Forensic Science Fiction

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Will the last humans on Earth please turn out the lights? James Patterson's ZOO was just the beginning. The planet is still under violent siege by ferocious animals. Humans are their desperate prey. Except some humans are evolving, mutating into a savage species that could save civilization-or end it.

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.

It started as a new virus. Before long, 95% of the world's population was dead. When a deadly flu sweeps the globe, the Bronson family hunkers down to wait it out. It doesn't take long for society to collapse, but when surviving neighbors band together, hope is restored. That hope is swiftly shattered when a rogue element forms, requiring food in exchange for security and medical services.

Alex Wolfe is an elite agent with the CIA. He has a proven track record of stopping international bioweapons programs. Skylar Cruz is a skilled Marine whose battlefield injury sidelined her from serving her country. When they’re recruited for a brand-new covert-op group, Vector, combating biological and chemical weapons threats, their first mission had better be a success. Because it’s not just their careers at stake. It’s all of humanity.

From New York Times best-selling author Mira Grant comes the second book in the terrifying Parasitology series. The SymboGen-designed tapeworms were created to relieve humanity of disease and sickness. But the implants in the majority of the world's population began attacking their hosts, turning them into a ravenous horde. Now those who do not appear to be afflicted are being gathered for quarantine as panic spreads, but Sal and her companions must discover how the tapeworms are taking over their hosts, what their eventual goal is, and how they can be stopped.

Something insidious has arrived - right in the heartland of our nation. 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.

The ultimate battle for humanity and freedom begins—and ends—right here. On one side: The ravenous, unending, and undead hordes of the Infected—insanely fast blue zombies who can think, heal, and even reproduce. On the other: The vicious, hyper-violent, and desperate remains of the US Government, obsessed with destruction of the real America. Only Bruce and his brave clan of battle-hardened warriors will stand and fight for the future. But there is hope. Bruce and his clan have gathered an awesome array of weaponry on the ground and in the air.

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.

Captain Dominic Holland leads a crew of skilled covert operatives and talented scientific personnel. He's taken them to all corners of the Earth to protect the United States from biological and chemical warfare. When his CIA handler, Meredith Webb, gives him a mission to investigate a disturbing lead on a laboratory based out of an abandoned oil rig, they discover the most terrifying threat to mankind they've ever faced - a genetically engineered biological weapon called the Oni Agent.