Recommendations based on "Wither"

"This is a beautiful book. Gripping, engaging, and absolutely worth the time it takes to burrow yourself into its reality. I can't recommend it highly enough." —Seanan McGuire The first in a masterful new trilogy from acclaimed author M. R. Carey, The Book of Koli begins the story of a young boy on a journey through a strange and deadly world of our making.  Everything that lives hates us... Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable landscape. A place where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don't get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will. Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He believes the first rule of survival is that you don't venture too far beyond the walls. He's wrong. "A captivating start to what promises to be an epic post-apocalyptic fable." —Kirkus "Enthralling...Koli embarks upon a journey as perilous as it is enlightening." —Guardian "The best thing I've read in a long time. I loved it." —Joanne Harris "Carey hefts astonishing storytelling power with plainspoken language, heartbreaking choices, and sincerity like an arrow to the heart." —Locus Look out for the next novels in the trilogy: The Trials of Koli and The Fall of Koli

Collected here for the first time is every piece of short fiction from New York Times Bestseller Mira Grant's acclaimed Newsflesh series, with two new never-before-published novellas and all eight short works available for the first time in print. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, a man-made virus taking over bodies and minds, filling them with one, unstoppable command...FEED.Mira Grant creates a chilling portrait of an America paralyzed with fear. No one leaves their houses and entire swaths of the country have been abandoned. And only the brave, the determined, or the very stupid, venture out into the wild.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Timeline, Sphere, and Congo, this is the classic thriller of science run amok that took the world by storm.Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read“[Michael] Crichton’s dinosaurs are genuinely frightening.”—Chicago Sun-TimesAn astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price.Until something goes wrong. . . .In Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton taps all his mesmerizing talent and scientific brilliance to create his most electrifying technothriller.Praise for Jurassic Park“Wonderful . . . powerful.”—The Washington Post Book World“Frighteningly real . . . compelling . . . It’ll keep you riveted.”—The Detroit News“Full of suspense.”—The New York Times Book Review

Soon to be a major motion picture!The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.Eyewitness reports from the first truly global war“I found ‘Patient Zero’ behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town. . . . His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds. . . . He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was ‘cursed.’ I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy’s skin was . . . cold and gray . . . I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse.” —Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China“‘Shock and Awe’? Perfect name. . . . But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!” —Todd Wainio, former U.S. Army infantryman and veteran of the Battle of Yonkers“Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? . . . For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.” —General Travis D’Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, EuropeFrom the Hardcover edition.

In the sequel to the terrifying science fiction thriller, One Way, returning home from Mars may mean striking a deal with the very people who abandoned him.They were sent to build a utopia, but all they found on Mars was death.Frank Kitteridge has been abandoned. But XO, the greedy -- and ultimately murderous -- corporate architects of humanity's first Mars base made a costly mistake when they left him there: they left him alive. Using his skills and his wits, he's going to find a way back home even if it kills him.Little does he know that Mars isn't completely empty. Just over the mountain, there's another XO base where things are going terribly, catastrophically wrong. And when the survivors of that mission find Frank, they're going to want to take even the little he has away from him.If there's anything in Frank's favor, it's this: he's always been prepared to go to the extremes to get the job done. That's how he ended up on Mars in the first place. It just might be his ticket back.For more from S. J. Morden, check out:One Way

"Worst Case Scenario is the best thriller I’ve read so far this year. It’s a chilling idea with great characters and near-perfect execution." -James Patterson When a pilot suffers a heart attack at 35,000 feet, a commercial airliner filled with passengers crashes into a nuclear power plant in the small town of Waketa, Minnesota, which becomes ground zero for a catastrophic national crisis with global implications. #1 internationally bestselling author T.J. Newman is back with Worst Case Scenario, following her explosive debut thriller Falling and its harrowing follow-up Drowning.   “Worst Case Scenario is the best thriller I’ve read so far this year.  A jetliner crashes in the worst possible location – and I mean the worst – the site of a nuclear plant.  It’s a chilling idea with great characters and near-perfect execution.  T. J. Newman is the kind of gifted storyteller that comes along every 5 to 10 years. Don’t miss Worst Case Scenario.” -James Patterson    The International Nuclear Event Scale tracks nuclear disasters. It has seven levels. Level 7 is a Major Accident, with only two on record: Fukushima and Chernobyl. There has never been a Level 8. Until now.   In this heart-stopping thriller, ordinary people—power plant employees, firefighters, teachers, families, neighbors, and friends— are thrust into an extraordinary situation as they face the ultimate test of their lives. It will take the combined courage, ingenuity, and determination of a brave few to save not only their community and loved ones, but the fate of humanity at large.

The Strange Bird―from New York Times bestselling novelist Jeff VanderMeer―expands and weaves deeply into the world of his “thorough marvel”* of a novel, Borne.The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory―she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape.But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology―satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation itself: a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans―all of them now simply scrambling to survive―who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home.With The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer has done more than add another layer, a new chapter, to his celebrated novel Borne. He has created a whole new perspective on the world inhabited by Rachel and Wick, the Magician, Mord, and Borne―a view from above, of course, but also a view from deep inside the mind of a new kind of creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world.Praise for Borne*“Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy was an ever-creeping map of the apocalypse; with Borne he continues his investigation into the malevolent grace of the world, and it's a thorough marvel.” ―Colson Whitehead“VanderMeer is that rare novelist who turns to nonhumans not to make them approximate us as much as possible but to make such approximation impossible. All of this is magnified a hundredfold in Borne . . . Here is the story about biotech that VanderMeer wants to tell, a vision of the nonhuman not as one fixed thing, one fixed destiny, but as either peaceful or catastrophic, by our side or out on a rampage as our behavior dictates―for these are our children, born of us and now to be borne in whatever shape or mess we have created. This coming-of-age story signals that eco-fiction has come of age as well: wilder, more reckless and more breathtaking than previously thought, a wager and a promise that what emerges from the twenty-first century will be as good as any from the twentieth, or the nineteenth.” ―Wai Chee Dimock, The New York Times Book Review

