M. Abrams

Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

1992. All across the United States respectable, upstanding citizens are showing up dead. These deaths could be accidents, and they don’t appear to be connected—until a fatal fall from a high-floor window attracts some unexpected attention. That attention comes from the secretary of defense. All of a sudden he wants an interagency task force to investigate. And he wants Jack Reacher as the army’s representative. If Reacher gets a result, great. If not, he’s a convenient fall guy.

Only the most hardened survivalists can endure living in the scorched deadlands of the former state of Arizona. Among them is nineteen-year-old Georgia Reno, who lives in an isolated desert settlement with her father and younger brother. Roads don’t exist here; visitors are more dark fairy tale than reality. But when two mysterious strangers arrive on their land, Georgia begins to question her sheltered existence. Soon, her tentative curiosity blooms into a fledgling desire to leave the settlement, even if it means venturing into a world her father has only ever warned against.

When police investigator Susan Adler is called to the roadside murder of a fellow state trooper, she's tasked with finding the people responsible for the cold-blooded act caught on the trooper's dashboard cam. She traces the car to a nurse who, along with her elderly patient, has been missing for days. At the old man's house, she finds disturbing evidence that instantly revives two cold cases involving long-missing children.

From the do-or-die early days of self-financed recordings and D.I.Y. concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy, to the multi-platinum, MTV-powered glory years of stadium-shaking anthems and chart-topping power ballads, to the ultimate crash when grunge bands like Nirvana forever altered the entire climate of the business, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock's Nothin' But a Good Time captures the energy and excess of the hair metal years in the words of the musicians and industry insiders who lived it.

In the mid-70s, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. Born Standing Up is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked away".

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

It's been five years since Carter Blake parted ways with the top-secret government operation Winterlong. They brokered a deal at the time: he'd keep quiet about what they were doing, and in return he'd be left alone. But news that one of Blake's old allies is dead, a man who agreed to the same deal, means only one thing: something has changed and Winterlong is coming for him.

We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies - neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist.

The entire Perseid Collapse series in one box set: post-apocalyptic thriller action and suspense in five books! Contains: The Jakarta Pandemic (Book 1), The Perseid Collapse (Book 2), Event Horizon (Book 3), Point of Crisis (Book 4), and Dispatches (Book 5).