Psychological Science

In the wake of tragedy, ex-boxer Kelly returns to Detroit after years in the South. Unable to find work, he scavenges for scrap metal in the hundred thousand abandoned buildings at the heart of the city, an area he calls "the zone", where one day he finds something far more valuable than the copper he's come to steal: a kidnapped boy handcuffed to a bed, crying out for rescue. After being celebrated as a hero, Kelly secretly decides to avenge the boy's unsolved kidnapping, a task that will take him deeper into the zone.

A man and a woman have moved into a small house in a small village. The woman is an "examiner", the man her "claimant". The examiner is both doctor and guide, charged with teaching the claimant a series of simple functions: This is a chair, this is a fork, this is how you meet people. She makes notes in her journal about his progress: He is showing improvement, yet his dreams are troubling.

FrontierWorld follows Tommy Ray and Willie Parker and a half dozen other characters as they meet in Seattle to begin their wagon train adventure. Once they arrive at the wagon camp, the group meets Brad Jefferson, the young wagon master who will lead the neo-pioneers through their 14-day journey. Jefferson gives the group strict instructions that everything from the 21st century must stay at the base camp. From this point on, everything will be just as it was in the early 1800s.

Not only had Adam lost his parents in a car crash, but he'd also forgotten who he was. Pamela is haunted by the patient who was murdered by her father. Barbara and Mike have mysterious secrets. Harry seeks solace at the bottom of a glass. And why is Mildred so afraid? While Helen's mind gathers dust, Lizzie mourns the loss of her and her husband. Both Penny and Jane are frantic to find their daughters, if in different ways. Rick wonders what to do about his family. And who is William?

Once a century, for only six days, the bay around a small Washington island glows like a water-bound aurora. Dr. Rachel Bell, a scientist studying the 100-year miracle and the tiny sea creatures that create it, knows a secret about the phenomenon that inspired the region's myths and folklore: the rare green water may contain a power that could save Rachel's own life (and change the world).

Seven strange stand-alone tales involving unusual people caught in disturbing circumstances are presented in this collection.

Rita, professora universitária, começa a ter visões de uma realidade paralela, como se estivesse o tempo todo mergulhada num aquário. Em casa, no trabalho ou na rua, ela se vê rodeada por seres aquáticos e especialmente pelo "grande peixe", uma criatura fantasmagórica que a persegue, mas que ninguém mais enxerga. Como se não bastasse, sua pele é tomada por escamas aos poucos, de forma dolorida e fantástica. Brânquias surgem em seu corpo, e isso pode significar o início ou o fim de uma jornada.

Rick Timber was a small-time con-artist living in either high-end hotels or out of his car. He was a loner. Who needs friends when you have split personalities to keep you company? One of Rick's alter egos, Tim Bricker, was fearless. He had an eye for curvy women and nerves of steel when it came to the short con. Tim wasn't afraid to put Rick into dangerous, even deadly circumstances. Egor, on the other hand, was more cynical, always looking for a fight. Rick created the characters to help him, but now they seemed more interested in helping themselves.

Jon Gunnarson never meant to transform humanity. He just wanted a normal life. A life where he doesn't absorb other people's emotions, lose himself, and have to live like a hermit. So he jumps at the chance to help develop a scam telepathy app because it will get him to Bhutan, where he hopes an old friend will teach him how to disconnect. The problem is, working with others is the least of his worries because Jon and Ella unwittingly trigger the onset of mass telepathy. As if that isn't enough, they must run for their lives when they discover a way Venn can avoid arrest.

When Jared refuses to kill for his gang, they beat him nearly to death. Comatose, his world splits in two. In one, Jared battles to wake from unconsciousness. In the other, he becomes a ruthless gang member known as J-Rock. After three years in darkness, Jared finally opens his eyes and is bombarded by visions of the horrible crimes J-Rock is committing in a parallel world. As Jared struggles to wake, he realizes his soul has been switching places with his criminal counterpart. Jared must find a way to eliminate J-Rock before the next switch.

