Forensic Science Fiction

Morton Farrier's life as a forensic genealogist has kept him from his own family's secrets- until now. This Christmastime novella follows Morton as he investigates the mysterious events surrounding his family's past, as well as events from one hundred years ago.

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.

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.

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.

Frannie O'Neill is a young and talented veterinarian living in Colorado. Plagued by the mysterious murder of her husband, David, a local doctor, Frannie throws herself into her work. It is not long before another bizarre murder occurs, and Kit Harrison, a troubled and unconventional FBI agent, arrives on her doorstep. Late one night, near the woods of her animal hospital, Frannie stumbles upon a strange, astonishing phenomenon that will change the course of her life forever....

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.

Dr. Lauren Hale, a new hospital resident, is nearly killed by a raving mad emergency room patient, in a senseless, unprovoked attack. Officer David Olson, veteran cop and former Marine, returns from a father-son camping trip to discover that his ex-wife has vanished under bizarre circumstances, and his police department is on the verge of collapse. Jack and Emma Harper, a young, upwardly mobile couple, find their hip city neighborhood rapidly descending into madness.

Deep in the steaming jungles of Paraguay, Aimee Weir is in trouble. The petrobiologist has found what she was looking for - a unique microorganism in a natural gas deposit - but it proves to be more destructive than anyone could have imagined. A contagion is striking down all in its wake. The camp is quarantined, but workers start to vanish in the night. Is it fear of contamination - or has something far more lethal come to the surface? Something that has been trapped beneath the miles of stone, waiting... for us.

When America is hit with a pandemic - soon finding out it was a viral and biochemical attack from terrorists - the population is both shocked and relieved to quickly have a vaccine on hand to save them. Untested and rushed to market, the people don’t care. In droves they line up, hoping to avoid the deadly virus. Too late, they discover there is something much worse than the virus unleashed on the United States; something so hideous and terrifying, it will make the virus look like a bad case of the flu.

Former star basketball player Clay Edison is busy. He’s solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man, earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. Plus his brother’s fresh out of prison, bringing with him a whole new set of complications. Then the phone rings in the dead of night. A wild party in a gentrifying East Bay neighborhood. A heated argument that spills into the street. Gunshots. Chaos. For Clay and his fellow coroners, it’s the start of a long night and the first of many to come.

London is in lockdown under martial law. A hospital is being urgently built by the river Thames to contain the thousands of victims of a flu-like epidemic. Construction is brought to a sudden halt when a leather holdall containing the bones of a child is unearthed from the rubble. A psychopath has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified. But why are he and his handlers determined to go to such murderous lengths to hide the origins of the body?

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.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages and seems to be from her computer-genius niece, Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost 20 years ago. As Scarpetta watches she begins to learn frightening secrets about her niece. That film clip and others sent soon after raise dangerous legal implications that increasingly isolate Scarpetta and leave her confused, worried, and not knowing where to turn.

Six children have escaped government experiments, and a frightening brush with death. Living out in the world for the first time, they yearn to be reunited with Kit and Frannie, the couple who saved their lives, and to return to the cabin known as the Lake House. But before they can get there, they will face a horrifying evil, for one man has survived the laboratory that bred the flying children, and he is obsessed with reclaiming them for a new round of experiments - with an even more deadly outcome.

Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician, has been training for years for the mission of a lifetime: to study living beings in space. Jack McCallum, Emma's estranged husband, has shared her dream of space travel, but a medical condition has grounded and embittered him. He must watch from the sidelines as his wife prepares for her first mission to the international Space Station.

And so it begins, the virus enters on the quiet feet of The Innocents. It invades each and every one of us. But, they say, plagues are like fires. At some point, they burn themselves out. Or not. Fear and rumor can be far more dangerous than the virus itself.

In this science fiction thriller, brothers are pitted against each other as a pandemic threatens to destabilize world governments by exerting a subtle mind control over survivors. Neil Johns has just started his dream job as a code breaker for the NSA when his brother Paul, a mycologist, goes missing on a trip to collect samples in the Amazon jungle. Paul returns with a gap in his memory and a fungal infection that almost kills him. But once he recuperates, he has enhanced communication, memory, and pattern recognition.

LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis has solved a lot of murder cases. On many of them - the ones he calls "different" - he taps the brain of brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware. But neither Alex nor Milo are prepared for what they find on an early morning call to a deserted mansion in Bel Air. This one’s beyond different. This is predation, premeditation, and cruelty on a whole new level. Four people have been slaughtered and left displayed bizarrely and horrifically in a stretch limousine. Confounding the investigation, none of the victims seems to have any connection to any other.

Scientist Emma Miller was the first American infected in the Pandoravirus pandemic, which triggers violent rages and sociopathic homicide. No longer fettered by morality or emotion, she has attracted millions of followers, both infected and uninfected. But is she America's worst nightmare - or its only hope? Emma's twin sister Isabel and brother Noah struggle against the threats posed by rampant infection, deadly civil unrest, and desperate government measures. Their - and humanity's - only chance for a future may lie in an alliance with Emma and her expanding community.

After Dr. Jack Stapleton’s near-death confrontation with a medical serial killer, his wife, NYC Chief Medical Examiner Laurie Montgomery, is carrying the load both at work and at home. When Laurie insists that Dr. Ryan Sullivan—an underperforming senior pathology resident who is spending his required month at the medical examiner's office but who truly detests doing forensic autopsies—assist her on a suicide autopsy in hopes of stimulating his interest in the field, the last thing she expects is to be unwittingly drawn into a major conspiracy that puts her own life in jeopardy.