Science Thriller

Flo lives an eccentric life - she travels with a popular circus in which the main acts star orphaned children with secret shape-shifting abilities. Once Flo turns 16, she must perform, but she's not ready. While practicing jumping a flaming hurdle in a clearing beside the circus, she spots a dark figure in the trees and fears he saw her shift. The news sends the circus into a panic.

Dakota Sloane, a tough-as-nails former foster kid, has spent her life running from the past. A man haunted by secrets, Logan Garcia has only one goal: to drink himself into oblivion. They're two strangers in a bar—until the news reports nuclear detonations in New York City and Washington, D.C. Before they can escape Miami, everything explodes. Buildings collapse and fires rage. As the fallout descends, utter chaos erupts.

When an EMP cripples the nation, Charlie is one of the few prepared to survive. What would you risk to save your family? Former United States Department of Defense contractor Charlie Owens resigned from his position with the government to live a life off-grid. After building a cabin on a small island in the Pacific Northwest, the detonation of an EMP sets into motion a series of events that will test Charlie and his family in ways he never imagined.

In his youth, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia. One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong.

Rudi is a cook in a Krakow restaurant, but when his boss asks Rudi to help a cousin escape from the country he's trapped in, a new career - part spy, part people-smuggler - begins. Following multiple economic crises and a devastating flu pandemic, Europe has fractured into countless tiny nations, duchies, polities, and republics. Recruited by the shadowy organisation Les Coureurs des Bois, Rudi is schooled in espionage, but when a training mission to The Line goes wrong, he is arrested and beaten, and Coureur Central must attempt a rescue.

The Winter Queen of Faerie has manipulated Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden into accepting a case to solve a murder and stop a war between the courts of Summer and Winter that could have literally earth shattering consequences. His own soul is up for grabs. Dresden must dig deep to discover that at time a willingness to accept a little help from your friends, be they a cub pack of werewolves, old loves in sheep's clothing, or a battalion of pizza loving dewdrop fairies, is a very good thing.

My name is Leah, and I am a Cazador. Trained to hunt and kill vampires over 300 years ago, my training became essential once I became one of those monsters. The underbelly of the supernatural world has begun to bleed into the human world, and journalist Rachel Sambrook is asking too many dangerous questions. Unwittingly, she's revealed a conspiracy I had hoped would never become a reality: using vampire blood for human experiments. As I attempt to contain her, she's by my side, and the truth of just how deep the darkness goes is exposed.

Doing Time: For the prison writers whose work is included in this anthology, it means more than "serving a sentence"; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one's humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers' organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. The contest honors the best short stories, plays, essays, and poems among hundreds submitted annually by men and women nationwide.

Vampires don't exist, do they? That is a question Private Detective Tony Mandolin finds himself pondering as the evidence piles up in a case involving a string of dead redheads and the usual dose of weirdness San Francisco has to offer. To complicate things, Mandolin has to deal with the perception that he has become the latest golden boy of the fog city's crime boss. Then there's his cross-dressing friend Frankie.... Just another day in San Francisco.

EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources, and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure. But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting...and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand why this treasure has never been unearthed.

Dr. Tyson Klein is a quantum physicist who has dedicated his entire life to his research. At CERN, he analyses data generated by the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator. Now, Ty believes he's found a pattern in its output. It looks like an organised data stream, being broadcast over what he calls a quantum radio. Could it be a signal from another universe? A message sent from the future? Or something else entirely?

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Neal Stephenson is continually rocking the literary world with his brazen and brilliant fictional creations - whether he’s reimagining the past (The Baroque Cycle), inventing the future (Snow Crash), or both (Cryptonomicon).

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps", robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real, and the crowds love it. Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.

Hallie works as a skip tracer—hunting down people wanted by the law, for one reason or another. It's not glamourous, and it doesn't pay all that well. But it's legal work, and that's hard to come by in low city. When her best-and only—friend calls her in a panic, Hallie goes to help and gets a lot more than she bargained for. One of the elite has been murdered and the city police and special investigators are looking for someone to blame. The moment Hallie is near a dead body of one of the ruling class, her hard work and clean record count for nothing.

A junior intelligence officer in the Martian Combined Fleet, Radrick Siegn supplements his meager pay by smuggling contraband from Saturn to Mars. Someday, he’ll buy his own ship and escape the Fleet forever. But his captain has other plans for him. A tanker pilot has been murdered on Saturn Station. It’s up to Siegn to salvage the honor of the Fleet by finding the killer … before they kill again. The investigation plunges Siegn into the seedy underworld of Saturn Station, where he learns this was no ordinary killing.

Tuesday West had a charmed life—until a tragic accident changed everything. In an instant, Tuesday's life is altered when she is left paralyzed from the waist down. What should be a crushing blow, however, does not break her spirit. Living in the enchanting town of Middle Falls, Oregon—where second chances are not just a possibility but a promise—Tuesday discovers she is uniquely equipped to face every challenge. With an unending supply of determination, she refuses to let her accident define her.

Un phénomène inexplicable s'empare des femmes à travers la planète : une sorte de cocon les enveloppe durant leur sommeil et si l'on tente de les réveiller, on prend le risque de les transformer en véritables furies vengeresses. Bientôt, presque toutes les femmes sont touchées par la fièvre Aurora et le monde est livré à la violence des hommes. À Dooling, petite ville des Appalaches, une seule femme semble immunisée contre cette maladie.

I never expected a midlife crisis. Sure, I'm over 40 and married, but my kids are grown and moved out. Then my husband asks for a divorce and my whole world crashes. But I am not about to give up. I am ready to tackle my do-over; my chance to become the me I've always dreamed of. Starting with moving into my late grandma's cottage and adopting a new kitten. However, my new life is a little odder than expected. Old books suddenly appearing in my house. Neighbors going missing. A supposed lake monster and a strange man who likes to skulk around with an axe.

The unimaginable has happened: the world has been plunged into all-out nuclear war. Sailing near the Arctic Circle, the USS Nathan James is relatively unscathed, but the future is grim and Captain Thomas is facing mutiny from the tattered remnants of his crew. With civilization in ruins, he urges those that remain - 152 men and 26 women - to pull together in search of land. Once they reach safety, however, the men and women on board realize that they are the earth's last remaining survivors.

My name is Danica James. I'm a cop with the Arcane Division. Most mages have the ability to manipulate the elements - fire, water, air, earth, electricity. My magic only works on machines and electrical devices. They call me a magitek. That doesn't help much with demons and vampires, let alone criminals with lethal magikal powers.