In the Australian desert, a nuclear bomb explodes. There are no survivors and no clues about who has made it or detonated it. In England, two police officers are shot dead when they apprehend a cargo vessel in Portsmouth dock. Vast quantities of heroin are later found on board.

It’s the autumn of 1890, and a spate of bombings has hit London. The newspapers are full of fevered speculation about anarchists, antimonarchists and Fenians. But one man suspects an even more sinister hand behind the violence. Sherlock Holmes believes Professor Moriarty is orchestrating a nationwide campaign of terror, but to what end? At the same time, a bizarrely garbed figure has been spotted on the rooftops and in the grimy back alleys of the capital.

William Gibson's dark visions of computer cowboys, bio-enhanced soldiers of fortune, and hi-tech lowlifes have won unprecedented praise. Included here are some of the most famous short fiction and novellas by the author of Count Zero and Neuromancer.

Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

The Mark of Zorro was originally entitled The Curse of Capistrano. It was the first work to feature the California character Diego Vega, the masked hero also called Zorro. Zorro is the Spanish word for fox. The story was adapted into the silent film The Mark of Zorro in 1920. A new version of The Mark of Zorro was produced in 1940 starring Tyrone Power as Don Diego Vega.

Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down.

As a child Chris Hooper dreamed of monsters. But in deep space, he found only darkness and isolation. Then, on planet LV178, he and his fellow miners discovered a storm-scoured, sand-blasted hell - and trimonite, the hardest material known to man. When a shuttle crashes into the mining ship Marion, the miners learn that there was more than trimonite deep in the caverns. There was evil, hibernating - and waiting for suitable prey.

First came the man: a young wanderer in a fatigue coat and long hair. Then came the legend, as John Rambo sprang from the pages of FIRST BLOOD to take his place in the American cultural landscape. This remarkable novel pits a young Vietnam veteran against a small-town cop who doesn't know whom he's dealing with - or how far Rambo will take him into a life-and-death struggle through the woods, hills, and caves of rural Kentucky.

Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffeehouse is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. She is terrified - but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done. Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a fashionable London Hotel have been murdered, and a cufflink has been placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman?

Predator ships stream into human space in unprecedented numbers. The Colonial Marines, controlled by Weyland-Yutani, respond to the incursion, thus entering the Rage War. This terrifying assault by the Yautja cannot go unchallenged, yet the cost of combat is high. Predators are master combatants, and each encounter yields a high body count. Then, when Lt. Johnny Mains and his marines - the VoidLarks - enter the fray, they discover an enemy deadlier than any could imagine.

When the obituary of legendary computer game architect Matthew Sobol appears online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events that begins to unravel our interconnected world. This daemon reads news headlines, recruits human followers, and orders assassinations. With Sobol’s secrets buried with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed, it’s up to Detective Peter Sebeck to stop a self-replicating virtual killer before it achieves its ultimate purpose - one that goes far beyond anything Sebeck could have imagined.

Jake Sullivan is a licensed private eye with a seriously hardboiled attitude. He also possesses raw magical talent and the ability to make objects in his vicinity light as a feather or as heavy as depleted uranium, all with a magical thought. It's no wonder the G-men turn to Jake when they need someoneto go after a suspected killer who has been knocking off banks in a magic-enhanced crime spree.

The Battle of Serenity Valley was the turning point that led the Independents to their defeat at the hands of the Alliance. Yet the Browncoats had held the valley for weeks against all odds, before being ordered to lay down their arms. Command stated they refused to send in airpower because the ground war was "too hot". But the soldiers who were there insist that was not true.... While picking up a new cargo on Persephone, Captain Malcolm Reynolds is kidnapped by a bunch of embittered veteran Browncoats who suspect him of sabotaging the Independents during the war.

Something very strange -- and sinister -- is going on in the Russian woods at Borodino. In a place called Mrs. Ivanova's Charm School, young KGB agents are being taught by American POW's how to be model citizens of the USA. The Soviet goal -- to infiltrate the United States undetected. When an unsuspecting American tourist stumbles upon this secret, he sets in motion a CIA investigation that will reveal horrifying police state savagery and superpower treachery.

Stephen Leeds, AKA 'Legion,' is a man whose unique mental condition allows him to generate a multitude of personae: hallucinatory entities with a wide variety of personal characteristics and a vast array of highly specialized skills. As the story begins, Leeds and his 'aspects' are drawn into the search for the missing Balubal Razon, inventor of a camera whose astonishing properties could alter our understanding of human history and change the very structure of society.

Meet John Milton. He considers himself an artisan. A craftsman. His trade is murder. Milton is the man the government sends after you when everything else has failed. Ruthless. Brilliant. Anonymous. Lethal. You wouldn't pick him out of a crowd but you wouldn't want to be on his list. In this second dip into his case files (see 1000 Yards for a further novella), Milton is sent to Italy to investigate the death of a colleague from Group 15.

