Dramatized Science

War is coming, and she must decide how badly she wants the vampires on her side. Or as a thorn in her side. When children go missing, and the Humans have no leads, I'm the one they call. I am their last hope in bringing home the lost ones. I salvage what they cannot. Bringing my allies together as war approaches is my number one concern. But that means I have to play nice with a vampire who is blackmailing me. If I don’t, I’m screwed and my family is dead. But I don't play nice. And I have a backup plan. Kinda.

After discovering just how filled with magic, intrigue, and adventure the parahuman world of being an Undead American can be, Fredrick Frankford Fletcher did exactly what was expected - he became a certified parahuman accountant. Myths and legends, as it turns out, are not so great at taking appropriate deductions and keeping their receipts, and Fred is more than happy to return to a life others view as woefully dull, expanding his accounting business to cater to various monsters and their respective financial needs.

Beneath the brutal sun of the nuke-ravaged Southwest, the Texas desert burns red hot and merciless, commanding agony and untold riches to those greedy and mad enough to mine the slick black crude that lies beneath the scorched earth. When a Gateway jump puts Ryan and the others deep in the hell of Texas, they face a no win situation: Fry in the heat, or become a rogue baron's sec force for an oil refinery targeted by saboteurs. The task: Catch the raiders and win their freedom. Or fail...and face death.

Police Chief Delaney Reed is good at keeping secrets for the beach town of Ordinary Oregon - just ask the vacationing gods or supernatural creatures who live there. But with the first annual Cake and Skate fundraiser coming up, the only secret Delaney really wants to know is how to stop the unseasonable rain storms. When all the god powers are stolen, a vampire is murdered, and her childhood crush turns out to be keeping deadly secrets of his own, rainy days are the least of her worries.

The dark frontier of the 22nd century is lawless and oppressive, but humanity is slowly beginning to carve out new beginnings in the midst of this brutal, nuke-altered world. In pockets of civilization called villes, peace and hope start to flourish. But law and order invite what's evil and corrupt.... Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists are guests of a powerful Tennessee baroness and her mysterious adviser at her ville on what was once the mighty Mississippi. Beautiful and alluring, the venomous baroness will do anything to secure her future line.

When Ryan ingests bacteria-infested food, he lies near death — his body paralyzed but his mind traveling rapidly back to his early days in the Deathlands...moving through the southwest on post-nuke vehicles called warwags...and his run-in with the Baron. Towse, near what was once Albuquerque, is a ville in a freakishly beautiful landscape populated by scabbies and armed Apaches. Baron Alias Carson and his bejeweled wife, Sharona, welcome Ryan, J.B. Dix, and the Tracker to their treacherous world.

The world blew out in 2001. Vast areas of what was the United States lie beneath an unbrella of noxious dust and radioactive debris, a mantle of destruction drawn over a land of doom. Much of the East Coast has been oliterated; the Southwest is a land of fire; cities of smoldering ash have give birth to horrifically mutated life forms. Such is the Deathlands, legacy of global annihiliation.

Once an idyllic chain of inlets running from Key Largo to Key West, the Florida Keys have become an isolated universe of grotesquely mutated wildlife and bizarre submarine malformations. Blind 70-foot sea snakes lurk among the reefs around underwater volcanoes, while typhoons and pirates turn the crystal waters above into a death zone.

As the roaming band of survivors seek desperately to escape the eerie wastes and mutated life-forms of their nuclear hell, they emerge from a gateway back into the ruins of Manhatten — the concrete battlefield where Ryan had avenged the death of his father and older brother. The city is a flooded hellzone ruled by street gangs and hordes of reptilian mutants who inhabit the sewers. Under this urban ruin lives the self-styled King of the Underground, presiding over his subterranean fortress filled with prenuke memorabilia.

Although the exciting military career she hoped for never got off the ground, Ky Vatta ended up seeing plenty of combat when she took the helm of one of the commercial transport vessels in her family's fleet...and steered it into a full-blown war. Now the lessons she learned in that trial by fire are about to pay off - because this time, the war has come to her. Someone has launched a full-throttle offensive against Vatta Transport Ltd., Ky's father's interstellar shipping empire.

