In the near future, humankind has mastered the arts of peace, tolerance, and acceptance. At least, that's what we claim.
But then they arrive. Aliens--the last of a dead race. Suffering culture shock of the worst kind, they must take refuge on a world they cannot understand; one which cannot comprehend the scope of their loss. Taciturn Gwen Pierson and super-geek Basil Grey are Specialists for the Institute--an organization set up to help alien integration into our societies. They take in Kalp, a widower who escaped his dying world with nothing but his own life and the unfinished toy he was making for a child that will never be born. But on the aliens' world, family units come in threes, and when Kalp turns to them for comfort, they unintentionally, but happily, find themselves Kalp's lovers.
And then aliens--and the Specialists who have been most accepting of them--start dying, picked off by assassins. The people of Earth, it seems, are not quite as tolerant as they proclaim.
Wattys 2021 shortlist. Shipwrecked on a criminal-infested mining colony, military telepath Reid Kaplan needs answers about the attack on his ship and the unusual alien activity on the planet he's stranded on. Unfortunately, some of those answers might lie in a mind as unique as it is dangerously flawed.
Customs inspector Jinsin Koel is used to having guns pointed at her head - but not ones attached to weapon-heavy cyborg insects who consider her lower on the food chain. The Xykeree, past enemies of humanity, should never have been allowed to dock at her home port. And they're just the start of her problems. Throw in a hereditary neurological illness and a secret society of soldiers genetically tailored for psionic combat and she has herself a whole new level of trouble ... the kind that could destroy her personal foundations and imperil billions of lives.
Complete novel (word count approx. 115,600; no cliffhanger ending)
Action adventure, space opera
Reader advisory: strong language, violence/horror, sexual content
UK spelling