It was one of the less glorious incidents of the Idiran wars that led to the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported. Now, 800 years later, the light from the first of those deaths has reached the Culture's Masaq' Orbital. A Chelgrian emissary is dispatched to the Culture.

Cheradenine is an ex- special circumstance agent who had been raised to eminence by a woman named Diziet. Skaffen-Amtskaw, the drone, had saved her life and it believes Cheradenine to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine intelligence can see the horrors in his past.

Sharrow was once a warrior-spy and leader of a combat team. Living in a state of semi-retirement, she suddenly found herself the target of the Huhsz, a religious cult, and realised that she had to find and reform her old team if she had any hope of survival. By the author of the Culture sequence.

A science fiction novel.

The third novel from one of the most exciting new British SF writers of the decade.

Two and a half millennia ago, the Excession, a perfect black sphere, appeared in a remote corner of space. It did nothing, then disappeared. Now it is back, and someone who saw it the first time has information on its staggering potential, but she is living out her death in the Sleeper Service.