Alternate chapters follow teenagers Todd and Viola, who become separated as the Mayor's oppressive new regime takes power in New Prentisstown, a space colony where residents can hear each other's thoughts.

Sent to Earth a century after the Martian war of independence, a group of young delegates becomes caught between two worlds, unable to reconcile the beauty and culture of Mars with the realities of a violent Earth.

Bell has spent his whole life--all eleven years of it--on Mars. But he's still just a regular kid--he loves cats, any kind of cake, and is curious about the secrets the adults in the US colony are keeping. Like, why don't they have contact with anyone on the other Mars colonies? Why are they so isolated? When a virus breaks out and the grown-ups all fall ill, Bell and the other children are the only ones who can help. It's up to Bell--a regular kid...

Fergus Ferguson, repo-man, has one job: find a spacecraft and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. Finding Gilger in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a gas-giant harvesting colony called Cernee, was easy. The hard part will be getting past a field of space mines, hacking into a compromised AI, and fighting a crew of hostile enemies to take control of the ship.