What starts as an emergence of a new virus quickly turns into Mother Nature’s ultimate population control. While attending a seminar at the Ambassador Hotel, Ava Mason is unknowingly exposed to a carrier of a highly contagious virus. The next morning, she wakes to a steady pounding on her door. Within minutes, her home is stormed and she and her three children are apprehended, placed in a van and taken away. They are told nothing. No one is. Ava, her children, and others are brought to the Ambassador and sealed in.

In the wake of the cataclysmic events that reshaped our world in 2020, a sense of relief washed over us all. By late 2023, I think we were ready to just live life again. I know I was. It was a time to make new friends and put the past to rest. Rayne and I hadn’t known each other long, but we were building a solid friendship, nothing more. It was our common interests that sent us on vacation together to my remote cabin. What we didn’t, couldn’t know, was that we were on a collision course with the end of the world as we knew it.

When Vivian closes her eyes to go to sleep, she prays she doesn't wake up, that the world just goes away. Little does she realize her prayers are about to be answered. Vivian wakes to a world void of life. Bodies everywhere, cars smashed into buildings and each other. It seems whatever happened occurred in an instant. Everyone is dead. Everyone but her. Now Vivian not only searches out others, but for answers as to what happened and why.

Following a distress call from the state police, Dr. Edward Neil and his team from the Centers for Disease Control enter the small town of Hartworth, Montana. Immediately they encounter a man in a pickup truck holding a quarantine post, his body decimated by a disease like they have never seen. The entire town, population a little under 1000... dead. Men, women and children. The unknown germ hit so fast, the town did not stand a chance of survival.

It happens on a routine red-eye from Las Vegas to New York. Just as the plane breaks the early morning sky, in a blink of an eye, 144 passengers onboard flight 6520 die. There is no rhyme or reason. Experts scramble to find an explanation on how and why those on Flight 6520 met their demise so quickly and violently. It is hurriedly explained as a terror attack to the public, but General Buford Cane knows better. He has spent his entire career dedicated to the investigation and prevention of globe-threatening events.

A mysterious virus emerges after a meteor lands near a remote village in Peru. Authorities brought in to investigate discover the horrific virus not only kills, but it reanimates its victims, turning them into the walking dead. In spite of the government believing they have contained the outbreak, samples of the contagion are brought to the United States via infected military and other victims. The virus breaks boundaries and the infection spreads initiating the ground invasion of the War against the Undead.

Before the lights went out, Jack Warrant never considered himself a prepper. That was someone on the edge, a conspiracy theorist or a doomsday cultist who had a fatalistic view of the world. He was neither a theorist nor a cultist. He was an optimist. At least that was what he told himself when the darker thoughts creeped into his psyche as he stared at the ceiling in the middle of the night. Whenever he started down the rabbit hole, he always clawed his way back into the sunlight.

Akart's standalone novel, ARkStorm, is based on actual events. In 1861, a 43-day series of atmospheric rivers, huge flows of moisture carried from the tropics to the West Coast, turned large swaths of California into an inland sea. The intense rainstorms pounded the state unabated with little respite. Rivers became raging torrents that swept away entire communities, killing thousands. The State’s Central Valley turned a massive body of water 300-miles long and 20-miles wide.

In the wake of a summer storm, a strange malady takes hold, slowing mental and physical response. For many exposed, it proves fatal. As scientists race to find a cure for the unexplainable, it spreads.

When two teenagers stumble upon a frozen corpse deep in the woods, they make the fateful decision to bring it back to town—unaware they’ve just unleashed the apocalypse. In the morgue beneath the hospital, the dead begin to stir, attacking the living and spreading a relentless infection. The once-quiet town quickly descends into chaos as the hospital becomes a battleground, its halls soaked in blood as survivors fight to escape the growing horde.

Several years ago, an ARkStorm, a once-in-a-thousand-years flood event caused by a series of intense atmospheric rivers, flooded the Central Valley of California from Sacramento to what was once Los Angeles. The weight of the water was equivalent to the volume generated by the Mississippi River times 22. It challenged an already fragile seismic system consisting of hundreds of active faults.

USGS geophysicist, Mac Atwood, and volcanologist, Taylor Reed, survived being swallowed by the Earth during the earthquake swarm. They returned to the ordinarily peaceful and serene environs surrounding Mammoth Mountain and the Long Valley Caldera. When a series of seemingly minor earthquakes take place in the Sierra Nevadas, Mac the seismic detective, expresses his concern to Taylor. Her skills as a volcanologist will be tested as it appears the Long Valley Caldera, the second largest supervolcano in the U.S. behind Yellowstone, is awakening.