Stories of the Trader and his convoy of war wagons endure in the badlands of post-holocaust America. A dealer in Deathlands' most precious commodities - weapons and fuel - Trader takes note of a young Ryan Cawdor. Surrounded in myth and rumor, Trader sets into motion the beginnings of legend at a place called Virtue Lake...At Spearpoint, the ultimate redoubt housing a valuable cache of predark technology, two opposing wills clash. Levi Shabazz intends to carve his own empire out of the vast wastelands, but the Trader intends to thwart him and end his bloody siege of power.

In the relatively untouched area of what was once Niagara Falls, Ryan and his fellow wayfarers find the pastoral farmland under the despotic control of a twisted baron and his slave-breeding farm. Ryan, Mildred, and Krysty are captured by the baron's sec men and pawned into the cruel frenzy of their leader's grotesque desires. JB, Jak, and Doc enlist the aid of outlanders to organize a counter strike — but rescue may come too late for them all.

A century after the nuclear conflagration almost destroyed the world, humanity endures in a lawless land. Those who inhabit Deathlands are either killers or those who would be killed. But an elite few defy the laws of this new natural selection — playing both sides of the eternal game of life and death. Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists never leave a friend behind...or a cold heart alive.

Ryan travels to the snowy wastes north of the 49th parallel to rescue his young son, enslaved in a mining colony. In this forbidding landscape, one of Ryan's oldest enemies lies in wait, orchestrating a deadly finale to their private war. In the biting cold, Ryan must battle a legion of hunter androids designed to track and kill any intruders with ruthless ingenuity. But for Ryan Cawdor, the need to save his son is greater than any threat the one-eyed warrior may encounter.

The warrior survivalists are reluctant guests in a reactivated 20th-century medical institute in Maine. Here, scientists still pursue their abstract theories, oblivious to the realities of a world gone mad. But when they take an unhealthy interest in Krysty Wroth, the pressure is on to find a way out of this guarded enclave.

When children go missing, and the Humans have no leads, I'm the one they call. I am their last hope in bringing home the lost ones. I salvage what they cannot. Crossing into Ogre country is dangerous when you're a polite, respectful gal. Which means we all know I'm in for a wild ride, despite the new backup I've brought along. Even when things start to go sideways, and enemies close on us from every side, I still believe we have the upper hand. How very blind can one person be when it comes to a salvage for a missing child? I'm about to find out.

When Fred formed his own parahuman clan out of necessity, he understood that it was going to come with new responsibilities. Much as he hoped those tasks would center around extra paperwork and perhaps the occasional mandatory class, enough time around the supernatural has taught him to be ready for anything. Or so he thought. As a freelance accountant for the Agency, Fred soon finds himself being tossed into new, unexpected, and perilous situations.

A pre-dark legacy of shattering promise lies beneath the ruins of nuke-ravaged Seattle. Ryan Cawdor and his warrior companions come face-to-face with the ancestors of a secret society whose members were convinced that paradise awaited at the center of the Earth. This cult is inexorably tied to a conspiracy of 20th-century scientists devoted to fulfilling a vision of genetic manipulation.

Jon-Tom just wanted to go home. Trapped in a world where animals speak and magic is real, the American college student yearned for an ordinary dorm-room life. But here his music has magical power — even if he can’t control it — which may be able to save the world from the army of the Plated Folk, whose sinister queen plans on killing and eating every warm-blooded mammal she can get her pincers on and taking over their lands.

The Hunter from the Woods marks the much-anticipated return of Michael Gallatin, the lycanthropic hero of Robert McCammon's classic, The Wolf's Hour. These all-new, interlinked stories offer a full measure of McCammon's trademark narrative excitement, and comprise a fascinating composite portrait of a unique fictional creation. The volume opens with a pair of brief glimpses into Michael's early life in Russia and his initial recruitment into the British Secret Service. It ends with a haunting vision of the werewolf at twilight.