"For my money, The Empress of Mars is the one to read.” —Mike Resnick, author of Starship: Rebel

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns on all of Mars, the Empress is the one to visit. Let's raise a round to Kage Baker.”
—Jack McDevitt, author of The Devil's Eye

Mary Griffith started her career on a colonized Mars in the twenty-fourth century as a xenobotanist for the British Arean Company. But when the company abandoned Mars in search of something more profitable, she had to find other work to support her three daughters. On a planet not yet fully terraformed, those who stayed are tenacious, outcasts—or criminals. Mary opens the Empress of Mars, the only bar on the planet. From an Italian heir turned space cowboy to a one-eyed heretic on the run to a con man, Mary collects a motley band of regulars—and when the BAC exerts pressure on the colony, her band of misfits must come together to stand up for the colonists, while the shadowy specter of the Company looms.

A rollicking adventure in a Wild West frontier in space, The Empress of Mars is Kage Baker at the top of her game.