Science Mysteries

The Spear of Lugh, one of the four Kingly Hallows of Ireland is in Chicago. And everyone, everyone wants it, for it is said that he who carries the spear into battle cannot be defeated. Among those who seek it are an agent of the infamous Wild Hunt; a mobster who knows far more about these things than he should; and of course both the Seelie and Unseelie Courts - the last people PI Mick Oberon would want getting hold of the spear....

An FBI agent hunts a new kind of terrorist through a Washington, DC, of the future in this ground-breaking book - at once a gripping techno-thriller and a fact-based tour of tomorrow. America is on the brink of a revolution, one both technological and political. The science fiction of AI and robotics has finally come true, but millions are angry and fearful that the future has left them behind. After narrowly stopping a bombing at Washington’s Union Station, FBI Special Agent Lara Keegan receives a new assignment: To field-test an advanced police robot.

Ex-Navy SEAL Adam Cain finds himself attempting to make a living the best he can in the alien universe he's been dropped into - as an assassin. After all, with his kick-ass attitude and instinctive hatred for aliens, he's a natural at it. As a human among aliens, he's stronger, faster, and tougher than just about everyone - and everything - he encounters. In this reality, Adam is the Superman.

Dr. Timothy Ryan, head of the military psychiatric unit at Grantham Barracks, is meeting a new patient, a woman known as Prisoner Alpha. As she is being transferred, they are attacked by assassins, barely escaping with their lives. One shooter vanishes, leaving behind a dead companion unlike anyone Ryan has ever seen. But even more baffling is the puzzle of Alpha herself. She speaks in a strange tongue, and doodles in bars, dots, and little pictures like nothing Ryan has ever seen. Is she some sort of savant, or the most cunning spy he's ever met?

When Jenna Blake starts her freshman year at Somerset University, she's not only living on her own for the first time, she's moving closer to the father she never really knew. It's an exciting time, filled with new faces and new challenges, not to mention parties and boys and … corpses? Jenna is torn about her future. She'd like to be a doctor like her mother, but she can't stand the sight of blood. Her father, a criminology professor, thinks he has the answer—and sends her to interview for a job with the Medical Examiner—an interview that takes place in the middle of an autopsy!

Delia Spark is caught in a maelstrom. Her former life as a London theatre director is on the brink of implosion amid a scandalous divorce, a tarnished reputation, and, for reasons she cannot fathom, things keep spontaneously combusting around her. Her sixties were supposed to be peaceful, but now even her grown daughter won't return her calls. Escape is the only option.

The Martian meets Gravity when Army Pilot Vaughn Singleton, Earth’s last man, rushes to Area 51 in search of a spaceplane after he discovers the last woman is stranded on the International Space Station and barely alive - thus beginning a race against time. The event that wiped life from the planet started at the supercollider. It created a rift in space-time. The astronaut stranded aboard the space station, Commander Angela Brown, is a theoretical physicist who used to work at the collider.

I'm not Goth to hide my Drow heritage, I'm Goth because I'm not a quitter. My name is Cheyenne Summerlin, remember that name. Somebody should. The world can't know I'm a Drow halfling. Not yet. I barely have these powers under my control, but time's up. I'm about to take magic for a test drive. Want to come along? The black ops government group believe they can run my life... But I have plans of my own. Watch out magical evil doers - I'm about to crash your party. But will my training be enough?

In Chicago, someone has been killing practitioners of magic, those incapable of becoming full-fledged wizards. Shockingly, all the evidence points to Harry Dresden's half brother, Thomas, as the murderer. Determined to clear his sibling's name, Harry uncovers a conspiracy within the White Council of Wizards that threatens not only him, but his nearest and dearest, too.

When Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are asked to escort a VIP on the late-night train to Bath, it would appear to be a routine case. The Organisation has acquired intelligence that an attempt is to be made on Sir Dennis Gregson’s life as he travels to Bath to take up his new position as Head of the British Psychic Weapons Division. Ishmael’s mission is to ensure that Sir Dennis arrives safely. How could anyone orchestrate a murder in a crowded railway carriage without being noticed and with no obvious means of escape?

