'Professor Summerfield, your very presence here has raised this hotel's insurance premiums by seven point two percent.'

It is the year 2595. Mars, once the distant target of humanity's ambitions in space, has been colonised for five hundred years. To mark the anniversary, the planet's university is holding an academic conference. Naturally, esteemed expert on Martian archaeology Bernice Summerfield is invited to present a paper based on her long career in this field.

But other matters distract Bernice from academia. Decades ago, hostile aliens invaded Mars. At their moment of greatest need, Mars' human population was betrayed by its leader. And although the occupation was swiftly ended, the anger of those who fought to save Mars still runs deep.

So when a veteran of the war is found dead, old wounds are reopened. Bernice finds herself investigating a murder with the least reliable of allies - and soon discovers that the consequences of the Siege of Mars are far from being ancient history.

The Great Houses:
Immovable. Implacable. Unchanging. Old enough to pass themselves off as immortal, arrogant enough to claim ultimate authority over the Spiral Politic.

The Enemy:
Not so much an army as a hostile new kind of history. So ambitious it can re-write worlds, so complex that even calling it by its name seems to underestimate it.

Faction Paradox:
Renegades, ritualiists, saboteurs and subterfugers, the criminal-cult to end all criminal-cults, happy to be caught in the crossfire and ready to take whatever's needed from the wreckage... assuming the other powers leave behind a universe that's habitable.

The War:
A fifty-year-old dispute over the two most valuable territories in existence: "cause" and "effect".

Marking the first five decades of the conflict, The Book of the War is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity. Part story, part history and part puzzle-box, this is a chronicle of protocol and paranoia in a War where the historians win as many battles as the soldiers and the greatest victory of all is to hold on to your own past…

In the far future, the city of Hope isn't a place for the weak.

The air is thick with fog.  The sea burns.  Law and orders are a thing of the past.  Headless corpses are being found at the edge of the city, and the militia can't find the killer.  Members of a deranged cult mutilate themselves while plotting the deaths of their enemies.

Even the Doctor can't see any possibility of redemption for this cursed place.  All he wants is to leave, but to do so he needs the TARDIS - and the TARDIS is lost in the depths of a toxic sea.  When the most powerful man on the planet offers to retrieve the TARDIS - for a price - the Doctor has no choice but to accept.

But while the Doctor is hunting a killer, another offer is being made - one which could tear the Doctor and his companions apart.

Twelve million years ago, a war touched the Earth briefly.  Now, in Antarctica, an archeological team has discovered the detritus of the conflict.  And it's alive.

Twelve million years ago, a creature evolved that was capable of consuming all life in the universe.  Now someone, or something, is desperate enough to want to revive it.

Outside the ordered universe, things move.  They're hungry.  And something has given them the scent of our space/time.

In the far future, the Doctor has learnt of the war and feels he must intervene - but it's more than just a local conflict of interest.  One of the groups of combatants is from his own future, and the other has never, ever, existed.

'Oh, why not,' Benny said. 'After all, I've died before and it never did me any harm then.'

The once peaceful planet of Dellah lies in ruins. The god-like beings who infest the place have lured the inhabitants into holy wars, suicide cults and genocidal pogroms. As they run out of victims, the deities plan to invade more planets - and other races are preparing pre-emptive strikes to stop them. Humankind's small sector of the galaxy is about to become the battleground of leviathans.

There is just one hope. Professor Bernice Summerfield is, surprisingly, alive and well. And she's coming home. Bernice and her friends are determined to dispose of the gods once and for all - at any cost.