Plague Of Ice

This title chronicles the latest adventure of various iconic characters from the Dungeons & Dragons core rulebooks. This series of novels is designed to bring readers closer to the feeling of actually playing a D&D adventure. This seventh title in the novel line features the iconic characters of the fighter and the rogue, both of whom appeared in the kickoff title of the line, The Savage Caves. Frigid cold and ice sweep across the realm at the height of summer. Arctic monsters prowl the flash-frozen landscape. To unlock the mystery, a small band of heroes must traverse the depths of a ruined, ice-clogged city that now houses only unearthly creatures and deadly traps. Will they find the key to salvation?

Pristine water—hidden for millions of years, untouched by pollution, and possessing natural healing powers—is found miles under Antarctic ice. The scientists who make this astonishing discovery stand to win worldwide acclaim and earn billions. While people around the world line up for a taste of the therapeutic water, a cluster of new cases of mad cow disease explodes in a rural French province. Dr. Noah Haldane and his World Health Organization team are urgently summoned. Fresh from a brush with a pandemic flu, Noah recognizes the deadliness of a prion—the enigmatic microscopic protein responsible for mad cow disease—that kills with the speed and ferocity of a virus. Despite intense international pressure to declare the outbreak a random occurrence, Noah suspects that factors other than nature have ignited the prion's spread among animals and people in France. Facing a spate of disappearances and unexplained deaths, Noah uncovers a conspiracy that stretches from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Beverly Hills, and from the North to the South Pole. He soon realizes that the scientific find of the century—a lake the size of Lake Superior buried three miles under Antarctica—might hold the key to a microscopic Jurassic Park. With a billion-dollar industry hanging on his silence, Noah has to stay alive long enough to sound the alarm. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

An unflinching photographic record of the epic effects of a violent climate, from the earliest extinction events to the present. Violent geologic events have ravaged the Earth since time began, spanning the vast eons of our planet's existence. These seismic phenomena have scored their marks in rock strata and been reflected in fossil records for future humanity to excavate and ponder. For most of the preceeding 78,000 years Homo sapiens simply observed natural climate upheaval. One hundred years ago, however, industrialization stunningly changed the rules, so that now most climate change is driven by us. Fire, Storm and Flood is an unflinching photographic record of the epic effects of a violent climate, from the earliest extinction events to the present, in which we witness climate chaos forced by unnatural global warming. It uses often emotional and moving imagery to drive home the enormity of climatic events, offering a sweeping acknowledgment of our crowded planet's heartbreaking vulnerability and show-stopping beauty.

A post-apocalyptic literary epic in the tradition of The Handmaid's Tale, Divergent and Cloud Atlas, and a breakout book in North America for a writer of rare and unconventional talent. From Guardian First Book Award finalist Sandra Newman comes an ambitious and extraordinary novel of a future in which bands of children and teens survive on the detritus--physical and cultural--of a collapsed America. When her brother is struck down by Posies--a contagion that has killed everyone by their late teens for generations--fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star pursues the rumour of a cure and sets out on a quest to save him, her tribe and what's left of their future. Along the way she faces broken hearts and family tragedy, mortal danger and all-out war--and much growing up for the girl who may have led herself and everyone she loves to their doom.

Two undercover agents take the greatest risk of their careers—and lives—in these thrilling first two books in Loreth Anne White’s Bellona Channel series! MELTING THE ICE Hannah McGuire’s resort-town life had been quiet, happy and safe. Until her best friend was murdered and the investigation forced her into a partnership with Dr. Rex Logan—the man she’d loved, lost and been hiding from for six years. Rex had put Hannah’s life in danger once before. Now he had to face her again. And this time, to protect her, he was staying close—very close. Working to expose a terrorist who possessed a weapon that could threaten global security, Rex was defenseless in the face of the powerful passion that still simmered between them. But was passion enough? And when Hannah told Rex her own secret—that she’d borne him a son—would she put all their lives in grave danger? SAFE PASSAGE Wounded government agent Scott Armstrong hated his newest assignment—baby-sitting scientist Dr. Skye Van Rijn. He missed the excitement of working in the field, his only salvation from the tragedy that haunted his dreams. But the mission turned dangerous when he discovered an evil terrorist was also after the mysterious—and beautiful—doctor. Skye was a genius at developing biological antidotes to new diseases. Her tender touch and warm body soon began to heal Scott’s battered heart, but the deadly secrets she hid put both their lives at risk, sending them on the run, into the harsh wilderness. As their enemy closed in, Scott was forced to choose between his loyalties to his job—and his passion for the woman who might just be able to save his soul . . .

