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Shards of Honor is the novel in which Lois McMaster Bujold introduced the SF world to Barrayar and Aral Vorkosigan, Beta Colony and Cordelia Naismith. From this beginning the author has created a multi-generational saga spanning time as well as space. Bujold is generally recognized as the current exemplar of the character-based SF adventure story.

Cordelia Naismith, legendary ship commander in the Betan Expeditionary Force, a woman who beat the Barrayaran militarists at their own game, was never one to fulfill stereotypes. Having married the commander of the forces her side defeated in battle, she was ready to settle down to a quiet life devoted to raising little Vor lordlings, interrupted only by the occasional ceremonial appearances required of the Lady Vorkosigan.

But Cordelia had not paid sufficient attention to what an important Vor lord she had married; when the Emperor died, only her husband's reputation for honor stood between her adopted planet and the unspeakable horrors of a dynastic civil war fought by first-rate soldiers armed with up-to-the-minute technology. Aral Vorkosigan had little choice but to take up the burden of Regency -- as Cordelia had little choice but to support him in his decison. But neither of them realized the part Cordelia -- and her unborn son -- would play in Barrayar's bloody legacy.

Nebula-nominated Novella; winner of Analog Readers' Poll for Best Novella/Novelette (this story was a Hugo finalist, but Bujold declined the nomination since its containing novel was also a finalist)

On Miles Vorkosigan's first military posting, he is sent to an outpost with Arctic temperatures and a psychotic, unstable commander. When the commander orders his men to enter a facility that is leaking poisonous radiation, the men revolt, and it's up to Miles to use his wits to avoid a massacre.

This story was originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact in February 1990, incorporated into Bujold's Hugo Award-winning novel The Vor Game, and later anthologized in The Space Opera Renaissance (1990).

Discharged from the Barrarayan academy after flunking the physical, a discouraged Miles Vorkosigan takes possession of a jumpship and becomes the leader of a mercenary force that expands to a fleet of treasonous proportions.

Miles Vorkosigan graduates from the Barrayaran Military Academy with high expectations of ship command but is disappointed with an assignment as meteorologist to an arctic training camp. There he narrowly averts a massacre between the trigger-happy base commander and mutinous recruits. Reassigned to investigate a suspicious military buildup near a wormhole nexus, he revives his undercover persona as mercenary Admiral Miles Naismith to negotiate between competing powers for control of the wormhole, to rescue the Emperor of Barrayar, and to watch his back for the arctic base commander seeking bloody vengeance.

Drafted into aiding a quest for ovarian tissue samples, Chief of Biology Dr. Ethan Urquhart confronts the female members of his species, who have been forbidden to live on their home planet.

In the wake of unexpected planetary peace and the disappearance of the Dendarii payroll, mercenary captain Miles Naismith attempts to discover the link between the insufferable Captain Galeni and the Komarran rebel expatriates.

A Collection: Borders of Infinity (short story), The Mountains of Mourning, Labyrinth and The Borders of Infinity (novella).

Injured in his mother's womb, Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, born a dwarf with brittle bones, faces off against his brother, a cloned stranger created to murder Miles and replace him.

When the Cetagandan Empress dies, Miles Vorkosigan and his cousin Ivan Vorpatril are sent to Cetaganda for her funeral as diplomatic representatives of Barrayar. But when the lifelong attendant of the Empress is found murdered, Miles and Ivan find themselves in the thick of things.

Miles tries to play detective in a strange, complicated, and deceptively alien culture, while lacivious Ivan manages to get himself involved with several noble females at the same time - a diplomatic no-no of the first order. As the plot thickens, it becomes clear that to save the Empire, it's up to Miles to do the job. He doesn't mind exactly, but... an adversary's Empire?

Restored to life after being pronounced dead, Miles Vorkosigan realizes that the event has left him with a profound weakness and is dismissed from his job, but things are further complicated when he remembers something that he saw while dead.

The orbital solar mirror vital to the terraforming of planet Komarr has been shattered by a ship hurtling off course, and the Emperor of Barrayar has sent Miles Vorkosigan to find out why. The choice of Miles is not a popular one on Komarr, where a betrayal a generation before drenched the name of Vorkosigan in blood. Amidst lies and treachery, Miles is caught in a race against time to stop a plot that could exile him from Barrayar forever. His hope lies in an unexpected ally, one with wounds as deep and honor as beleaguered as his own.

Despite all his power, Lord Miles Vorkosigan can't win the hand of the beautiful Vor widow, Ekaterin Vorsoisson, who is violently allergic to marriage as a result of her first exposure. But as Miles has learned from his career in the galactic covert ops, subterfuge is always an option. So he devises a cunning plan.

A COMEDY OF TERRORS from the inimitable award-winning Lois McMaster Bujold!

A rich Komarran merchant fleet has been impounded at Graf Station in distant Quaddiespace, after a bloody incident on the station docks involving a security officer from the convoy's Barrayaran military escort. Just the sort of situation that calls for the attention of the Imperial Auditors, Barrayar's special, high-level trouble-shooters.

As luck would have it, Lord Miles Vorkosigan, the empire's youngest Auditor, just happens to be in the area. Of course, he and his wife, Lady Ekaterin, have other things on their minds, such as getting home in time to attend the long awaited births of their first children. But when duty calls -- in the voice of Barrayar's Emperor, Gregor -- Miles has no choice but to answer. Waiting on Graf Station are diplomatic snarls, tangled loyalties, old friends, new enemies, racial tension, lies and deceptions, mysterious disappearances, and a lethal secret with wider consequences than even Miles anticipates. The entire system is in danger and time is running out.

Miles Vorkosigan is uncomfortably aware that the downside of being a trouble-shooter comes when the trouble starts shooting back...