Bøger af Susan Staneslow Olesen

Continuing the adventures of the fractured Kirushenko family from Best Intenions. Home. The one place Sarah never wanted to leave. Even when Father dragged them place to place, home had moved with them. Valeria promised they'd never split up, then promised the split would be just two days long. Dmitri promised a week, tops, but now he's taking Sarah on a never-ending joyride of independence, and the stress is eating Sarah alive. She's not the only one: lightyears away, Vlad, Sergei, and David are just as upset, and their refusal to accept the situation keeps wounds raw. As the weeks turn to months and the months to years, Sarah discovers a new horror: she's growing up, and unimagined dangers are coming to light. As disaster follows disaster, Dmitri pushes farther from home, and Sarah's loneliness is growing with each move. When Dmitri's Someday turns to Never, Sarah's desperation gets the better of her, and she launches a ploy so heinous it will change the course of her life forever... if Dmitri doesn't kill her first. Best Efforts. Everyone tries. Not everyone succeeds.

Sigma Tau Ceti IV. An idyllic, underdeveloped planet currently under secret study by the United Planetary Alliance. A planet 400 years behind Earth's technology - except for three separate reports of a modern energy weapon in use. Who would dare introduce such a weapon and violate one of the Alliance's strictest constitutional laws? How could it happen? It is up to Captain Jazak Sullivan to find out how, and why. His investigation leads his crew to set up a temporary base near one of the reported sightings, with a young Alliance Cultural Observer and his brilliant but eccentric younger sister. Eccentric - or just plain crazy? Jack Sullivan can't decide, and the skittery girl won't let a doctor near her long enough to find out. The longer they stay, the more lies appear, and the more secrets are coming to light. Sullivan is convinced the girl may hold the answer - if only he can get her to trust him. What happens next will pit Jack Sullivan against the formidable reach of Tomas Ivanov in a battle to save the Kirushenkos from themselves. Book 3 in the Best Intentions series.

The stunning prequel to Best Intentions. In 2238, opposites still attract. Sixteen year old Maryana is the darling of the Byelorussian debutante circuit, a knockout blonde with a smile to resurrect the dead and the heiress to her father's galactic business empire. Twenty-two year old Sasha towers more than two meters tall, the son of a chem-whore, a dirt-poor working stiff too withdrawn and demoralized to apply his brilliant mind. When Sasha and his friends crash an upscale party, etiquette-maven Maryana feels it her civic duty to make him feel welcome - until she glimpses past his rough-as-pavement exterior. When her acts of kindness are met with outrage at home, Maryana pushes back. Disowned by her parents, Maryana fights to build Sasha's career and their fortune to award-winning triumph, with an ever-growing family in tow. When Sasha accepts what should be a prestigious new job offer, Maryana finds her world spinning out of control - and their very lives on the line.

The exciting conclusion to the Best Intentions series. It's been a dream for seven years. Seven long, agonizing years since Sarah was ripped from her family, and now she's actually coming home. A new home, a new guardian, a new chance at happiness - or is it? A lot of water went under the bridge in her absence, and nothing is the same. Baby Marina is a pesty eight, Katya is married, Galina about to be, Valeria is involved, and even Vlad turns his head after girls. Sarah's the lonely one who can't seem to grow up. Burning with old guilt, smothered by unforgiven shame, emotionally strangled by horrors in her past, Sarah's being forced to learn new rules, forge new relationships, accept new standards to live by, all without Dmitri to hold her together. And just when she feels it might be safe to trust herself, guess who's coming back to his family?

In the future, some things never change. Sarah Kirushenko is a human child like any other, despite an extreme IQ. Just because she studies classes eight years more advanced than her peers doesn't mean her favorite hobby isn't raising hell with her gang of older brothers, or that she's not stuck watching her baby brother, or getting into bloody fights with her hateful little sister. All she wants is to break the record and have a diploma before her tenth birthday. But the year 2263 is no shining star for Sarah and her many siblings. Dragged around the galaxy by their archeologist father, they harbor a shocking load of secrets. No one ever planned on bad luck, but tragedy and violence have stalked their family for generations. Trapped on the blistering wastelands of Navara, far from the Russian home they long for, things are quickly going from bad to unbearable. When it seems like nothing can possibly get worse, Father is arrested for murder. Can twelve children raise themselves on an alien world? Will Sarah survive with her education - and her sanity - intact?

