LEATHER: A Runaway Girl Across Three Worlds by Stephen Euin Cobb

Leather is a runaway girl, stealing food and living on the street.

Waking frantically to a cockroach crawling across her face, she decides that beating the crap out of her evil stepmother, and running away from home wasn’t such a brilliant plan after all. But she’s far too stubborn to go back now—even sleeping in the trash-strewn basement of an abandoned church.

But soon she falls for a traveling conman who lavishes her with gifts, carries her from her home planet, and introduces her to his criminal friends, most of which are alien. Through these “friends,” she becomes an accessory to the mass-murder of forty scientists who had just found the ruins of a dead alien civilization. While participating in the sudden search for priceless alien artifacts, she is secretly lusted after by the most vile of these miscreants. A man whose desires will not be denied.