Forensic Science Fiction

A city is hit by a sudden and strange epidemic of "white blindness", which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there social conventions quickly crumble and the struggle for survival brings out the worst in people.

After an exchange student with bubonic plague turns up in a Reno hospital, a contractor with identical symptoms dies in Los Angeles. The government‘s official stance is that the cases are isolated and the outbreak is under control. But George Mack, a 30-year public health veteran, quickly realizes this is no ordinary plague. The death toll is too high, and the spread pattern make no sense. As Reno’s hospitals fill with victims, Mack begins to believe that there is more to the epidemic than the CDC is letting on - and that he must take drastic steps if he hopes to save his city.

In The Poisoner's Handbook, Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.

At the close of the 24th century, a series of revolutions has caused the galaxy to descend into chaos. With the Galactic Union Army stretched thin, mercenary units have arisen for those who have the need - and the means - to hire them. Kay, the alien member of the Cutter Force Initiative, has returned to her brutal home world of Vast on a mission of mercy. Before she joined the merc team, she was a great healer. And now her skills are sorely needed. Hundreds of Vastalimi - including her blood-kin - are mysteriously dying. But is the plague a work of nature? Or is it a bioengineered virus, purposefully unleashed?

In Atlanta, Dr. Peyton Shaw is awakened by the phone call she has dreaded for years. As the CDC's leading epidemiologist, she's among the first responders to outbreaks around the world. It's a lonely and dangerous job, but it's her life - and she's good at it. This time she may have met her match. In Kenya, an Ebola-like pathogen has infected two Americans. One lies at death's door. With the clock ticking, Peyton assembles her team and joins personnel from the Kenyan Ministry of Health and the WHO.

On October 20, 1973, in San Francisco, a White couple strolling down Telegraph Hill was set upon and butchered by four young Black men. Thus began a reign of terror that lasted six months and left 15 Whites dead and the entire city in a state of panic. The perpetrators wanted nothing less than a race war.

What started as a flu outbreak on a military base proves deadlier than Ebola. Sympatico Syndrome is unlike anything the world has ever seen. Victims' behavior is changing to accommodate the rapid spread of the virus. Former Navy epidemiologist Cole Evans is well aware of the rare, infectious diseases the military studies. He also knows the government's stance on sharing information with the public, so if the media has already learned about the disease, then it's too late to contain the outbreak.

Once thought to be pure academic legend, scientists recently found proof of the existence of viruses thousands of times larger than ordinary viruses. So far all have been innocuous, but what if one was a human pathogen? While drilling for oil in the desolate reaches of the Arctic, an unsuspecting company extracts a permafrost ice core that has been frozen for 30,000 years, accidentally releasing a "megavirus".

Still reeling from her last case, Detective Isobel "Bel" Emerson finds comfort in both her dog and her newfound friendships. But when she and her new partner, Detective Gold, are called to the site of a bear attack, they discover something far more horrifying: the body of a young woman posed inside a cabin where the furniture is all too big. And to make matters worse, the cabin is located on Eamon Stone's property.

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.

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.

In Aurora, Illinois, Aubrey Wheeler is just trying to get by after her semi-criminal ex-husband split, leaving behind his unruly teenage son. Then the lights go out—not just in Aurora but across the globe. A solar storm has knocked out power almost everywhere. Suddenly, all problems are local, very local, and Aubrey must assume the mantle of fierce protector of her suburban neighborhood.

Master Sergeant Reed Beckham has led his Delta Force Team, codenamed Ghost, through every kind of hell imaginable and never lost a man. When a top-secret Medical Corps research facility goes dark, Team Ghost is called in to face their deadliest enemy yet - a variant strain of Ebola that turns men into monsters.

The study of twins and the genetics of aggression totally consumes research scientist Jeannie Ferrami. An accomplished and headstrong researcher, Jeannie has developed a sophisticated software program to identify identical twins reared apart. But Jeannie's breakthrough project is threatened by the appearance of a sudden impossibility - identical twins born weeks apart to different mothers at separate locations.

Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems, and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn. Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect.

In Marbella, Spain, Dr. Kate Warner awakens to a horrifying reality: the human race stands on the brink of extinction. A pandemic unlike any before it has swept the globe. Nearly a billion people are dead--and those the Atlantis Plague doesn't kill, it transforms at the genetic level. A few rapidly evolve. The remainder devolve. As the world slips into chaos, radical solutions emerge. Industrialized nations offer a miracle drug, Orchid, which they mass produce and distribute to refugee camps around the world. But Orchid is merely a way to buy time. It treats the symptoms of the plague but never actually cures the disease.

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.

Former naval doctor Peter Crane is summoned to a remote oil platform in the North Atlantic to help diagnose a bizarre medical condition. But when he arrives, Crane learns that the real trouble lies far below on "Deep Storm", a stunningly advanced science-research facility built two miles beneath the surface on the ocean floor. The top-secret structure has been designed for one purpose: to excavate a recently discovered undersea site that may hold the answers to an ancient mystery.

When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead. In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth's population - killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant - the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power - and the strong who possess it.

After fleeing Los Angeles during the last, desperate throes of the DRYP pandemic, medical resident Susan Barry and critically injured oil company executive Alan Wheeler know their toehold on survival in rural Liberty Valley won't last. They need food, fuel, and help. At first, they reach out to other survivors by radio, but when a mysterious code starts, the other survival colonies disappear from the air one by one.