Science Mysteries

Blue Magic, the latest designer drug linked to a rash of overdoses, might explain the needle mark on the arm of a young woman found dead in her Kansas City apartment. But when star reporter Rich Azadian digs deeper, the clues point to a far more explosive story: MaryLee Stock was a special protege of evangelical megapastor and power broker Cobalt Becker, who is poised to deliver his followers and the presidency to a firebrand right-wing senator in the next election.

The name’s Bond. Shaman Bond. Actually, that's just his cover. His real name is Eddie Drood, but when your job includes a license to kick supernatural arse on a regular basis, you find your laughs where you can.

The world's population is soaring, creating overcrowded cities and an economic crisis. And in the UK, the breaking point has arrived. A growing number of people can no longer afford to start families, let alone raise them. But for those desperate to experience parenthood, there is an alternative. For a monthly subscription fee, clients can create a virtual child from scratch who they can access via the metaverse and a VR headset. To launch this new initiative, the company behind Virtual Children has created a reality TV show called The Substitute.

Ravaged by the Nazi Secret Service during World War II, Romanian resistance forces turn to one of their leaders, Professor Van Helsing, for any way out. To fight these monstrous forces, Van Helsing raises a legendary monster from centuries of slumber - Prince Dracula himself. Once he was the ruler of Transylvania. Prince Dracula, is, above all else, a patriot. He proves more than willing to once again drive out his country's invaders.

When fate knocks, answer the door. Unless it knocks three times. Then pretend you didn't hear it. Nora Ashcroft knows all too well that life is full of trouble when you can speak to the dead. When she accidentally lets in a dark entity to the house she shares with Ruby, it's up to her to banish the who-knows-what before the rest of Eastwind devolves into complete chaos. If she hopes to succeed, she'll need a special kind of assistance, and, unfortunately, the best man for the job is also the last witch in town she wants to spend time with...

Dib is an Earthlike planet, only slightly smaller, with shorter days and longer years, in orbit around twin suns. On the continent of Geo, in the city of Velon in the nation of Inimata, a man lies dead in his study. In life, Professor Orno Linus was a world-class scholar: an astrophysicist, a dead-language linguist, and an expert in (and apparent true believer of) the religious concept of the Cull, i.e., the end of the world. Widely respected, nothing about Linus’s expertise suggests somebody might want him dead.

Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever, and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent - and nearly five million souls in the United States alone - the disease causes "Lock In": Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.

This entertaining and humorous chapter book will feature animals who can perform amazing acts like riding motocross, foretelling the weather, and playing a guitar. These stories will enchant listeners and empower them to devour the more text-heavy "grown up" style of the book, while still keeping the story easily digestible for a hesitant listener.

Being a normal teenager is hard. For Chance Fortunato, former demon’s apprentice and reforming warlock, it’s almost impossible. On the outs with Shade, his alpha werewolf girlfriend, behind on his magickal studies, and still hunted by the conclave, Chance thinks his life can’t get any worse. But when an empath named Dani asks him to find her missing girlfriend, Chance’s life suddenly spirals out of his control.

Through vivid stories of devoted pigs, two-timing magpies, and scheming roosters, The Inner Life of Animals weaves the latest scientific research into how animals interact with the world with Peter Wohlleben's personal experiences in forests and fields. Horses feel shame, deer grieve, and goats discipline their kids. Ravens call their friends by name, rats regret bad choices, and butterflies choose the very best places for their children to grow up.

Five years ago, mage private investigator Alice Worth escaped her grandfather Moses Murphy's organized crime syndicate. Now, her grandfather's war with local boss Darius Bell has drawn her out of hiding and put her in the crosshairs of not one but two merciless crime lords. Her decision to intervene in their war has endangered everyone Alice cares about and threatens to destroy the life she's built for herself, including her relationship with alpha werewolf Sean Maclin.

Kira Miller is a brilliant genetic engineer who discovers how to temporarily achieve savant-like capabilities in all areas of thought and creativity. But what if this transcendent level of intelligence brings with it a ruthless megalomania? David Desh left the special forces after his team was brutally butchered in Iran. Now he has been reactivated for one last mission: find Kira Miller, the enigmatic genius behind a bioterror plot that threatens millions.

If you’re a fan of fiction that is more than just black and white, this latest story collection from number-one New York Times best-selling author George R. R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois is filled with subtle shades of gray. Twenty-one all-original stories, by an all-star list of contributors, will delight and astonish you in equal measure with their cunning twists and dazzling reversals. And George R. R. Martin himself offers a brand-new A Game of Thrones tale chronicling one of the biggest rogues in the entire history of Ice and Fire.

Marnie's first big FBI case ended with a bullet in one shoulder and a chip on the other, a queasy heart and a serial killer in the wind, leaving her a public flop and a private wreck. When the FBI's preternatural crimes unit tracks her down at a remote mountain lodge for her insight on a local case, her quiet retirement is promptly besieged by a stab-happy starlet, a rampaging ghoul, and a vampire-hunting jackass in tight Wranglers. Marnie figures the only real mystery is which one will kill her first.

My name is Zachary Nixon Johnson. The year is 2057, and after a handful of species-altering upheavals, Earth-shattering cataclysms, history-changing extraterrestrial contacts, and pop-culture disasters, the world is now a pretty safe place. But, of course, as in times past, people still run the shades-of-gray gamut from good to evil. There are still cops and robbers, saints and sinners, voters and politicians. And every once in a while some crazy thing happens that threatens all of society, all of humanity, even the entire space-time continuum. And it always happens on my watch.

Body and soul. The song. That's what London constable and sorcerer's apprentice Peter Grant first notices when he examines the corpse of Cyrus Wilkins, part-time jazz drummer and full-time accountant, who dropped dead of a heart attack while playing a gig at Soho's 606 Club. The notes of the old jazz standard are rising from the body - a sure sign that something about the man's death was not at all natural but instead supernatural.

Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson participated in a drug experiment run by a veiled government agency known as The Shop. One year later, they marry. Two years later, their little girl, Charlie, sets her teddy bear on fire by simply staring at it. Now that Charlie is eight, she doesn't start fires anymore. Her parents have taught her to control her pyrokinesis, the ability to set anything - toys, clothes, even people - aflame. But The Shop knows about and wants this pigtailed "ultimate weapon".

Why can salamanders grow new legs, and young children grow new fingertips, but adult humans can't regenerate? What is the electricity that flows through the human body? Is it the same thing that the Chinese call Qi? If so, what does Chinese medicine know that Western medicine ignores? Dan Keown's highly accessible, witty, and original book shows how Western medicine validates the theories of Chinese medicine and how Chinese medicine explains the mysteries of the body that Western medicine largely ignores.

I've always had a weak spot for strange ladies. One very beautiful girl had even warned me that she was, get this, a vampire. But did I listen? No.

The mission to Rio de Janeiro ended in victory, but it came at a dire cost, killing most of those who set out to rescue the stranded survivors. Even worse, the skinwalkers’ leader, Horn, escaped with his demonic crew and is coming to take the throne. Back at the Vanguard Islands, King Xavier Rodriguez has been severely injured in another battle to protect the kingdom. Now an infection threatens to kill the one man who can keep the peace.