The Inbetween Archives
Found family. Bad decisions. Cosmic consequences.
Welcome to The Inbetween Archives: character-driven space opera about morally complicated people, dangerous loyalties, government conspiracies, things that should probably have stayed outside reality, and one extremely persistent family that refuses to remain dead, separated or sensible.
There are several ways into the Archives.
There is, however, one correct place to start.
New here?
Start with Hard Parole.
You do not need to read the prequel first.
You do not need a glossary.
You do not need to understand the Void.
Honestly, that last one may never happen.
Recommended main-series order:
Hard Parole → Conditional Release → Flight Risk → Hostile Intent → Final Appeal
The Main Archives
This is the central story.
Start at Book One and continue in order unless you enjoy being confused recreationally.
Hard Parole
Book One
A woman too dangerous to kill.
A man too principled to leave her behind.
For almost five years, disgraced war hero Wraith has existed alone in a black-site cell.
Then Major Kael Veyne opens the door and tells her she’s a patriot again.
Someone is attacking the edges of Confederation space, and humanity needs Wraith’s ability to navigate the deadly dimension known as the Inbetween.
Kael needs her to find the scattered survivors of Ghost Command.
And to make sure she cooperates, he’s been made her Tether.
If she runs, she dies.
If he dies, she dies.
Neither of them is particularly happy about this.
Book One is free.
Conditional Release
Book Two
The mission is over.
The damage isn’t.
Wraith is free.
Mostly.Kael has walked away from SID.
Ghost Command is no longer quite as dead as advertised.
And something came back with Kael from the Void.
It whispers. It changes him.
And an ancient cult has been waiting a very long time for its god to return.
The only person who might understand what’s happening is another Ghost.
Shade.
This should improve matters enormously.
It does not.
Flight Risk
Book Three
Six years after the War, Ghost Command is finally back together.
All six of them.
For the first time since everything fell apart.
It should feel like coming home.
Instead, the Confederation has begun weaponising footage from the War, the people humanity once called the Others may know considerably more than anyone wants to admit, and something much older is starting to move beneath the surface.
Geist has therefore done the only reasonable thing.
He has summoned the family.
Attendance is not optional.
Hostile Intent
Book Four
Coming soon
Ghost Command is back.
Unfortunately, so is Helios.
The Confederation has spent years turning fear into a weapon.
Now something with the face of a god has decided to demonstrate what fear actually looks like.
The old conflict is breaking open.
The rules are changing.
And what comes next may be considerably bigger than humanity’s wars.
[HOSTILE INTENT UPDATES]
Final Appeal
Book Five
Forthcoming
Somewhere at the end of all this lies a choice.
Not a prophecy.
Not a command.
A choice.
Everything has been moving towards it.
The Archives will open when clearance permits.
For now, SID recommends patience.
Shade recommends ignoring SID.
Before they were ghosts
Ghost Formation
The prequel to The Inbetween Archives
You know the ghosts.
Now meet the people they were before they became them.
Before Wraith, Shade, Geist, Spirit, Phantom and Spook, there were Ash, Zane, Zahir, Matt, Elijah and Rina.
Young soldiers.
Problem recruits.
Weapons the Confederation was only beginning to understand.
Over the course of a brutal war, six damaged people become something nobody intended to create:
A family.
And eventually—
Ghost Command.
Should I read this first?
You can.
I recommend that you don’t.
Meet the Ghosts in Hard Parole. Then come back and discover who they were before the War carved pieces out of them.
It hurts better that way.
Elsewhere in the Archives
The main novels are only part of the story.
Some files belong to particular characters.
Some fill gaps between larger events.
Some answer questions nobody sensible was asking.
And some are probably evidence.
Raven Smile
Prequel Novella
Rina and Sin.
A fake marriage.
Several excellent reasons why this was a terrible idea.
Rivals’ Folly
Welcome to the Folly.
A mercenary stronghold.
A pile of bad decisions
And one deeply inconvenient attraction.
Coming 2026
Halo Effect
Prequel Novella
The War with the Others is over.
The conspiracy is not.
Same universe, different disaster.
Coming 2027
So what order should I actually read them in?
If you only want the main story, this is easy:
1. Hard Parole
2. Conditional Release
3. Flight Risk
4. Hostile Intent
5. Final Appeal
Everything else expands the universe.
Ghost Formation is the main prequel novel that gives the history of Ghost Command.
The novellas, standalone novels, and bonus stories fit around the main timeline in various places.
And yes, there is a chronological order.
No, I am not putting the entire flowchart here.
What kind of books are these?
If you’re wondering whether The Inbetween Archives is your particular variety of terrible decision, expect:
Character-driven space opera
The galaxy matters.
The people matter more.
Found family
Not the soft matching-pyjamas version.
More the I know where the bodies are because I helped you bury them version.
Morally gray protagonists
Almost everyone has done something questionable.
Some have done something prosecutable.
A few require entirely new sections of criminal law.
Romance and complicated relationships
Love matters deeply in these books.
It is also frequently inconvenient.
Dark humour
The coping mechanisms are not clinically recommended.
Cosmic weirdness
The series begins with soldiers, spies and a dangerous dimension between space.
It does not remain that simple.
Trauma, recovery and choice
Surviving something is only the beginning.
Deciding who you become afterward is much harder.
Still not sure?
That’s what the free book is for.
You don’t need to commit to five novels, several side stories, a suspicious Archive and whatever Shade is doing.
Just meet Wraith.
Meet Kael.
Open the cell door.
See what happens.
Read Hard Parole free.
No credit card.
No prior knowledge.
No blood oath.
Already caught up?
Then you have higher clearance than the people this page was written for.
Congratulations.
Probably.
The Archives contain character dossiers, classified SID material, Cult transmissions, bonus files and other material that becomes considerably less spoiler-safe the deeper you go.
The Inbetween Archives
by AJ Pryor
For family, given and found.