This short story collection will take you into the depths of Beck’s dark imagination: from what happens when the deepest bore hole on Earth has just passed nine miles and hits a strange open space – and it's hellishly hot down there; to an Antarctic research team examining fragments from a deep ice glacier and discovers a tiny seed that, once thawed, grows into something terrifyingly unexpected.

On a desolate beach in far northern Scotland, the winter storms have been washing up all manner of things since time began. But buried in the centre of one smaller iceberg is a shard of ancient Viking pottery telling a partial tale of a hidden mysterious island beyond the ice and mist, that was home to a great treasure and even greater horrors. Thawing in the same block of ice was a rotting flap of skin that refused to be identified but had similar skin patterns to a creature not seen for 100 million years.

It had been a rough five years for Memphis Police Officer Jake Jessup. Blaming himself for the death of two partners, a divorce, and almost losing his job, the three-day canoe and kayak trip in the Ozarks sounded like the perfect way to reconnect with family and friends, and to put old demons to rest. What he found instead were a new set of demons, only these were real...and deadly. A float turns tragic for a group of boaters when a secret military project escapes into the Ozark Mountains of West Arkansas.

Alex Hunter - in the mission that turned him from a normal man into the weapon known as the Arcadian - and the elite team of soldiers known as the Hotzone All-Forces Warfare Commandos must enter a hostile country to rescue a defected Chechen researcher from the centre of a country at war. But the HAWCs are not the only ones looking for the rogue scientist and the mysterious package he carries with him. A brutal and relentless killer and his death squad are on the trail, too - and they bring a savagery with them that Hunter and his team have never witnessed before in modern warfare.

Under 30,000 feet of water, the experimental exploration rig Leaguer has discovered an oil field larger than Saudi Arabia, with oil so sweet and pure, nations would go to war for the rights to it. But as the team starts drilling exploration well after exploration well in their race to claim the sweet crude, a deep rumbling beneath the ocean floor shakes them all to their core. Something has been living in the oil and it's about to give birth to the greatest threat humanity has ever seen.

It was just another fishing trip for Stew, his wife, and their friends until the storm. Forced off-course to avoid the worst of the swells and lightning, the boat floats into a dead zone filled with large, glowing jellies. Upon investigating an adrift boat, the creatures attack them, sickening one of their party. With the Coast Guard on their way to evacuate them, the four have to survive until help arrives.

The deadliest killers are the ones you can't see. Three weeks have passed since the monstrous Kronosaurus imperator's attack on Harcourt Marina stunned the world. The death toll was horrifying, but Paradise Cove's traumatized survivors soon discover they have more to worry about than burying their dead and rebuilding their shattered lives.

There’s something growing deep in the old Angel Mine - something the Native Americans warned us about - And now it’s rising again. Mitch Taylor, ex-Special Forces medic, is seeking a quiet life in the town of Eldon. Tragedy has dogged his life, and he sees the small friendly place as a second chance. But buried deep below the friendly smiles and quaint painted houses is an old abandoned mine that holds a legend of an ancient and terrible god. In the mine’s labyrinthine depths, something has been growing, something from a time of myth when ancient gods strode the Earth.

Klaus and Doris have just made the discovery of their lives - a complete Neanderthal skeleton buried in a newly opened sinkhole. But on removing it, something else tumbles free. Something that switches on, and then calls home. Soon the owners are coming back, and nothing will stop their ruthless search for their lost prize.

Rick Napier is a fisherman struggling to make ends meet. The situation is made even worse when a local fishing vessel mysteriously disappears, along with a Coast Guard diver sent to search for the wreckage. As events unfold, he confronts the horrible reality of a top secret government experiment gone haywire, resulting in a hybrid creature of massive proportions. Escaped from captivity in a high tech facility in the Atlantic, it seeks to fill an insatiable appetite.