'A GENUINE TREAT FOR SF FANS: AN EPIC MULTIVERSE TALE THAT MOVES LIKE A THRILLER' Kirkus on Infinity Gate 'AN IMMENSE ACHIEVEMENT: AN IMPECCABLY CRAFTED BOOK' New York Times Following the critically acclaimed Infinity Gate comes the second and final novel in the Pandominion by international bestselling M. R. Carey. A thrilling adventure set in the multiverse, it tells of humanity's expansion across millions of dimensions, and the AI technology that might see it all come to an end . . . Two mighty empires are at war - and both will lose, with thousands of planets falling to the extinction event called the Scour. At least that's what the artificial intelligence known as Rupshe believes. But somewhere in the multiverse there exists a force - the Mother Mass - that could end the war in an instant, and Rupshe has assembled a team to find it. Essien Nkanika, a soldier trying desperately to atone for past sins; the cat-woman Moon, a conscienceless killer; the digitally recorded mind of physicist Hadiz Tambuwal; Paz, an idealistic child and the renegade robot spy Dulcimer Coronal. Their mission will take them from the hellish prison world of Tsakom to the poisoned remains of a post-apocalyptic Earth, and finally bring them face to face with the Mother Mass itself. But can they persuade it to end eons of neutrality and help them? And is it too late to make a difference? Because the Pandominion's doomsday machines are about to be unleashed - and not even their builders know how to control them. Discover the conclusion to the spectacular Pandominion duology - an exhilarating science fiction series from the author of the million-copy bestseller The Girl With All the Gifts. Perfect for fans of The Space Between Worlds, The Long Earth and Children of Time. Praise for The Pandominion: '[A] brilliant dimension-hopping sci-fi thriller . . . readers will be wowed' Publishers Weekly 'A fascinating window onto a dangerous and multifaceted universe' Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time 'Infinity Gate, with its in-depth science and rich characterization, is a must-read for SF fans' Booklist 'A powerful exploration of the near-future, skilfully and seamlessly weaving different realities and different iterations of AI . . . A compelling entry and a must-read!' Tade Thompson, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of Rosewater 'Humane, thoughtful and exciting, Mike Carey reaffirms his place in the ranks of SF with this startlingly good novel' Paul Cornell, award-winning author and screenwriter 'M.R. Carey is a master of imagination and suspense' Gareth L. Powell, author of Embers of War 'A dazzling speculation on the many ways our world could have evolved, layered inside a thriller that will make your eardrums vibrate. I was charmed, disturbed, and fascinated by turns - and I couldn't put this book down' Annalee Newitz, author of Autonomous and The Terraformers 'This is gripping, unrelenting, and absolutely unique. Carey is working at the absolute top of his game' Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author 'One of the most inventive voices in contemporary fiction' i09.com

It's been three months since everyone under the age of fifteen became trapped in the bubble known as the FAYZ. Three months since all the adults disappeared. Gone. Food ran out weeks ago. Everyone is starving, but no one wants to figure out a solution. And each day, more and more kids are evolving, developing supernatural abilities that set them apart from the kids without powers. Tension rises and chaos is descending upon the town. It's the normal kids against the mutants. Each kid is out for himself, and even the good ones turn murderous. But a larger problem looms. The Darkness, a sinister creature that has lived buried deep in the hills, begins calling to some of the teens in the FAYZ. Calling to them, guiding them, manipulating them. The Darkness has awakened. And it is hungry.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A thrilling finale to a trilogy that will stand as one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction.”—Stephen King You followed The Passage. You faced The Twelve. Now enter The City of Mirrors for the final reckoning. As the bestselling epic races to its breathtaking finale, Justin Cronin’s band of hardened survivors await the second coming of unspeakable darkness. The world we knew is gone. What world will rise in its place? The Twelve have been destroyed and the terrifying hundred-year reign of darkness that descended upon the world has ended. The survivors are stepping outside their walls, determined to build society anew—and daring to dream of a hopeful future. But far from them, in a dead metropolis, he waits: Zero. The First. Father of the Twelve. The anguish that shattered his human life haunts him, and the hatred spawned by his transformation burns bright. His fury will be quenched only when he destroys Amy—humanity’s only hope, the Girl from Nowhere who grew up to rise against him. One last time light and dark will clash, and at last Amy and her friends will know their fate.Look for the entire Passage trilogy:THE PASSAGE | THE TWELVE | THE CITY OF MIRRORSPraise for The City of Mirrors“Compulsively readable.”—The New York Times Book Review “The City of Mirrors is poetry. Thrilling in every way it has to be, but poetry just the same . . . The writing is sumptuous, the language lovely, even when the action itself is dark and violent.”—The Huffington Post “This really is the big event you’ve been waiting for . . .  A true last stand that builds and comes with a bloody, roaring payoff you won’t see coming, then builds again to the big face off you’ve been waiting for.”—NPR “A masterpiece . . .  with The City of Mirrors, the third volume in The Passage trilogy, Justin Cronin puts paid to what may well be the finest post-apocalyptic epic in our dystopian-glutted times. A stunning achievement by virtually every measure.”—The National Post “Justin Cronin’s Passage trilogy is remarkable for the unremitting drive of its narrative, for the breathtaking sweep of its imagined future, and for the clear lucidity of its language.”—Stephen King