Nineteen year old Aila swore to her mother she wouldn't marry Masákh until she turns twenty-one, and she meant it. She also swore when she left Kerasím last year she would return to visit her friend Mímihn for the New Year celebration, and no matter what her mother says, Aila means to do it. She believes whole-heartedly in the Kerasi, and in Emperor Nághtas's plan to put his daughter Rimas on the throne after him. But Mímihn insists that if Aila is truly her friend, she and Masákh will get married now so Mímihn can be there, and Aila fears the pressures could destroy the fragile peace treaties between their worlds if she says no. Just when Aila must return to the Union, Masákh undertakes a troubling task that he can't discuss. Aila must either wait on Kerasím or leave without him - if she's ever granted permission. Making matters worse, Mímihn's past is threatening to harm her, if her fear doesn't kill her first. Aila is pulled into the web of deceit and treachery undermining Kerasím, and only through disaster does she realize just how big the struggle is for Kerasím to ever change. Aila's grip on the tightrope of diplomacy is slipping, and so is her loyalty - but to which side?

Tokh dar-Giláhn wanted nothing more than to walk around his town as one of the proud military cadets on Graduation Day, with a dashing uniform and sword. When he's snatched from the Academy by a perceptive General before he can graduate, Tokh's life begins an upward spiral toward power and glory that he never anticipated. Tokh is forced to balance his climbing military career against an explosive personal life that wants to hold him back: a wife he didn't want, sons who won't respect his will, a second wife he never intended, children younger than his grandchildren, and the accidental acquisition of his first true love, a blinded teenaged consort; a combination of women that threatens to tear everything apart. As Tokh's success on the Emperor's Emissary Project sends him ever deeper into palace politics and tenuous diplomatic relations with the Planetary Union, he starts to believe in the Emperor's treasonous vision: why shouldn't a female take the throne of Kerasím? And why shouldn't his daughter be educated to be her first advisor?

Sometimes patriots come together for all the wrong reasons Aila Perrin was an experiment gone right; a young teen held against her will and trained to open diplomatic relations with the Kerasi Empire, grand enemies of her Planetary Union. Four years later, Aila's eighteen and doing the impossible: after years of increasing trust, the two governments have agreed to a face-to-face diplomatic accord on Kerasím for the first time in history. Aila is thrilled to be chosen as one of the delegates, one of her old Kerasi mentor/captors along as her guard and guide - and maybe more. But as the accord begins its historic mission, Kerasím falls under a coup, and all bets are off as delegates are being assassinated under the safest conditions possible. It's a whole new learning experience when Aila finds herself on the run on a planet in turmoil, where old Kerasi enemies are turning out to be her best friends and her Union colleagues just may be the people trying to take her life. While she criticizes the Kerasi for being cold-blooded killers, will Aila be able to do the same when her own life is on the line?

Rumors about the Kerasi and their violent society abounded. Kerasi played marbles with real eyes. Kerasi ate live toads the way decent people ate peanuts. Kerasi executed people just for walking down the street. The worst things Kerasi did didn't kill you, but you wished they did. Aila Perrin knew that for a fact. A Union operative had been caught on Kerasím. The Kerasi returned him without incident. His mind had been tampered with, erased, until he didn't have the sense to feed himself. When fourteen year old Aila finds herself abducted by the Kerasi, she has every right to be terrified for her life, but even bad things aren't always what they seem, and as Aila is drawn deeper and deeper into the Kerasi's plot, she can't help but wonder who the worst offenders are - the patriots fighting to free their own people, or her own precious Union that ignores their pleas for help. Can Aila forgive her captors and save a race of people without sacrificing her own?