A bizarre series of incidents take place on a usually tranquil lake. Boats are found ravaged, a body torn in two, other people are missing and an injured victim cries of a monster. Chief of Police Morgan Sydney must face the reality that a huge monster is lurking in the lake. With bulletproof scales, territorial aggression, and an insatiable appetite, the beast causes mayhem in the peaceful town.

Down there, beyond the deepest caves, below the crust and the mantle, there is another world. An old woman locked away in a Russian asylum has a secret - knowledge of a 500-year-old manuscript written by a long-dead alchemist that will show a passage to the mythical centre of the Earth. She knows it’s real because 50 years ago, she and a team travelled there. And only she made it back. Today, caving specialist Mike Monroe leads a crew into the world’s deepest cave in the former Soviet Union.

Deputy Thomas Rodney is no stranger to tense situations. Having served multiple tours in the worst of environments, facing death had practically become just another day at the office. But nothing could have prepared him for this. In a woodland county in the Pacific Northwest, a sinister presence has awakened. A roadwork crew has disappeared without a trace; a truck is found run off the road; a lakefront property is mysteriously vacant, its roof damaged as though something large descended from high above; and an eerie quiet has overtaken the countryside.

Like shadows in the night, Captain Andrew Serrano and his elite team intercept the cargo ship Griffin, secretly owned by a Russian arms dealer. Their objective: capture the bio-engineer Dr. Hank Nore and deliver him to the C.I.A. The operation initially goes well, with the team overpowering the security forces and tracking their target to the lower decks. Backed into a corner, Dr. Nore resorts to desperate measures to avoid capture.

In Fathomless, the greatest predator the world has ever known is coming home in 2016. Carcharodon megalodon. The largest and most fearsome predator to have ever existed on our planet. Rumours of its existence in our modern oceans have persisted for centuries. Now, in a new adventure, the rumours explode into brutal and terrifying reality in Fathomless, by Greig Beck.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

Annie has always had high hopes for her future. But the reality of her life just isn’t measuring up. She loves her fiancé, Greg–doesn’t she? She’s going to get her degree and open her own business–won’t she? Then, a strange old woman shows up outside her house, and she seems to know a lot about Annie. An awful lot. Annie could tell the old woman to get lost. Yet there’s something about her Annie just can’t shake. And what she learns could change her life forever–but is it the life she envisioned?

For some it’s an opportunity. For others it’s a moment to question their faith: In God, in science, in everything. Still others try to keep the world running in the face of absurdity and uncertainty. And then there are the billions looking to the sky and wondering how a thing that was always just there is now... something absolutely impossible.

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.

On a desolate beach in far northern Scotland, the winter storms have been washing up all manner of things since time began. But buried in the centre of one smaller iceberg is a shard of ancient Viking pottery telling a partial tale of a hidden mysterious island beyond the ice and mist, that was home to a great treasure and even greater horrors. Thawing in the same block of ice was a rotting flap of skin that refused to be identified but had similar skin patterns to a creature not seen for 100 million years.

This short story collection will take you into the depths of Beck’s dark imagination: from what happens when the deepest bore hole on Earth has just passed nine miles and hits a strange open space – and it's hellishly hot down there; to an Antarctic research team examining fragments from a deep ice glacier and discovers a tiny seed that, once thawed, grows into something terrifyingly unexpected.

There’s something growing deep in the old Angel Mine - something the Native Americans warned us about - And now it’s rising again. Mitch Taylor, ex-Special Forces medic, is seeking a quiet life in the town of Eldon. Tragedy has dogged his life, and he sees the small friendly place as a second chance. But buried deep below the friendly smiles and quaint painted houses is an old abandoned mine that holds a legend of an ancient and terrible god. In the mine’s labyrinthine depths, something has been growing, something from a time of myth when ancient gods strode the Earth.

Klaus and Doris have just made the discovery of their lives - a complete Neanderthal skeleton buried in a newly opened sinkhole. But on removing it, something else tumbles free. Something that switches on, and then calls home. Soon the owners are coming back, and nothing will stop their ruthless search for their lost prize.

