Thirteen teen-agers experience a period of terror when their school is mysteriously closed, their parents disappear, and a gang of youths plans to build a new world for losers.

The tale of Bird and Scientist Guy,Who find a light bulb in the sky

It took 20 years for perfectionist PR pro Kate Masters to fall for her best friend, Army scout Ethan Shepherd, but only seconds for their lives to shatter. When an ill-fated deployment cuts short Ethan's life and their future, Kate struggles to reconstruct her world. She abandons who she is for a reckless and dangerous existence. Army medic Nick Hunter made a promise to Ethan, his brother-in-arms, before tragedy ripped his friend away. Upon leaving the military, Nick moves to Ethan's hometown, his determination to uphold his promise as strong as his need to heal his own broken heart. What he finds when he arrives isn't at all what he thought he was getting into. Kate isn't interested in healing, making it impossible for Nick to keep his promise. Neither of them could have predicted what happens next, but maybe that was the point all along...The Day He Went Away is a second chance romance novel that explores the devastation of loss, the beauty in losing yourself, and the transcendent power of grief.

Reaching the surface was just the beginning. As Myra Jackson and her friends set out to find the First Continuum, Captain Aero Wright and two companions from the outer space Second Continuum find themselves banished for treason and stranded on Earth. Wright has vowed to complete his late father’s mission to recolonize their ancestral planet, but his true mission is to find the mysterious girl who haunts his dreams. Meanwhile, Myra and the young refugees of the underwater Thirteenth Continuum must make an unlikely ally if they are going to survive the hostile surface world and reach their destination, the nexus of humanity’s hope for survival. As their paths begin to converge, the Beacons that guide and connect Myra and Aero begin to prove their power, and a shadowy force with a centuries-old grudge reveals itself.

"Just after a young couple says their vows, the earth shakes, and some people die suddenly and are taken away. The rest of their wedding party and friends are left to wrestle with what happened and with their faith"--

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

"Books written out of great emotional distress are ... rarely great literature. Thomas Melle's [The World at My Back] is great literature because he pulls it off without a single false note." —Deutschlandfunk (German National Radio) A FINALIST FOR THE GERMAN BOOK PRIZE • TRANSLATED INTO EIGHTEEN LANGUAGES Addicted to culture, author Thomas Melle has built up an impressive personal library. His heart is in these books, and he loves to feel them at his back, their promise and challenge, as he writes. But in the middle of a violent dissociative episode, when they become ballast to his increasingly manic self, he disperses almost overnight what had taken decades to gather. Nor is this all he loses: descending further into an incomprehensible madness, he loses friendships and his career as a novelist and celebrated playwright, but the most savage cruelty is that he no longer either knows or understands himself. Vulnerable and claustrophobic, shattering and profoundly moving, Thomas Melle’s The World at My Back is a book dedicated to the impossibility of reclaiming what has been lost, its lines both a prayer and reminder that, on the other side of madness, other possibilities await.

A SWAT team is only as good as its weakest link. The Listener works hard to make sure that no link breaks. She's constantly watching the team, testing to see if anyone's getting too close to the edge. But she can't do much when her help is refused. Dr. Maria Worley is the Listener. Maria's latest case is the hardest she's ever had. In her experience, no patient has walked closer to the edge than Ryan Lukas. Worse, he's convinced himself that he's just fine. And to make things even more complicated, Maria—and her teenage son—need Ryan as much as he needs them. The Listener is about to learn that helping others is easier than helping yourself. The Guardians: This time the good guys wear black