Science Mysteries

Three of the most important words in science are I don't know. Not knowing implies a universe of opportunities—the possibility of discovery and surprise. Our understanding of science has advanced immeasurably over the last 500 years, yet many fundamental mysteries of existence persist: How did our universe begin? How big is the universe? Is time travel possible? What’s at the center of a black hole? How did life on Earth arise? Are we alone? What is consciousness, and can we create it?

When you get up in the morning, the last thing you expect to see is a murdered guy hanging outside your window. Things like that tend to draw the attention of the local police, and when you're squatting in your parents' old house until you can afford to buy it, another thing you can't afford is the attention of the cops. Oh yeah. Hi. My name is Pet. It's not my real name, but it's the only one you're getting.

It's hard being the youngest in a family of witches known for their power. It's even harder when that magical power has all but passed you by. Still, I was doing okay for myself. I like to think I was proving to the rest of my family that magic wasn't a requirement to living. Then Aunt Opal became the prime suspect in a murder investigation. Wouldn't you know it would happen right when everyone else in the family but me was out of town. Now it's up to me to prove her innocence, and a little magic could go a long way in helping me do that.

Histories of science in the 20th century have focused on relativity and quantum mechanics. But, quietly in the background, there has been a third area of exploration that has equally important implications for our understanding of the universe. It is unknown to the general public, despite the fact that many Nobel prize winners, senior academics and major research centres around the world have been devoted to it - it is the study of plasma.

Ben Davis was prepared for disaster. He just didn't know it would come so soon. He and his teenage son Joel, are miles deep in the backcountry of the San Juan Mountains when high-altitude nuclear electromagnetic detonations light up the pre-dawn sky. Ben, Joel, and their dog, Gunner, must make their way home - or whatever's left of it - on foot.

After 20 years working for Pervenio Corp chasing bounties and extinguishing rebellions throughout the solar system, he’s on a routine pickup job hunting a wealthy offworlder heir who ran away from home. But when a mad scientist gets his hands on the boy, Malcolm finds himself caught up in a twisted plot to develop working androids.

The once-utopian Chasm City - a domed human settlement on an otherwise inhospitable planet---has been overrun by a virus known as the Melding Plague, capable of infecting any body, organic or computerized. Now, with the entire city corrupted - from the people to the very buildings they inhabit---only the most wretched sort of existence remains. The stakes are raised when Tanner Mirabel's search brings him face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.

The eighth entry in Charlaine Harris' New York Times best selling, Anthony Award-winning series finds Sookie reeling from an explosive attack on the previous month's vampire summit. Many vampires were killed, including several of Sookie's friends. But most pressing for Sookie is the unknown status of her weretiger boyfriend Quinn. Like it or not, everything is changing in the supernatural world - and Sookie is caught in the middle.

Finally settled with Viking vampire Eric, Sookie finds normalcy just as chaos surrounds her. Sookie’s former lover Bill, her boss Sam, and even Eric are struggling with family problems. Then things get really interesting when the werewolves tell Sookie an ominous presence is lurking.

In this entry from Anthony Award winner Charlaine Harris' New York Times best-selling series, the gorgeous and feisty telepath hits the road to find her missing boyfriend, who may have run off with his former lover - a notorious vamp.

What happened to Dr. Jonathan Brandon, a dashing RAF flight surgeon, who disappeared from London in 1945? Kidnapping? Murder? Or did Brandon merely vanish of his own free will, seeking another life? American teacher Anne Howard is stunned by a different explanation - that her British grandmother's long-lost fiance was unwillingly wrenched back through time to Elizabethan England. Anne knows time travel is nonsense - until she is handed a fresh-cut thornless rose, a bloom extinct for over 400 years.

When San Francisco PD asks Argonaut to assist them in solving a series of strange bank robberies, Cassius Black and Morgan King uncover a disturbing plot that points to an unknown artifact hidden somewhere in the city. Their investigation soon has them crossing paths with a desperate Brianna, who seeks their help in finding her missing daughter. When the witch reveals the shocking circumstances surrounding her daughter's birth as well as the deadly magic sealed inside the young girl's body, the Argonaut agents realize their case is linked to Eden.

In her ninth adventure, Sookie has just tied on her cocktail waitress apron for a night's work when a special report comes on the television. The time has come. The wereanimals have revealed themselves.

The fate of the Lost Ark of the Covenant is one of the great historical mysteries of all time. The Bible contains hundreds of references to the Ark's power, but the Ark itself mysteriously disappears from recorded history sometime after the building of the Temple of Solomon. After 10 years of searching through the dusty archives of Europe and the Middle East, Graham Hancock has succeeded where scores of others have failed. This intrepid journalist has tracked down the true story behind the myths and legends - revealing where the Ark is today, how it got there, and why it remains hidden.

Sometimes the worst storms aren't from Mother Nature, and sometimes the worst nightmares aren't the ones in our heads. Mike Mitchell, an average New Yorker already struggling to keep his family together, suddenly finds himself fighting just to keep them alive when an increasingly bizarre string of disasters starts appearing on the world's news networks. As both the real world and the cyber world come crashing down, bending perception and reality, a monster snowstorm cuts New York off from the world, turning it into a wintry tomb where nothing is what it seems.

New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Charlaine Harris has won an Anthony Award for her one-of-a-kind Sookie Stackhouse mystery series. Sookie, a Louisiana cocktail waitress, skilled telepath, and friend to vampires, has a dedicated fan base that grows larger every day.

The witnesses are legion, scattered across the world and dotted through history, people who looked up and saw something impossible lighting up the night sky. What those objects were, where they came from, and who - or what - might be inside them is the subject of fierce debate and equally fierce mockery, so that most who glimpsed them came to wish they hadn't. Most, but not everyone.

At Midnight's local pawnshop, weapons are flying off the shelves - only to be used in sudden and dramatic suicides right at the main crossroads in town. Who better to figure out why blood is being spilled than the vampire Lemuel, who, while translating mysterious texts, discovers what makes Midnight the town it is?

Vampires have officially "come out of the coffin", and Miss Sookie can't wait for one to come her way.

Filled with adventurous human drama-and shocking inhuman horror - Rise Again is a vivid and powerful debut novel of the zombie apocalypse.