The United States has survived a pandemic and the famine that followed, but America finds herself backed into a corner when Chinese-Russian forces arrive at her borders. In a country starved of patriotism and divided on every stance, this invasion is the breaking point.

Lem’s a mace-wielding teen space-ninja in a universe of sentient insectoids, purple jungles, and insane electromagnetic fields. She solves most problems by hitting harder, and never plays by her enemy's rules - until Jared Diebol captures her. Diebol is the rising leader of an army uniting the galaxy by force. He believes that the violent energy being Njande has “contaminated” Lem and her friends from another dimension to conquer the matter-based universe. Diebol’s army usually kills contaminated people - but he vows to cure Lem.

When a fame-hungry scientist brings an impossible, living specimen of a creature long thought extinct back from the wild jungles of South America he unwittingly brings along a passenger. Something with the potential to destroy every living thing on our planet. The infestation begins, rapidly overtaking medical resources and resisting all treatment.

A journey into the deepest, darkest jungles of the Venezuelan Amazon...and a primeval place and time that mankind was never meant to exist in. Ben Cartwright, former soldier, home to mourn the loss of his father, stumbles upon cryptic letters from the past between author Arthur Conan Doyle and his great-great-grandfather who vanished while exploring the Amazon jungle in 1908. Amazingly, these letters lead Ben to believe that his ancestor’s expedition was the basis for Doyle’s fantastical tale of a lost world inhabited by long-extinct creatures.

Before the end of the world, Cooper Kane was a man who floated aimlessly through life, relying on his good looks and charm to escape consequences. But when the bombs fell and the dead began to walk, all that changed. Now, with the remnants of Phoenix in ruins, Kane’s only goal is to save his mother from a city that’s become a feeding ground for the undead.

In the icy darkness of the Arctic Ocean, a violent showdown between ruthless whale hunters and fervent environmentalists ends in explosive catastrophe: both ships sinking into the frigid abyss. Marooned on a desolate island, the survivors, now bitter enemies, are forced into an uneasy truce to withstand the merciless cold. Enter Jane Harper: undercover agent, razor-sharp and unflinching, wielding her wit as deftly as her fists. As she rallies the fractured group, they stumble upon ancient Viking ruins and awaken something primal and terrifying.

James Robard was a risk-taking con artist and thief before he turned over a new leaf as a loving husband and a dull suit in a law firm. He's never felt so unadventurous. That is, until the System descends upon Earth and he's initiated into a thrilling game world of magic and mayhem, training for exhilarating challenges that make him feel alive again.

Alex Hunter - in the mission that turned him from a normal man into the weapon known as the Arcadian - and the elite team of soldiers known as the Hotzone All-Forces Warfare Commandos must enter a hostile country to rescue a defected Chechen researcher from the centre of a country at war. But the HAWCs are not the only ones looking for the rogue scientist and the mysterious package he carries with him. A brutal and relentless killer and his death squad are on the trail, too - and they bring a savagery with them that Hunter and his team have never witnessed before in modern warfare.

Down there, beyond the deepest caves, below the crust and the mantle, there is another world. An old woman locked away in a Russian asylum has a secret - knowledge of a 500-year-old manuscript written by a long-dead alchemist that will show a passage to the mythical centre of the Earth. She knows it’s real because 50 years ago, she and a team travelled there. And only she made it back. Today, caving specialist Mike Monroe leads a crew into the world’s deepest cave in the former Soviet Union.

Get ready to experience two more origin stories in the Backyard Starship universe.

In Fathomless, the greatest predator the world has ever known is coming home in 2016. Carcharodon megalodon. The largest and most fearsome predator to have ever existed on our planet. Rumours of its existence in our modern oceans have persisted for centuries. Now, in a new adventure, the rumours explode into brutal and terrifying reality in Fathomless, by Greig Beck.