Handpicked by the NSA to track down and identify the ten known witnesses to the recent crash of a weather balloon, Robert Bellamy searches for clues in Rome, Budapest, and Texas.

Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit. “A tour de force.”—The New York Times Book Review For Kivrin, preparing to travel back in time to study one of the deadliest eras in humanity’s history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history’s darkest hours.

Handpicked by the NSA to track down and identify the ten known witnesses to the recent crash of a weather balloon, Robert Bellamy searches for clues in Rome, Budapest, and Texas.

As their infatuation with President Obama fades, millions of Americans anxiously ask, Is this the change we were waiting for? The current administration represents change, for sure, Steven Malanga argues - a momentous transformation of the fundamental structure of American politics. A self-interested coalition of public-sector unions and government-financed community activists (like the young Barack Obama) has become our era''s characteristic political machine. In Shakedown, Mr. Malanga shows how this machine''s single-minded goal is always bigger government and more public spending. The bill, he says, is now coming due for the relentless rise of this new political powerhouse. He chronicles how public-sector unions and the corrupt political hacks beholden to them have all but bankrupted once-rich states like California and New Jersey. He details the campaigns to undermine the successful and popular 1990s welfare reform and to revitalize the failed, wasteful War on Poverty programs that funnel taxpayer money to the advocacy groups that are integral cogs in the new political machine. And he provides a comprehensive summary of how these same advocacy groups spent decades helping undermine mortgage standards in the name of helping the poor - in the process enriching themselves and enabling the housing meltdown. As Americans anxiously ponder the future direction of their government and their economy, Shakedown explores the questions of who got us in this mess and why we need change - constructive change - more than ever.

A major international conspiracy among U.S. military traitors, former KGB agents and international organized crime has begun a campaign of selective human annihilation. The most advanced weapons of mass destruction are poised to unleash the Coalition's vision of a New Earth. Every contingency has been planned and provided for--except one. The Executioner's hellfire blitz sweeping from the U.S. through Europe and the Middle East has left the enemy scrambling for damage control and winding up the doomsday clock.

“Is the government monitoring you? Are there secret organizations controlling society? Do creatures not of this world live among us? All of this and more is explored in this new thrilling series that delves into some of the horrifying truths we believe in the back of our minds. WARNING: This series may very well change how you look at life as we know it.”