Welcome, Apocalypse Friend!
If you’ve found this page, hopefully you’ve finished Deal With the Devil, the first #MercenaryLibrarians book, and are wondering what Kit Rocha book you should read next!
We’re here to help you.
At the moment, we have two other series set after the same apocalypse. While Deal With the Devil takes place in Atlanta and follows the lives of people living in the shadow of a technological autocracy, The Beyond Series and Gideon’s Riders both take place in Nevada, and follow the lives of people who lived in the shadow of (and eventually overthrew) a strict, brutal theocracy.
There is very little crossover between Atlanta and Nevada (as Knox makes clear, people don’t cross the Mississippi that much) but there are a few hints in Deal With the Devil about what else is out there.
The Beyond Series
The Beyond Series is the first series chronologically. It is extremely erotic, following a hedonistic gang of bootleggers as they resist, rebel, and eventually overthrow a judgmental theocratic dystopian city. Each book follows a couple (or trio, or quartet) as they fight for the right to live and love how they want to, while proving the family you make can be as strong as any bonds of blood.
The series contains kink and sex between multiple partners and a different culture of monogamy, but is extremely explicit and celebratory of enthusiastic consent. It is also known (by its most enthusiastic fans) as the Bisexual Love Army Series. It is complete, with nine novels and three novellas, plus a variety of free short stories catching up with previous characters.
There is a very brief reference to Beyond in Deal With the Devil.
Knox stopped on his way to the stairs to grab a bottle from a crate of liquor they’d been using to barter. Eleven more bottles rested in the crate, each one emblazoned with an increasingly coveted label—a skull over a pair of crossed guns. The liquor, supposedly distilled by some distant barbarian king, had started trickling across the Mississippi last year, its rarity making it wildly popular up on the Hill.
Rich people loved anything that no one else could get.
Want to know more about that distant Barbarian King? Check out the series. (Book one is free!)
Gideon’s Riders
Gideon’s Riders is a spin-off from Beyond, picking up six months after the end of the previous series. While there is a fair amount of cross-over in characters, it’s not necessary to have read the Beyond series before trying this one. Gideon’s Riders is set in Sector One, and follows a group of warrior-biker-monks (kind of? LOL) as they try to alleviate the suffering and chaos following in the wake of the Big War, and also try to figure out what their places are in a post-dystopian world. (It’s a thing, I promise.)
Gideon’s Riders still has sexy content, but it’s about on par with the sex in Deal With the Devil. If you’re not up to erotic kinky sex parties, this might be a better starting place for you! Each of the (currently three) books follows a couple as they grapple with the dangers of the world, the realities of power, and how to find their place in relationship to both.
The first hero, Ashwin, is part of the military project that Knox thinks about briefly in Deal With the Devil.
He paused with the bottle halfway to his lips. He’d built all his assumptions around the idea that Nina was part of some rogue military project. Most of the military bases east of the Mississippi had been privatized during the tumultuous run-up to the Energy Wars, liquidated for the cash flow the faltering government needed in order to bring the west coast—with its vital food supply—back under control. But some of those newly minted private mercenary companies had retained access to information on military genetic projects, and they had no doubt resumed experimentation once the Flares had wiped out any pretense of oversight.
As far as Knox knew, what had remained of the actual military after the Flares had focused on consolidating power in the west. Rumors drifted back across the Mississippi River, whispers of genetically altered soldiers who were born possessing all of Knox’s implant-gifted strengths. Knox had also heard rumors about the brutal brainwashing protocols they used to keep those soldiers loyal, a regime of torture and conditioning that stripped away emotion and empathy and made Protectorate training look like a cheerful slumber party.
It was a lot of work, keeping your supersoldiers in line. The TechCorps had always preferred the elegance of a kill-switch. Even knowing that the biochemical bomb ticking down in his brain would eventually destroy him, Knox couldn’t say he’d trade places with one of those emotionless killing machines. At least his mind had always been his own.
Is it better to live with temporary powers and the constant threat of a kill-switch, or permanent powers and the trauma of brutal emotional conditioning? Knox knows which one he’d pick. Ashwin might disagree. And he’s not the only one in his book who’s the product of military experimentation…
Find out more about Ashwin and the rest of the Riders here!