International bestselling editor and writer with over 35 million books in print, Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in many genres, from science fiction to mystery, from western to romance. She has written under a pile of pen names, but most of her work appears as Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.

Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award.

She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own.

To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com).

The Diving Series Starter Bundle by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Called "page-turning space adventure" by Publisher's Weekly, "adventure SF in the old tradition" by Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine, and "a refreshingly new and fleshed out realm of sci-fi action and adventure" by Astro Guyz, Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Diving Series offers stellar tales of the far future.

This bargain-priced starter bundle includes the first three books in the series: Diving into the Wreck, City of Ruins and Boneyards.

Diving into the Wreck

Boss dives derelict space vessels, for money, yes, but more for their historical value. So, when Boss uncovers the find of a lifetime, she enlists the best divers she can convince to help her pursue it—off the grid and under the Empire's radar.

Boss' discovery leads her and some of her team to the Room of Lost Souls. Boss remembers the Room. It haunts her. Her mother died there. Now, a client wants her to go back. She wants Boss to help her uncover the Room's mysteries. But the truths she discovers might destroy everything Boss holds sacred.

Because the more they discover, the less they realize they know—and the more it will cost them all.

City of Ruins (Winner of the 2012 Endeavor Award)

Years after stumbling across her first Dignity Vessel, Boss now leads a team of people searching for "loose" stealth technology. She takes a team to Vaycehn to investigate a phenomenon called death holes, thinking they might lead her to stealth tech.

Captain Jonathon "Coop" Cooper and the crew of the Ivoire finally find a way out of foldspace despite their damaged anacapa drive. But he soon realizes the ship's return to normal space is anything but normal.

Coop and Boss hold the answer to questions both seek. But what they discover will change everything.

Boneyards

Stealth tech: a lost science everyone wants to reclaim. The woman who helped Boss dive the Dignity Vessel, known then as Squishy, claims a long and storied history with stealth tech. Her research into the lost science caused deaths before, and she failed to prevent more during a fateful dive. Now, she vows to find a way to destroy the technology once and for all.

Coop and Boss want to keep stealth tech out of the Empire's hands, too, but for different reasons. "Stealth tech" powers Coop's ship in the form of its anacapa drive. A drive that malfunctioned, leaving Coop and his crew stranded. But to find a way home, he must know what happened in the past.

When Squishy's actions threaten Coop's mission, he must make a choice—help Boss attack the Empire, or risk losing his hope for a future.

CURATOR'S NOTE

The Diving Series is one of my most famous series. It's won or been nominated for more awards than I can count. It started as a single image for me—a woman who loves history dives old ships…in space. And now the series is several books strong, with more to come. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

REVIEWS

  • "This is classic sci-fi, a well-told tale of dangerous exploration. The first-person narration makes the reader an eyewitness to the vast, silent realms of deep space, where even the smallest error will bring disaster. Compellingly human and technically absorbing, the suspense builds to fevered intensity, culminating in an explosive yet plausible conclusion."

    – RT Book Reviews (Top Pick) on Diving into the Wreck

  • "Diving into the Wreck has much to offer, including what even Boss—the avid researcher into lost forms of science—describes as 'secrets which, if understood, can teach us more about ourselves than any science can.'"

    – Locus Magazine

  • "Rusch delivers a page-turning space adventure while contemplating the ethics of scientists and governments working together on future tech."

    – Publisher’s Weekly on Diving into the Wreck

  • "City of Ruins has two great strengths going for it. One is the characters. Rusch does a marvelous job of bringing even minor characters to life…. The other appeal is the constant tension….Each scene is a taut wire, ready to snap."

    – Josh Vogt, SpeculativeFictionExaminer.com

  • "Rusch follows Diving into the Wreck and City of Ruins with another fast-paced novel of the far future."

    – Publisher’s Weekly on Boneyards

  • "Filled with well-defined characters who confront a variety of ethical and moral dilemmas, Rusch's third Diving Universe novel is classic space opera, with richly detailed worldbuilding and lots of drama."

    – RT Book Reviews on Boneyards
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

I tell people I sleep alone because I prefer to be alone. I do prefer to be alone. I like my own company. But the reason I sleep alone is that I dream.

Or, more accurately, I nightmare.

I thrash and moan and frighten anyone within hearing distance. The cabins on my ship, Nobody's Business, have soundproof walls, as does my berth on Longbow Station. I put my bed in the center room of my apartment on Hector Prime, and hope no one can hear me through the floor.

So far no one has. Or, at least, no one has tried to come to my rescue.

Even though I was rescued before.

For almost forty years, I have had the dream every night—unless I'm traveling in the Business or in my single ship. Movement—movement through space—somehow negates the dream.

Or maybe it echoes the rescue.

For the dream is based on fact. The nightmare actually happened.

My mother and I suited up and walked, hand in hand, into a room on an abandoned space station. Mother wanted to explore, and I didn't want her to go alone. I was maybe four, maybe five. I don't remember exactly, and no one has ever talked of it.

What I do remember is a jumble—colored lights, beautiful voices singing in six-part harmony. Mother's face turned upward toward the lights.

"Beautiful," she said, her voice blending into the chorus. "Oh, so beautiful."

And then she left me and floated toward that light.

I called for her, but she never came back. I huddled on the floor of that room, surrounded by light and voices, and wrapped my spacesuited arms around my spacesuited knees, waiting.

Alone.

I didn't scream then, and I don't scream now. I never scream. But I gasp myself awake as the oxygen in my suit fails. My visor cracks, and even though I am four, maybe five, I know I am going to die.

Obviously, I didn't die. My father found me and brought me back to our ship. But he never did find my mother.

And he never spoke of her again.