Science Thriller

Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross is renowned for his cutting-edge science fiction. This third entry in his “edgy … spoof of Cold War spy thrillers” ( Booklist) finds covert agent Bob Howard learning about a top-secret dossier that vanishes with his boss. Determined to discover the contents of this memorandum, Howard runs afoul of Russian spies, ancient demons, and apostles of a hideous cult planning to raise the Eater of Souls from the undead.

Born blind, Kendra Michaels spent the first 20 years of her life living in the darkness. Then, thanks to a revolutionary medical procedure developed by England's Night Watch Project, she was given the gift of sight. Her highly-developed senses (honed during her years in the dark), combined with her newfound vision, have made her a remarkable investigator, sought after by law-enforcement agencies all over the country. But her newest case finds her uncovering a deadly truth about the shadowy organization that has given her so much.

A floating fortress occupied by warrior gnomes. A castle made of sand. A derelict submarine guarded by malfunctioning machines. A haunted crypt surrounded by lethal traps. It was supposed to be easy. One bubble. Four castles. Fifteen days. Capture each one, and the stairwell is unlocked.

Like the "Dark Continent" of Africa, the dark island of Madagascar holds many chilling secrets. One of them is a long-thought extinct species of dinosaurs living at the country's core. A massive earthquake rocks the mountain range within the Andringitra National Park. The splitting Earth reveals a network of tunnels, hidden away for millennia. Responding to the series of violent upheavals, a pack of hypersensitive predators flee their subterranean home; frenzied and hungry, they head for the surface.

Vincent Pike always had an aversion to sunlight, one that required him to take pills so he could live a normal life in New York City. But when a date goes horribly wrong, he soon discovers that this sickness is because of his vampire heritage. In a matter of hours, Vince finds himself befriended by a woman who calls herself a Nightweaver, a special kind of vampire with lethal powers. This woman claims that Vince is not only a vampire, but a powerful one known as a Blood Lord.

On a brisk autumn day, a 13-year-old boy stands on the shores of the gray Atlantic, near a silent amusement park and a fading ocean resort called the Alhambra. The past has driven Jack Sawyer here: His father is gone, his mother is dying, and the world no longer makes sense. But for Jack everything is about to change. For he has been chosen to make a journey back across America - and into another realm. One of the most influential and heralded works of fantasy ever written, The Talisman is an extraordinary novel of loyalty, awakening, terror, and mystery.

From a remote corner of the galaxy, a message is being sent. The continuous beats of a pulsar have become odd, irregular, and artificial. It can only be a code. Frantically, a research team struggles to decipher the alien communication. And what the scientists discover is destined to shake the foundations of empires around this world - from Wall Street to the Vatican.

When an EMP devastates the nation's power supply, it doesn't take long for society to spiral out of control. There's no government to guide people. There's no power and no order. Only chaos and panic. In the immediate aftermath of the devastation, five survivors-a self-sufficient survivalist, a university student, a plane crash survivor, a young girl, and an escaped prisoner-all face a dangerous, treacherous journey towards safety. But as the day goes on, tensions reach breaking point; our survivors soon realize this solar event is far more dangerous than they could ever have imagined.

An experiment has gone terribly wrong. Dr. Peter Hobson has created three electronic simulations of his own personality. One will test life after death; another, immortality. The third one is the control unit. But now all three have escaped from Hobson's computer into the worldwide electronic matrix. And one of them is a killer.

Sometimes the worst storms aren't from Mother Nature, and sometimes the worst nightmares aren't the ones in our heads. Mike Mitchell, an average New Yorker already struggling to keep his family together, suddenly finds himself fighting just to keep them alive when an increasingly bizarre string of disasters starts appearing on the world's news networks. As both the real world and the cyber world come crashing down, bending perception and reality, a monster snowstorm cuts New York off from the world, turning it into a wintry tomb where nothing is what it seems.

Life as Aileen knew it ended when she woke up in a morgue sporting a new set of fangs after a wild night out. Now, as a courier for the supernatural world, she balances figuring out this whole vampire thing with making enough to support her ice cream habit. When a job goes disastrously awry and ends with a body on the ground, Aileen finds herself in over her head as she draws the attention of a powerful creature intent on her death.

After the assassination of FDR in the 1930s, the US collapses and is picked off by the UK, Canada, Mexico, and Russia. Gunnie Lizbeth Rose tries to piece out a life, running security on runs from Texoma across the border to Mexico, where work and prospects are stronger. When two Russian magicians come looking for a man named Alex Karkarov, they hire Lizbeth, but there are problems: The man they're looking for is dead, but he has a daughter they now need to find, as an ever-growing set of sorcerers and gunnies do not want them to succeed.

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King - who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer - takes listeners on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.

Not satisfied with the thrills of being one of Greater Los Angeles' toughest cops, Jake Cardigan turns to Tek, a computerized brain stimulant that transports the user to any reality he can imagine. He's soon addicted to this fantasy enabler—and it isn't long before Cardigan is accused of dealing. When he fails to convince the mechanized jury of his innocence, the state strips his badge and sentences him to fifteen years in suspended animation. Four years later, he's awakened. His sentence has been changed, but no one will tell him why.

The Movie Town Theater is holding its first ever Film Noir Festival, with Pen handling book sales for the guest speakers, including screen actress Hedda Geist. The legendary femme fatale has been out of the spotlight for decades. Unfortunately, the moment she steps back into it, she's nearly killed. Then other guests start to die, and Penelope wants to know why her little town's Film Noir weekend has taken a truly dark turn.

Located on the Long Island Sound, random attacks by unknown creatures are terrorizing local residents. The question: Who is going to do something about it? Marine biologist Katie DiNardo and ichthyologist Nick Tanner have seen the damage caused by their mystery creatures, but are at a complete loss as to the attacking species. All they know is that they need to get to the bottom of this - and fast.

Black Hollow is a town with a dark secret. For centuries, residents have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker - an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. Yet the boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: Occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.

Although he hasn’t seen Robert Bergin for 40 years, Ishmael feels duty bound to respond when his old friend calls for help. Robert’s daughter Gillian is about to be married, and he is afraid she’ll fall prey to the ancient family curse. Arriving in rural Yorkshire, Ishmael and his partner Penny learn that the vicar who was to perform the ceremony has been found dead in the church, hanging from his own bell rope. With no clues, no evidence, and no known motive, many locals believe the curse is responsible. Or is someone just using it as a smokescreen for murder?

Vampire Cat Crawfield is experiencing a new role as a mother. Turns out, trying to manage a perfect domestic life for her daughter is more...challenging than Cat ever imagined. Since things have finally quieted down in the undead world, her husband, Bones, suggests that Cat recharge by spending a girls-only getaway with her best friend, Denise. Cat and Denise intend to spend the week doing nothing more than dancing, drinking, and sightseeing. Unfortunately, they stumble across a deadly summer solstice ritual.

After ten years together, Jeremy “Jem” Creed and his wife, Crystal, are looking to give their marriage a fresh start on Paradeisos, a mysterious island off the coast of Oregon. What they find is stranger than they could have imagined: the locals are named after Greek gods, horned thugs lurk in back alleys, and the women are strangely friendly.