Dipple

A refugee fleeing the oppression of a police state must go on the run with animals who can communicate with him   Exiled after his home planet was turned into a military outpost following an interstellar war, Troy Horan is relocated to the planet of Korwar. Under the watchful eye of the police state, he lives in the slums in a restricted area for sub-citizens. He works as a day laborer in an interplanetary pet shop and has no idea why the Terran animals have been imported to Korwar-or why he has the ability to silently communicate with them, especially the kinkajou. But a murder forces him to flee with his animal friends into the Wild, where mysterious, sealed ruins conceal Korwar's most fiercely guarded secret. With no one he can trust and an entire government under siege, Troy leads his extraordinary band of warriors in a final bid for freedom none of them may survive.   This action-packed, classic outsider story will be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

In the aftermath of interplanetary war, a disfigured and dispossessed loner is given a chance at a new life-but it comes at a steep cost Disfigured in the wars that destroyed his planet, Nik Kolherne lives a shadow existence in the sprawling refugee ghetto of the Dipple. He wears a mask to cover his scars and dreams about another country under an unfettered blue sky and a warm sun. But a chance encounter gives him the opportunity for a new face-and a new life. All he has to do is impersonate a young boy's fantasy hero.   So what if Nik is now allied with the Thieves' Guild, a subversive outlaw group that seeks their prey on loosely held frontier worlds? A kid all alone in the world could use an ally. His mission is to lure Vandy Naudhin i'Akrama, the young son of a powerful warlord, from his high-security villa and deliver him to the Guild so they can access critical information locked in his brain. But when Nik and Vandy are shipped off to Dis, a burned-out wasteland of a planet, Nik realizes he's a pawn in a spiraling web of political intrigue and intergalactic evil that threatens both their lives.