Dr. Leonard Wise, now an associate professor of parapsychology at Garden State University, is requested by a pair of grieving parents to examine the case of their deceased grown son. Harold Stoller was depressed and had thrown himself from the roof of his palatial home. Was it due to his unhappiness, or was he seduced by a female spirit, a succubus, that tempted him to his doom? As Leonard seeks answers, he comes in conflict with Dr. Anika Vanya, a specialist in unusual hypnotherapy. Was Harold’s death merely an accident, or did she program him to destroy himself?

Twelve-year-old Spencer embarks on a hunting trip with his abusive father, until a tragic accident leaves him alone and lost, deep in the woods. After a horrific bear encounter, Spencer stumbles upon Stu, a bald man who refers to the forest as his domain and claims it's inhabited by otherworldly creatures he calls "the crazies". Next thing he knows, Spencer is locked up in Stu's cabin. But is it imprisonment or salvation?

In a reimagined contemporary Edinburgh, where a tectonic fault has opened up to produce a new volcano in the Firth of Forth, and where tremors are an everyday occurrence, volcanologist Surtsey makes a shocking discovery. On a clandestine trip to new volcanic island The Inch, to meet Tom, her lover and her boss, she finds his lifeless body and makes the fatal decision to keep their affair, and her discovery, a secret. Desperate to know how he died, but also terrified she’ll be exposed, Surtsey’s life quickly spirals into a nightmare when someone makes contact - someone who claims to know what she’s done....

By the end of the Corporate War, Dallas Blake had lost everything: his wife, his daughter, his whole family. He was a man in need of far more than just a new beginning. What Dallas needed was a resurrection. Dallas went to the Union Fleet space docks to buy a war-surplus scout-class ship. Instead, he unknowingly buys the Tesseract, a ship with many secrets. It does not take Dallas long to find out that its crew of artificials seems way more human than they should be and every bit as much in need of a resurrection as Dallas.

When his wife, Hannah, is found dead on the road near the carcass of a fawn, Rod Demsey sets out on a journey to find her killer (with his dog who seems to be able to communicate with spirits). His grief causes his faith to wither until an unexpected turn brings Rod face-to-face with the only person who can tell him what really happened to his wife.

Few writers have attempted to explore the natural history of a particular animal by adopting the animal's own sensibility. But Verlyn Klinkenborg, with his deeply empathetic relation to the world around him, has done just that, and done it brilliantly, in Timothy; or Notes of an Abject Reptile.

Ex-GI Will Gardestang just wanted to go to college on the GI Bill and get on with his life. After a chance meeting, he befriends Tommy Gatchell and Rico Challoner, two young men who share his love for philosophical debate, and soon all three participate in an ESP experiment. After Will and Rico display apparent psychic abilities, Rico begins to become panicky and in short order is killed before their eyes, seemingly long distance by his superiors in a devil-worshipping cult. Enraged over the death of their friend, Will and Tommy vow to track down the killers and unmask their diabolic plans.

Laid low by a tropical disease and an accompanying malaise, Crispin Clare returns to his ancestral home in East Anglia. Local folklore seeps into his fever dreams and into his writing, and the lines between reality and myth soon start to blur. In this finely woven tale of illness and recovery, family and fable, Randolph Stow creates a unique, imaginative landscape, populated by figures from old English myths and legends, and from Clare’s present.

Once in a while, a first novel arrives like a bolt of lightning, commanding attention with an explosion of power, grace, and light. Flying in Place is such a book. As unflinching as The Lovely Bones, as startling as Beloved, it is a work to bear witness - with bravery and compassion - for the experience of millions of readers and their loved ones. Emma is 12, a perfectly normal girl, in a perfectly normal home. With a perfectly normal father...who comes into her bedroom every night in the hours before dawn. Emma will do anything to escape.

What is it that drives a man from the light and into the dark? What force has the ability to take a man from sound of mind to muddled and confused in less than a year's time? Nick Hines wishes he knew because he has just completed the trip from husband and family man to convicted wife killer, child killer, and suspect in the investigation into the accidents that took his own two children's lives. In less time than it takes to wean a puppy, Nick has gone from sane to crazy, unable to distinguish fantasy from reality.