"How about I tell you a story? One that has been passed down through the ages... One told to me by your father..." In an Earth reborn, ruled over by a tyrannical, anthripe hating king, half-human Astraea struggles against her morals by joining a theif guild to earn enough money to care for her sick grandmother. But on one fateful night, when her life is thrown into chaos, she must choose to embark on a perilous journey to save the seemingly mythical dryads, or leave their fate to malevolent King Lucian who plans to eradicate them for good. But how can she succeed when her only guide, are stories that have been burried throughout the ages, including her own bloodline?

Autonomous is a thriller about wild-ass technology, the future of intelligence, floating cities in the middle of the ocean, murder, and autonomous underwater vehicles. It's a stand-alone story, loosely connected to my book Salvage (Masque, 2013). If you've read Salvage then you've already met a few of the characters, but if you haven't, what's the worst than can happen? Right, but besides that? If a story can have a shape, then I think Autonomous is funnel-shaped. It begins sort of loose, with a wide spread of characters who appear to be moving in different directions, and as we progress, the funnel walls impose on the narrative. They close in—metaphorically—and most of the characters and their stories slip into the more concentrated flow with other characters and their stories until we have a richer, deeper, more complex story that carries everyone through to the end. (Almost everyone). Then again, maybe that's every story ever told? Scratch all that. Autonomous is a murder mystery at its core, but it's also about many different people, and groups of people, taking sides to solve a serious problem. And by serious I mean civilization-ending, or deadly on a global scale. Not all of these people end up on the same side. Some of these people do not survive. Some of these people are inside one person—the principal character, Nathan Isenart, is made up of three very different aspects of the same person, sharing the same name, sharing the same physical form, but not much after that. Autonomous is also about three fairly-secret military programs with rival visions for the world's future. There, I think that covers some of it. If that sounds daunting or just weird, don't forget that Autonomous is really about wild-ass technology, the future of intelligence, floating cities in the middle of the ocean, and autonomous underwater vehicles. —Chris Howard, 2014, Somewhere near the Atlantic

When Vincent Tucat learns he's to be robbed, he turns the tables on the thief to enhance his own reputation. However, in city ruled by thieves, burglary and politics often go hand in hand, and things are rarely as straightforward as they appear.