In the spirit of medieval writer Chaucer, all human activity lies within the artist’s scope, the History of Man Series uses medicine as a jumping off point to explore precisely that, all history, all science, all human activity since the beginning of time. The jumping off style of writing takes the reader, the listener into worlds unknown, always returning to base, only to jump off again. History of Man are stories and tales of nearly everything. The Second History of Man focuses mostly on bacteria and bacterial infections as the foundation, jumping off into Darwin and evolution, gin & tonics and the discovery of the first antibiotic to treat infection (and it wasn’t penicillin), visiting with those clever chaps who cook up drugs in the lab. We’ll call upon poets & poetry, celebrities like Frank Sinatra, the Rat Pack, and Bobby Darin, the classical music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, the tragic story of World War II, Anne Frank and the Holocaust, tuberculosis, and a few of the rich & famous who suffered from TB, travelling back in time to the Black Death which wiped out 25 percent of humans on Earth, exploring the origins of a salon and a saloon, Columbus and the Age of Discovery, the lost generations of childhood, ending with the invention of the Internet.

A sweeping germ’s-eye view of history from human origins to global pandemics Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from cutting-edge genetics, Kyle Harper explains why humanity’s uniquely dangerous disease pool is rooted deep in our evolutionary past, and why its growth is accelerated by technological progress. He shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, and reveals the enduring effects of historical plagues in patterns of wealth, health, power, and inequality. He also tells the story of humanity’s escape from infectious disease—a triumph that makes life as we know it possible, yet destabilizes the environment and fosters new diseases. Panoramic in scope, Plagues upon the Earth traces the role of disease in the transition to farming, the spread of cities, the advance of transportation, and the stupendous increase in human population. Harper offers a new interpretation of humanity’s path to control over infectious disease—one where rising evolutionary threats constantly push back against human progress, and where the devastating effects of modernization contribute to the great divergence between societies. The book reminds us that human health is globally interdependent—and inseparable from the well-being of the planet itself. Putting the COVID-19 pandemic in perspective, Plagues upon the Earth tells the story of how we got here as a species, and it may help us decide where we want to go.

Reveals the global effects of the bubonic plague, and what we can learn from this earlier pandemic A century ago, the third bubonic plague swept the globe, taking more than 15 million lives. Plague Ports tells the story of ten cities on five continents that were ravaged by the epidemic in its initial years: Hong Kong and Bombay, the Asian emporiums of the British Empire where the epidemic first surfaced; Sydney, Honolulu and San Francisco, three “pearls” of the Pacific; Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro in South America; Alexandria and Cape Town in Africa; and Oporto in Europe. Myron Echenberg examines plague's impact in each of these cities, on the politicians, the medical and public health authorities, and especially on the citizenry, many of whom were recent migrants crammed into grim living spaces. He looks at how different cultures sought to cope with the challenge of deadly epidemic disease, and explains the political, racial, and medical ineptitudes and ignorance that allowed the plague to flourish. The forces of globalization and industrialization, Echenberg argues, had so increased the transmission of microorganisms that infectious disease pandemics were likely, if not inevitable. This fascinating, expansive history, enlivened by harrowing photographs and maps of each city, sheds light on urbanism and modernity at the turn of the century, as well as on glaring public health inequalities. With the recent outbreak of COVID-19, and ongoing fears of bioterrorism, Plague Ports offers a necessary and timely historical lesson.