The world’s food supply grows aggressively, occupying every inch of earth, no matter how inhospitable. World hunger is averted. Humanity flourishes. RC-714 is digested, absorbed…and passed on. The Change affects small fast-breeding mammals first. They multiply with the same aggressive speed as the ExoGen plants, but an insatiable hunger drives them to violence. A war between species breaks out. When RC-714 reaches humanity, along with every other large creature on the planet, civilization implodes.

Adam and Kimberly Hall are enjoying a quiet suburban life with their daughter, Crystal, and their dog, Bowser, when an emergency message flashes on their phones: meteor impact imminent, seek immediate shelter. Minutes later, the shock wave rages through South Austin like a hurricane, and they’re left to pick up the pieces. As dusk begins to fall and horrific creatures come crawling out of the impact craters, they realize they’re under attack—and the attackers are not from Earth.

E. E. Isherwood presents Books 1-3 of the Neighborhood Watch series.

International best-selling author Linwood Barclay delivers pulse-pounding suspense that puts him among the masters of the genre. A Tap on the Window finds private investigator Cal Weaver making an ill-advised decision to pick up a young female hitchhiker who reminds him of his dead son. But something is off about the girl, and Cal is soon drawn into a host of nightmarish secrets.

FBI Agent Jake Carlisle is in deep trouble. While undercover he's been shot, but he's not sure if it's the crooks or local cops behind it. Worse, if he can't get help fast, two lives will be lost - his and that of the young witness, a boy whom he's sworn to protect. On the run from both the police and the Russian Mafia, Jake will do anything to save the child at his side, even something illegal. In desperation he kidnaps a nurse from a hospital parking lot.

Life on Shelnora Island seemed to be perfect for me. A tropical paradise, great food, and beautiful women at the local sorority . . . until I crossed paths with a mysterious murder and sightings of an honest-to-God werewolf! Now I'm surrounded by three beautiful women, all drawn into the mystery, and it turns out that my new dog is a smoking hot shapeshifter. Life's gotten crazy, but maybe, if we all work together, we'll find out who the real killer is. Could it be the curmudgeonly divemaster with a grudge? The sleazy resort owner drumming up sensationalism for tourist bucks?

For San Francisco’s newest medical examiner, Dr. Jessie Teska, it was supposed to be a fresh start. A new job in a new city. A way to escape her own dark past. Instead, she faces a chilling discovery when an opioid-overdose case contains hints of something more sinister. Jessie’s superiors urge her to close the case, but as more bodies land on her autopsy table, she uncovers a constellation of deaths that point to an elaborate plot involving drug dealers and Bitcoin brokers.

When the pandemic hit, nobody was expecting it to be as bad as it was. The economy barely survived the lockdowns, but it staggered along until civil unrest shattered people’s hope of better times to come. With it being an election year, more and more Americans were waking up to the idea that they truly were behind the curve. The hope was if they did not get sick, run out of money, or could avoid violent mobs, they would be fine.

Just two years ago, the media turned Detective John Spader into a hero. He'd caught a twisted serial killer terrorizing Massachusetts, and the "Jack of Spades," as the media dubbed Spader, was born. But when the murderer walked free on a technicality - free to kill again - the public turned on Spader. Now a new serial killer is on the loose. He wears the silly, gap-toothed, grinning mask of Galaxo, Starboy Avenger! - a cartoon alien of unparalleled popularity with children.

In the southwestern desert, a mysterious cult prays for the return of the Visitors. Only one creature can derail that grand and glorious event: An evil entity, known as the Duad, can keep the Visitors from arriving and prevent the transfiguration to come. Daley, who lives nearby, has a far more serious problem: an alien consciousness that has taken up residence in her head.

After years of paying her dues on the force, Beth Sturgis has earned her place as a detective for the Robbery-Homicide division of the Atlanta PD. Now, she's heading up a major manhunt for a potential serial killer who's working his way inward from the outskirts of the city. The copycat elements in the first crime scene lead Sturgis to retired FBI agent Jack Kale, who was responsible for apprehending and nearly killing the murderer known as the Scarecrow, the same Scarecrow who appears to be this new killer's terrible inspiration.

It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.

In a world invaded by demons, it's up to Katie and her Killers to restore order while also evading enemies - and friends - who want her in the worst way.