Vivian Gandalon is a teen-aged werewolf with problems. Her father, the pack leader, was killed in a fire, and so the pack is in disarray. The young male members of the squabbling pack howl for her, but still she feels alienated and alone. To be more than human is a lonely thing. Vivian longs to have friends and fit in at school. She yearns to escape her legacy of violence and forbidden appetites, but the beast within her longs for something elementally deep and rich. She glories in her ability to change from woman to wolf.

An accident during the construction of a tunnel beneath the Bering Strait leads to the discovery of a network of caverns and evidence that hints at the survival of a primitive human species. Led by DARPA technologist Reinhard Thyssen, a team of experts from around the globe is dispatched into the subterranean maze to discover all they can before the caves completely flood. Something lurks in the darkness, though. A creature has evolved into a predator unlike any the world has ever known, and it's up to the scientists to make sure that it never reaches the surface.

In The Universe, today's most influential science writers explain the science behind our evolving understanding of The Universe and everything in it, including the cutting-edge research and discoveries that are shaping our knowledge. Lee Smolin reveals how math and cosmology are helping us create a theory of the whole universe. Neil Turok analyzes the fundamental laws of nature, what came before the big bang, and the possibility of a unified theory. And much more.

Deep inside Fairchild Air Force Base, Project Eternal Vigilance has continued to watch and wait for the Andromeda Strain to reappear. On the verge of being shut down, the project has registered no activity - until now. A Brazilian terrain-mapping drone has detected a bizarre anomaly of otherworldly matter in the middle of the jungle, and, worse yet, the tell-tale chemical signature of the deadly microparticle. With this shocking discovery, the next-generation Project Wildfire is activated, and a diverse team of experts hailing from all over the world is dispatched to investigate.

Newly escaped from the stifling boredom of a small town, college freshman Laura is ready for her first great adventure. But when her roommate, Betty, vanishes, and a sarcastic, nocturnal philosophy student named Carmilla moves into Betty's side of the room, Laura decides to play detective. Turns out, Betty isn't the first girl to go missing - she's just the first girl not to come back. As Laura closes in on answers, tensions rise with Carmilla. Is this just a roommate relationship that isn't working out, or does Carmilla know more than she's letting on about the disappearances?

All the creatures of the night gather in "the Hollows" of Cincinnati, to hide, to prowl, to party...and to feed. Vampires rule the darkness in a predator-eat-predator world rife with dangers beyond imagining - and it’s Rachel Morgan’s job to keep that world civilized. A bounty hunter and a witch with serious sex appeal and an attitude, she’ll bring ’em back alive, dead...or undead.

When 17-year-old Laurel Harper decides to go live with her estranged father and step-family, she's unaware of the fact that her fate was already sealed the day she was born. She is now exactly where some higher power wants her to be. But it's not until she meets the proud and mysterious Sam Laurens that she feels something strange is going on. And when she learns the dark truth about her own future, a sinister secret that will change everything as soon as she turns 19, she wants to run and hide, but soon realizes that there is no hiding from fate.

Turns out almost getting murdered and finding out you're part of a thought-to-be-extinct bloodline makes people notice you. Between a forbidden romance with my Arcane History prof, an accidental familiar bond with two shifters, and what I suspect about the Magistrate, hiding the truth is becoming impossible. As if I also need to be tormented by the ghosts of my insane ancestors . . . thanks, universe. Meanwhile, Cal and Adrian try to solve a mystery of their own: shifters from other packs are going missing, and all the evidence points to witches. But then they vanish, too.

To be irrevocably in love with a vampire is both fantasy and nightmare, woven into a dangerously heightened reality for Bella Swan. Pulled in one direction by her intense passion for Edward Cullen, and in another by her profound connection to werewolf Jacob Black, she has endured a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife to reach the ultimate turning point.

When the Lords of the Icelandic Elves summon me to use my talents to find a lost dragon's egg, I find it hard to say no. I've seen what a dragon can do, and a young, just-hatched dragon is a being of pure destruction. But word of the egg gets out, and the race to find it begins. Mages from many realms are on the hunt - including a dragon - and they don't always play well together. Unless I want to join the casualties, I need to find that egg and return it to where it belongs. Luckily, I have help, but I wish that damned golden-winged Nephilim would keep his shirt on.