Like millions of Americans, Dr. John VanDuyne is stunned to watch President Tom Winston announce his plans to legalize narcotics in a radical bid to destroy the power of the drug cartels. Especially since, as Winston’s personal physician and a government health spokesman, VanDuyne might have expected some prior warning. And now he’s going to be right in the firing line when the uproar begins. For President Winston, his daring plan could turn out to be political suicide. For VanDuvne, it’s going to be much worse than that.

In a steel-and-lead-encased bunker 20 feet below the basement level of his house, a soldier waits for his final orders. On the surface, a plague ravages the planet, infecting over 90% of the populace. The bacterium burrows through the brain, destroying all signs of humanity and leaving behind little more than base, prehistoric instincts. The infected turn into hyper-aggressive predators, with an insatiable desire to kill and feed. Someday soon, the soldier will have to open the hatch to his bunker, and step out into this new wasteland, to complete his mission....

Trying to escape a lifetime of regrets—and outrun his own demons—veteran soldier Lochled Thatcher embarks on the Fourth Crusade to Leftland, a country rich in magic. Desperate to save her brothers, Rony joins Lochled’s squad only to discover that war is very different from all the songs and fancy speeches. As politics and power clash, Kayna, a Seeker, and Ord, a priest of the Church of Alchemy, find their foundations of loyalty and faith shaken and crumbling. In this theater of chaos, magic, and treachery, soldier and priest alike will find their humanity in as much danger as their lives.

In the beginning, the gods destroyed the world. Five hundred years later, things haven’t gotten much better for humans. The demigods that were left behind to guard over humanity have been using them as fodder for an endless civil war between themselves, and the humans just go on dutifully slaughtering each other, battle after battle. It’s not all bad, though. Perry McGown makes his living off those bloody, stinking battlefields. He works on a crew that reclaims all the spent shell casings. But if anyone found out that he was a deserter from the war, he’d be executed for heresy.

Ten years after the collapse, Huxley has built a good life again. He has a loving wife, a farm with fields of golden barley, and a daughter with a strange and wonderful gift. Then the slavers come. Working out in the fields during the attack, Huxley returns too late. His daughter has been taken, and his wife is bleeding out, her last whispered words about a man with a scorpion tattoo on his neck. Where do the slavers go? Huxley has no idea. He knows only that they head east, and so will he, setting out on foot across the desert of the Wastelands.

Two young boys set off for the Rocky River Bridge through their war-torn North Carolina hometown, both with something to prove - an adventure that will quickly teach them the realities of the raging world around them, in this prequel to DJ Molles' newest novel: The Purge of District 89.

When a series of devastating terror attacks brought down the United States, Conor and Barb assumed they were safe in their compound. They had everything they needed. They were armed and highly trained. But then, Barb was kidnapped. The kidnappers didn’t know why Conor was known as The Mad Mick. They didn’t know the fear and respect his name invoked in the shadowy underworld of covert operations. They didn’t know that when it came to protecting his family, he was without conscience, without compassion, and without equal. But they would soon find out.

If society collapsed, could you survive? When Morgan Carter's car breaks down 250 miles from his home, he figures his weekend plans are ruined. But things are about to get much, much worse: the country's power grid has collapsed. There is no electricity, no running water, no Internet, and no way to know when normalcy will be restored - if it ever will be.

As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Halloween approaches. Come, brave listener, pull up a chair, and spend some time with master storyteller Stephen Fry as he tells us some of his favourite ghost stories of all time, in truly terrifying spatial audio. From the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow to the tortured spirits of M.R. James, from Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying tale of a doppelganger to Charlotte Riddell’s Open Door that should definitely stay shut, join Stephen as he tells you some truly terrifying tales.

Those who would seek a new world order have unleashed the most devastating virus onto mankind, and even they do not know the secrets hidden in their weapon. Follow along as Harry, a CDC scientist, races to figure out what exactly the virus is and how to stop it. It will be up to him and a group of marines led by Major Sanders to stop the zombie fallout before it ravages an unsuspecting world.

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

At Cold Mountain Penitentiary, the convicted killers on E Block await their turn to walk the Green Mile and keep a date with the electric chair. Paul Edgecombe has seen his share of oddities in his years working as a guard on the Mile, but he's never met anyone like John Coffey.

Caleb Lambert kills people for a living. The money is nice, but it comes a distant second to his primary reason for choosing such a vocation: Caleb often calls it “scratching an itch”. Here’s the thing, though: Caleb won’t just accept any contract. He and his team thoroughly vet each and every prospective mark to make sure they deserve to be punished.

The Galahad, a faster-than-light spacecraft, carries 50 scientists and engineers on a mission to prepare Kepler 452b, Earth's nearest habitable neighbor at 1400 light years away. With Earth no longer habitable and the Mars colony slowly failing, they are humanity's best hope. After 10 years in a failed cryogenic bed - body asleep, mind awake - William Chanokh's torture comes to an end as the fog clears, the hatch opens, and his friend and fellow hacker, Tom, greets him...by stabbing a screwdriver into his heart. This is the first time William dies.

One rainy night, the unthinkable happens: Dylan Moran’s car plunges off the road into a raging river, his beautiful wife drowning as he struggles to shore. In the aftermath, through his grief, Dylan experiences sudden, strange visions: wherever he goes, he’s haunted by glimpses of himself. Dylan initially chalks it up to trauma, but that changes when he runs into a psychiatrist who claims he’s her patient. She says he has been undergoing a unique hypnotherapy treatment built on the idea that with every choice, he creates an infinite number of parallel universes.

It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.

Ex-St. Paul cop Rushmore McKenzie has more time, and more money, than he knows what to do with. In fact, when he’s willing to admit it to himself (and he usually isn’t), Mac is downright bored. Until he decides to do a favor for a friend facing a family tragedy: Nine-year-old Stacy Carlson has been diagnosed with leukemia, and the only one with the matching bone marrow that can save her is her older sister, Jamie. Trouble is, Jamie ran away from home years ago.

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.

In Drawn, a mysterious little boy has begun appearing in the paintings of an artist who can't remember ever actually seeing him. A partially blind, disfigured agoraphobic who suffers crippling panic attacks if he even tries to leave his apartment is forced out by an unseen entity. A lonely widower begins to suffer terrifying nightmares that his long-missing, presumed-dead son is still alive and in mortal danger. A young runaway realizes that a man he thought was his traveling companion is actually his captor...and a predator.

Abby Cooper is a P.I., psychic intuitive. But her insight failed her when she didn't foresee the death of one of her clients - or that the lead investigator for the case is the gorgeous blind date she just met. Now, with the police suspicious of her abilities and a killer on the loose, Abby's future looks more uncertain than ever.