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It lures you in with the sensual promise of ecstasy beyond imagining. It seduces with a scent erotic and carnal, unleashing the raw animal passion in its once-civilzed human prey. And it kills with a terrible rapture no man or woman can resist. Beware the touch of... FIREFLY.

In its unearthly embrace awaits heven... and hell.

This short story originally appeared in Science Fiction Age, May 1997. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 3 (1998), edited by David G. Hartwell, and The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 1 (1999), edited by Frederik Pohl. The story is inlcuded in the collection At the Human Limit (2011).

Five hundred years in the future, Captain Mal Reynolds and his crew aboard the Serenity get more than they bargained for when they take on two passengers who are fugitives from an omnipotent consortium that dominates the galaxy.

The Battle of Serenity Valley was the turning point that led the Independents to their defeat at the hands of the Alliance. Yet the Browncoats had held the valley for weeks against all odds, before being ordered to lay down their arms. Command stated they refused to send in airpower because the ground war was "too hot." But the soldiers who were there insist that was not true...

While picking up a new cargo on Persephone, Captain Malcolm Reynolds is kidnapped by a bunch of embittered veteran Browncoats who suspect him of sabotaging the Independents during the war. As the rest of the crew struggle to locate him, Mal is placed on trial for his life, fighting compelling evidence that someone did indeed betray them to the Alliance all those years ago. As old comrades and old rivals crawl out of the woodwork, Mal must prove his innocence, but his captors are desperate and destitute, and will settle for nothing less than the culprit's blood.

The second original novel tying into the critically acclaimed and much-missed Firefly series from creator Joss Whedon.

An old flame of Jayne Cobb's, Temperance McCloud, sends a message to Serenity, begging him for help. She lives on the arid, far-flung world of Tethys, and bandits are trying to overrun her town to gain control of their water supply: the only thing standing between its people and dustbowl ruin. Jayne tries to persuade the Serenity crew to join the fight, but it is only when he offers Vera, his favourite gun, as collateral that Mal realises he's serious.

When the Serenity crew land at a hardscrabble desert outpost called Coogan's Bluff, they discover two things: an outlaw gang with an almost fanatical devotion to their leader who will stop at nothing to get what they want, and that Temperance is singlehandedly raising a teenage daughter, born less than a year after Temperance and Jayne broke up. A daughter by the name of Jane McCloud...

Mal wins an old map in a card game. Ancient and written in impenetrable symbols, the former owner insists it's worthless. Yet River Tam can read it, and says it leads to one of the Arks, legendary ships that brought humans from Earth-that-was to the 'Verse. The salvage potential alone is staggering. But the closer they get to the ancient ship, the more agitated River becomes. She says something is waiting inside, something powerful, and very angry...

Mal and the crew take receipt of a sealed crate which they are being paid to transport to Badger, no questions asked. Yet once their cargo is safely stowed aboard, River insists Mal should "space" it out of the airlock, for it contains, she insists, ghosts. With supplies running low, the crew desperately need another pay day, but soon find themselves paralysed by hallucinations of their deepest hopes and desires, so vivid they cannot be distinguished from reality. River is the only one unaffected, and desperately tries to awaken her crew mates, while the fantasies turn sour, and the ship begins to spin out of control.

The fifth original novel tying into the critically acclaimed and much-missed Firefly series from creator Joss Whedon.

A deadly disease
Months after Inara leaves Serenity, Mal and the crew finally learn the reason for her sudden departure: she is dying of a terminal illness. It is Kiehl's Myeloma, a form of cancer that's supposedly incurable, and Inara has very little time left.

A disreputable scientist
Through their shock and despair, rumors of a cure reach the crew. Expert Esau Weng is said to have developed a means to treat Inara's condition, but he has been disgraced and incarcerated for life on a notorious Alliance prison planet.

An infamous prison
On the planet of Atata, inmates are abandoned with no guards and left to survive as best they can. What's more, terraforming the planet did not take properly, so the world is a frozen wasteland. To save Inara, the Serenity crew must infiltrate the prison...

A heist by the Serenity crew goes badly wrong in a captivating original Firefly tie-in novel from the award-winning series by Titan Books.

City of sin
Neapolis: a desert city on planet Bethel where all manner of entertainment can be found: high-stakes gambling, luxurious hotels, exclusive clubs and any form of diversion imaginable may be had for a price. It's the eve of the annual carnival: three days of decadent revelry, and Serenity arrives to take a security job, guarding a costly shipment.

An unattainable ransom
Tragedy strikes: the shipment is stolen, and the wealthy owner kidnaps Zoë and Book, holding them to ransom for the lost shipment's value. If Mal can't find the enormous sum of five hundred platinum by the next evening, both of them will be killed.

A race against time
As the carnival begins the crew must attempt the impossible, calling on contacts, calling in favours, and revealing hidden talents to save their crewmates' lives. Meanwhile, the hostages have their own plans...

A breakneck adventure for the Serenity crew...

A simple job
Serenity is bound for the planet Kerry with a hold full of sealed, unidentified cargo for the planet's highest-ranking nobleman. The duke is a surprisingly genial man whose court brings all the fanciness and fun of Persephone's high society but little of the pretension--and, most importantly, he's got the promise of more work.

Some fine hospitality
Obliged to stick around while Inara is with a client--and hoping to score future employment--the crew settles in. The liquor flows freely at court, and there's food, entertainment, and comfortable lodgings to enjoy. Everyone is thrilled but Zoë. Her gut says something is off.

A vicious massacre
When the duke's estate is attacked in the middle of the night, Mal sends Serenity to safety while he and Zoë investigate. What they find turns the whole story of Kerry upside-down. Revolution is brewing, and each of them will have to decide where to make their stand, even if it lands them on opposite sides...

The Serenity crew land on the remote moon of Abel for a lucrative job but becomes embroiled in a young woman's quest for vengeance and a starving frontier town's fight for survival. Join Mal and the gang in this enthralling original tie-in novel from the award-winning series.

The Serenity crew head to Yell City, one of the settlements on Abel, a moon in the Rim. Their job: track down the killers of a local lawyer shot dead in the streets by a local gang. Their client is Annie Roberts, the eighteen year old daughter of the murdered man.

Lucky for them, Annie Roberts is more than capable of handling herself. Unlucky for them, the job is lot more complicated than they first think. Annie's father is not just the victim of local gang violence, but the target of some powerful men.

Taking down a local gang is one thing, but cleaning up a whole city? That's not a job for the Serenity crew. But when their ship is impounded, and Mal and the crew find themselves trapped in Yell City, they realise they are already in deeper than they could have ever imagined...

It all started with the geese. The Firefly crew is eager to get paid for their latest job, but when payment arrives as a gaggle of geese instead of a purse, their stay on the planet Brome gets an indefinite extension. Don't matter that the geese will fetch a pretty penny once they get somewhere to sell them. Without coin, they can't buy fuel, and without fuel, they can't get offworld. Serenity is stuck.

Luckily the foreman of the local fuel refinery, Lyle Horne, wants to hire them, but not to work in the factory. He needs their help on a job only a crew like Serenity can pull off. Horne is an old friend of Shepherd Book's. Mal would love to know more, but Lyle's got bigger fish to fry. An authority known as The Governess has been kidnapping his workers. Lyle wants them back.

The crew need to break into her fortress of an estate and retrieve the workers. Jayne, who suffered a goose-related injury stays behind to keep an eye on Horne while the rest of the crew split up to infiltrate the fortress. However, the Governess has her own story, as do the workers. Is Lyle lying? While they're trying to make sense of it all, the workers' children come aboard Serenity, with a plan to steal the ship and launch their own rescue mission.