Residuum : the third in the action-packed space opera The Long Game

A planet-eating plague. A hustler-turned-hero. Time is running out . . .

Orry Kent just wants a quiet life - but even a little R&R on the holiday planet of Halcyon turns wild when she accidentally sparks off a revolution amongst the downtrodden native workers.

But that''s small beer compared with the news footage being broadcast across the Ascendancy, showing Orry murdering the man she saved just six months earlier and destroying the Halstaad-Mirnov Institute, the heart of research into the aeons-dead alien race called The Departed.

''Dulley has made an amazing universe and I can''t wait to explore more of it'' Words of a Paige

With her brother Ethan, the irascible spacedog Captain Mender and his intelligent spaceship Dainty Jane, not to mention the Kadiran exile Quondam, she sets off to prove her innocence. It''s just a shame that means teaming up with the woman she loathes more than anyone else in any universe: the space pirate and criminal mastermind Cordelia Roag.

''Big-screen space opera at its most entertaining; Orry Kent makes for an engaging and savvy protagonist'' Gavin Smith, author of The Bastard Legion

For it''s not just Orry''s freedom at stake now: a long-dormant planet-eating plague has been triggered and there''s only one thing that can stop it.

The race is on . . .