in the night. After four years of war things are not going well for the Ugaro. Each of their warriors is a match for three Lau but the Lau fight in shielded formations and have far greater numbers. After a devastating battle his tribe leaves Ryo inGara behind as a tuyo, a kind of sacrifice offered to the enemy in the hopes of appeasing their desire for further bloodshed. If a tuyo is accepted the enemy may kill them in any manner they wish and won't pursue the defeated warriors. In return the defeated tribe and their allies will no longer make war with them. Ryo expects to die horribly with no guarantee that the Lau will actually honor the custom of his people. Lord Aras, the Lau commander, sees in Ryo an opportunity to learn more about his people and why they started the war so he spares his life. Unfortunately, what he learns confirms his fears that a powerful sorcerer has been manipulating both sides and probably plans to seize power over both lands.

The Families in their underground fortresses have little interest in the world above, although they did offer aid to the first Larossan refugees who came to their lands due to their ancient mandate to preserve humanity. When the Anvarrid invaders eventually conquered Larossa they chose to negotiate with them rather than fight and risk the last six fortresses built by the Founders. In exchange for being mostly independent they vowed to give up their secret languages and technologies and spend their first three years as adults guarding the Anvarrid nobility. They make exceptional guards due to the high number of psychics, called sensitives, among them and the mental discipline required by anyone living with empaths. An uneasy peace has now existed between these three cultures for almost two centuries.

Nahadoth, a being of darkness and chaos, was alone until Itempas, a being of light and order, joined him. They were both overjoyed to have a companion, and eventually they were joined by a third god, Enefa. With her to provide balance they were able to create the world and humans to worship them. They also discovered that by mingling their energy they could create lesser gods that contained various attributes of their parents. Nahadoth was change itself, but for Itempas, the god of law and order, change was something to be feared and there came a time when Enefa could no longer maintain peace between them. In an effort to return to their earlier happiness Itempas kills Enefa but this only results in Nahadoth vowing revenge. The human world is broken in this war between the gods until eventually Itempas emerges as the victor. Nahadoth and his children and bound by Itempas to serve the family of his favored priestess, the Arameri.