Former allies in the IRA, Sean Dillon and Martin Brosnan have chosen different paths. Now Dillon is a terrorist for hire, a master of disguise employed by Saddam Hussein. Brosnan is the one man who knows Dillon’s strengths and weaknesses…and brilliant mastery of espionage. Once friends, now enemies, they are playing the deadliest game of their careers. A game that culminates in a frightening - and true - event: Iraq’s attempted mortar attack on the British war cabinet at 10 Downing Street in February 1991.

Matthew Dunn spent years as an MI6 field operative working on some of the West’s most clandestine missions. He recruited and ran agents, planned and participated in special operations, and operated deep undercover throughout the world. In Spycatcher he draws on this fascinating experience to breathe urgent, dynamic new life into the contemporary spy novel. Featuring deft and daring superspy Will Cochrane, Dunn paints a nerve-jangling, bracingly authentic picture of today’s secret world. It is a place where trust is precious and betrayal is cheap....

The remote and impenetrable Pakistani mountains have offered refuge to the worst enemies of civilization since the time of Alexander. Now, the world faces a new challenge. Reared from birth to harbor a seething hatred, a lone man is about to unleash a firestorm that will rage for centuries. And the window of opportunity to stop him is shutting much faster than Washington D.C. can hope to deal with. A top lethal operative, Will Parker is embedded within the terrorist's ranks to stop this catastrophic disaster.

They said his uncle Ian died in a car accident. Alex Rider knows that's a lie, and the bullet holes in his uncle's car confirm the truth. But nothing can prepare him for the news that the uncle he always thought he knew was really a spy for Britain's top-secret intelligence agency. Enlisted to find his uncle's killers and complete Ian's final mission, Alex suddenly finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, with no way out.

Ann Blake, a rare-book expert and conservator, was imprisoned for a drunk-driving accident that she doesn't remember, one that resulted in the death of her husband, a famous rare-book expert. But she is freed from prison by CIA undercover agent Tucker Anderson in exchange for her help and expertise on the Library of Gold, a legendary collection of books that have been lost to the world for over a century.

Government secrets are being sold, and the newly sworn in president of the United States already feels out of options. Without knowing the full scope of the scandal, the president decides to turn to the one person he knows he can trust - former FBI agent Elizabeth James. Her deep distrust of the system is rooted in her unfair discharge from service. Now she sees a chance to restore her reputation and send a message to those who would use their power to destroy others' lives.

The Team: Financed by a billionaire philanthropist, this elite team - a soldier, an historian, a computer whiz, a weapons expert, and a thief - is tasked with finding the world's most legendary treasures. The Mission: Fearing a German victory in WWI, the Romanian government signed a deal with Russia to protect the country's treasures. In 1916, two trains full of gold and the most precious possessions of the Romanian state - paintings, jewelry, and ancient artifacts - were sent to the underground vaults of the Kremlin....

In the summer of 1947, an unidentified object crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. There were no survivors. Now it's happened again. But this time, two creatures have emerged from the wreckage alive.

When a forgotten journal materializes decades after Drake Ramsey's father vanished in the Amazon jungle, Drake decides to follow in his footsteps and search for the legendary treasure of the Inca empire hidden in the lost Inca city of Paititi.

Grace Chu is an American-educated Chinese national now working as a forensic accountant after serving in the Chinese army as an intelligence officer. John Knox is an American who parlayed his military service during the first Iraqi war into a lucrative import/export business, which now provides him the official access he needs to work freelance undercover operations throughout the world. Both are highly skilled operatives capable of deft subterfuge or extreme violence, if circumstances require.

When America’s controversial Phoenix Program was buried during the Vietnam War, a new program rose from its ashes. A top-secret Special Operations unit, with a core mission to combat terror wherever they find it, Bitter Ash grew ever more necessary in a new world of Islamic fanaticism. Now, Bitter Ash is forming a special team, a SEAL Team Six with a difference. It is Tier One, on par with SEAL Team Six and Delta, but it will report directly to Bitter Ash, and its fight will take place under the cover of dark.

Dreamland is the place where the nation's top minds come to develop artillery and aircraft that push beyond the cutting edge. And where the Air Force's top guns come to test them, on the frontlines of a new era in warfare. The fiasco of a spy's infiltration has the Pentagon looking for an excuse to close Dreamland down. To clean up the mess, and save Dreamland from the congressional chopping block, Lt. Colonel Tecumseh "Dog" Bastian is sent in.

Amid the dust, death, and chaos of Iraq, an American soldier on a routine patrol is killed by an unseen enemy. It's a tragedy but not a crime - until it's linked to the bizarre death of a decorated four-star general who happens to be the dead man's father...and the son-in-law of history's most feared and powerful U.S. vice president.

William Fawkes, a controversial detective known as The Wolf, has just been reinstated to his post after he was suspended for assaulting a vindicated suspect. Still under psychological evaluation, Fawkes returns to the force eager for a big case. When his former partner and friend, detective Emily Baxter, calls him to a crime scene, he's sure this is it: the body is made of the dismembered parts of six victims, sewn together like a puppet - a corpse that becomes known as "The Ragdoll".