Conquered Earth Series

Book 0.5

Mira Toombs has fled Midnight City, leaving behind her home and the people she loves in a desperate gamble to repair the damage her Tone enhancing artifact has caused. It is a journey that will lead her to Winterbay, an infamous, frozen city built in the middle of Lake Michigan. A place of secrets and conspiracies – and the one place more dangerous for Mira than Midnight City. Winterbay is the last bastion of the World Before, a place that has shunned the power of the Strange Lands, and where being a Freebooter means the death sentence.

To get what she needs, Mira must take a desperate bargain. One that will lead her into the city's icy depths, where its greatest and most dangerous secret lies guarded by a massive, deadly machine that rumor and myth say only one person can disarm. The one person not allowed inside the city walls.

A Freebooter.

Winterbay is a 14,000 word short story, part of J. Barton Mitchell's CONQUERED EARTH series, set directly before the events of Midnight City and The Severed Tower, showing how Mira Toombs came to be set on a path not only to Clinton Station, but to the two people who would change her life forever. Holt and Zoey.

Book 1

Midnight City

by J Barton Mitchell

Published 30 October 2012

Earth has been conquered by an alien race known as the Assembly. The human adult population is gone, having succumbed to the Tone - a powerful, telekinetic super-signal broadcast across the planet, which has reduced them to a state of complete subservience. But the tone has one critical flaw. It only affects the population once they reach twenty-one or twenty-two years old. This means that there is one group left to fight. Teens. Holt Hawkins is a bounty hunter, and his current target is Mira Toombs, a treasure seeker who has escaped from Midnight City after being sentenced to death. It's not long before Holt bags his prey, but their instant connection isn't something for which Holt bargained. Neither is the Assembly ship that crash-lands near them shortly after he captures Mira. Venturing inside the ship, despite the tied-up Mira's objections, Holt finds a young girl who can't remember anything except her name: Zoey.
The three soon begin an adventure through alien-conquered North America, encountering young freedom fighters, powerful artefacts of strange science that seem like magic, pirates and brigands, and frightening mutated creatures of the night, all while trying to stay one step ahead of the Assembly. Zoey, in the meantime, starts to exhibit amazing powers while Holt and Mira begin to realize that this young girl just may be the key to stopping the alien invaders.

Book 2

The Severed Tower

by J Barton Mitchell

Published 19 November 2013

Holt, Mira, and Max have fled Midnight City with Zoey after watching her repel an entire Assembly army. Zoey's powers are unlocked, but who and what she is remains a mystery. All she knows is that she must reach the Severed Tower, an infamous location in the middle of the world's most dangerous landscape: The Strange Lands, a place where the laws of physics have completely broken down. But the closer they get to the Tower, the more precarious things become. The Assembly has pursued Zoey into the Strange Lands. Among them is a new group, their walkers and machines strangely bereft of any colour, stripped to bare metal, and whose agenda seems to differ from the rest. To make matters worse, the group hunting Holt are here, too, led by a dangerous and beautiful pirate named Ravan. So is Mira's first love, Benjamin Aubertine, whose singular ambition to reach the Tower threatens to get them all killed. Then there's the Strange Lands themselves. They have inexplicably begun to grow, spreading outwards, becoming more powerful. Somehow, it all seems tied to Zoey herself, and the closer she gets to the Tower, the weaker she becomes.

Book 3

Valley of Fires

by J Barton Mitchell

Published 2 December 2014

Earth has been conquered by an alien race known as the Assembly. The human adult population is gone, having succumbed to the Tone-a powerful, telepathic super-signal broadcast across the planet that reduces them to a state of complete subservience. But the Tone only affects the population once they reach their early twenties. Which means that there is one group left to resist: Children. In Valley of Fires the trio of kid heroes - Holt, Mira, and Zoey - are forced apart to accomplish individual quests if they are to have any hope of uniting what remains of Earth's disparate survivors against its alien invaders. Mira ventures west to bargain with Van Cleef, the enigmatic leader of North America's most infamous resistance group. But Van Cleef has his own plans to end the conflict, a destructive solution that might actually work...but at a horrible cost. Meanwhile, Holt travels with Ravan and Avril back to the one place he swore he would never return: Faust, the sprawling and dangerous desert city of the Menagerie pirate guild. He goes not only to resolve his issues with Tiberius, its tyrannical leader, but to enlist the Menagerie in the fight to save Zoey.
Except Tiberius has his own problems. Factions within the Menagerie are splintering, and word of rebellion is beginning to spread. If Holt wants the Menagerie's help, he might have to help his greatest enemy in exchange. Traveling separate paths with little hope of safety or reunion, Holt and Mira bring this thrilling, genre-bending series to an utterly unforgettable close.