First Mystery

It's fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn't spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the internet, the paparazzi, and the government - and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father's leaks are a hoax and wants nothing to do with him.

In the sleepy rural town of Painters Mill, Ohio, the Amish and "English" residents have lived side by side for two centuries. But 16 years ago, a series of brutal murders shattered the peaceful farming community. Kate Burkholder, a young Amish girl, survived the terror of the Slaughterhouse Killer but came away from its brutality with the realization that she no longer belonged with the Amish. Now, a wealth of experience later, Kate has been asked to return to Painters Mill as Chief of Police. She's certain she's come to terms with her past - until the first body is discovered in a snowy field.

Commander David Bryce returned from his mission, successful, with a derelict alien ship that wasn’t as empty as predicted. With the assistance of an old ally, David is hell-bent on stopping the invasion before it begins. There’s just one problem; the Signal is hidden somewhere on Earth. Atlas Donovan is the only man capable of helping them, and it’s unclear whether he can trust the ORB employees. One thing is clear: Aliens have been to Earth, and from the looks of it, not just a single race. There were two.

Lincoln Rhyme was once a brilliant criminologist, a genius in the field of forensics - until an accident left him physically and emotionally shattered. But now a diabolical killer is challenging Rhyme to a terrifying and ingenious duel of wits. With police detective Amelia Sachs by his side, Rhyme must follow a labyrinth of clues that reaches back to a dark chapter in New York City’s past - and reach further into the darkness of the mind of a madman who won’t stop until he has stripped life down to the bone.

The entire human race balances on the razor's edge of annihilation, beset by an enemy that turns our own bodies against us, that changes normal people into psychopaths or transforms them into nightmares. To some, Doctor Margaret Montoya is a hero-a brilliant scientist who saved the human race from an alien intelligence determined to exterminate all of humanity. To others, she's a monster - a mass murderer single-handedly responsible for the worst atrocity ever to take place on American soil. All Margaret knows is that she's broken. The blood of a million deaths is on her hands.

In the electrifying first installment of the New York Times bestselling series, Harry Hole of the Oslo Crime Squad is dispatched to Sydney to observe a murder case. As he circles closer to the killer, Harry begins to fear that no one is safe, least of all those investigating the murder.

At 12, Gideon Crew witnessed his father, a world-class mathematician, accused of treason and gunned down. At 24, summoned to his dying mother's bedside, Gideon learned the truth: His father was framed and deliberately slaughtered. With her last breath, she begged her son to avenge him. Now, with a new purpose in his life, Gideon crafts a one-time mission of vengeance, aimed at the perpetrator of his father's destruction. His plan is meticulous, spectacular, and successful.But from the shadows, someone is watching. A very powerful someone, who is impressed by Gideon's special skills.

When a popular cheerleader winds up dead in a ditch, the case lands in Defense Attorney Cass Leary’s own backyard. Her niece’s boyfriend, Cole, is charged with first-degree murder, and the whole Leary family jumps to his defense. The evidence against him is as thin as the ice on Finn Lake. But an overzealous prosecutor and a rookie detective seem determined to see Cole go down for this no matter what.

A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.

Lora Weaver follows romance from New York to Montreal and expects to find a touch of Paris in North America — cobblestone streets, sidewalk cafés, fabulous shopping, and a little joie de vivre [zest for life]. Not dangerous liaisons. But, when she takes a job at a PI agency owned by a French brother and sister team, her life takes on more twists and turns than a Cirque du Soleil show.

Fourteen years after her last adventure, Thursday Next, literary detective, finds herself in an unusual situation her job policing the fictional characters of the BookWorld has been downgraded since her previous escapades are now themselves in print. However, a pressing threat may call her back into action: first Sherlock Holmes and then Miss Marple are found dead, stopping their series in their tracks.

When Frank Meyer and his family are executed during a home invasion, the police begin investigating the secret life they're sure Meyer had. Joe Pike's on a hunt of his own: to clear his friend's name, and to punish the people who murdered him. What starts out as a simple trail gets twisted fast by old grudges, double crosses, blood vengeance, and a crime so terrible even Pike and his partner Elvis Cole have no way to measure it.

The first book in C.J.Cherryh's eponymous series, Foreigner begins an epic tale of the survivors of a lost spacecraft who crash-land on a planet inhabited by a hostile, sentient alien race. From its beginnings as a human-alien story of first contact, the Foreigner series has become a true science fiction odyssey, following a civilization from the age of steam through early space flight to confrontations with other alien species in distant sectors of space. It is the masterwork of a truly remarkable author.

As a child Rose Franklin made an astonishing discovery: a giant metallic hand buried deep within the earth. As an adult she's dedicated her brilliant scientific career to solving the mystery that began that fateful day: Why was a titanic robot of unknown origin buried in pieces around the world? Years of investigation have produced intriguing answers - and even more perplexing questions. But the truth is closer now than ever before when a second robot, more massive than the first, materializes and lashes out with deadly force.

Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: We still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history.

Van Lopez and his brother Andy have enough to do keeping their truck running and the local criminal gang happy to be concerned about nuclear tests. Van has dreams, or-he's not sure what to call them-that he cannot explain or forget, but when he sees mysterious lights in the sky, he struggles to make sense of what now feel like his earliest memories.

Maya is hiding in plain sight in London. The 26-year-old has abandoned the dangerous obligations pressed upon her by her father and chosen instead to live a normal life. But Maya comes from a long line of people who call themselves Harlequins, a fierce group of warriors willing to sacrifice their lives to protect a select few known as Travelers.

Two years after first contact, Astral forces have established their fragile kingdom around the globe. Motherships occupy the cities. Shuttles patrol the lawless outlands. The pacifist class of Astrals known as Titans assist humans in running their alien empire while bloodthirsty Reptar peacekeepers ensure that order is kept. And unseen in the ships above, a third class of visitor calls the shots - the unseen Divinity, worshipped and feared by citizens in equal measure.

How did Fox Mulder become a believer? How did Dana Scully become a skeptic? The X-Files Origins has the answers. The X-Files Origins: Agent of Chaos explores the teen years of Fox Mulder, the beloved character depicted in the cult-favorite TV show The X-Files. His story is set in the spring of 1979, when serial murder, the occult, and government conspiracy were highlighted in the news. The audiobook follows Mulder as he experiences life-changing events that set him on the path to becoming an FBI agent.

Thou shalt not negotiate with terrorists. The president of the United States has broken the nation's number-one commandment, and by doing so has put himself in the crosshairs of America's number-one counter-terrorism operative, Scot Harvath.