A Debt to the Stars

A Kirkus "BEST OF 2023" winner!“...a journey of healing and heroism...” - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “...uproarious sci-fi that gets readers thinking.” - Publishers Weekly (BookLife Editor's Pick)With space-faring predators circling the planet, Earth's only hope is an aged heiress with faltering prosthetics, and her foul-mouthed, extraterrestrial forensic accountant.Diana Roark, heiress, scientist, and adventurer, never wanted to end up the richest person in human history. But she inherits her father's fortune, and begins to spend her wealth to benefit humanity. Then First Contact - with the alien Known Economy - utterly changes life on earth, and she's left with a business empire worth nothing, and emotional debts she can never repay.Thirty years after First Contact she's managed to rebuild her empire, when the Known Economy returns. This time they've come for payment on Earth's debt - and their price is the harvest of all earthly sentience. Diana, aging, health failing, chooses to fight beside Earth's lone Account Rep - a foul-mouthed, gelatinous Neoooxcolu - in a race to win the planet's freedom.The aliens will kill to stop her. Unless her own terrible debts kill her first ...-