The Culling

150 years after a virus wipes out most of the world's population, Reagan Scott finds herself chosen for the State of the Union's fifth Culling. She will compete against 49 of the country's brightest girls. And then, of course, there are the 50 boys. Though the government truly means well, not everything is as it seems. She will be tested to the fullest extent while an evil storm brews.With eliminations happening frequently, how far can she make it? And if she makes it far enough to meet the boys, how can she be expected to, at just 18 years of age, find a partner...for life? Does she have what it takes to be the next Madam President?

Lucian “Lucky” Spark has been recruited for training by the Establishment, a totalitarian government. If a recruit fails any level of the violent training competitions, a family member is brutally killed ... and the recruit must choose which one. An undeniable attraction develops between Lucky and another recruit, but only one of them can survive.

he Culling In a solar system where The Authority decides who lives and who dies, only one of their own executioners can stop them. Glade Io is a trained killer. Marked at a young age as an individual with violent tendencies, she was taken from her family and groomed to be a Datapoint—a biotech-enabled analyst who carries out the Culling. She is designed to identify and destroy any potential humans that threaten the colonies: those marked as lawbreakers, unproductive or sick. But when she’s kidnapped by rogue colonists known as the Ferrymen, everything Glade thinks she knows about the colonies, and The Authority that runs them, collapses into doubt. Pulled between two opposing sides, and with her family’s lives hanging in the balance, Glade is unsure of who to trust—and time is running out. The Authority When everything she’s ever known is a lie, one young woman must make a choice that could change the course of history. Glade Io is torn between two worlds. She’s a trained killing machine—selected by the ruthless Authority to be a Datapoint, a tech-enabled agent of the state who eliminates threats to the human colonies throughout the solar system in the Culling. But her time among rogue colonists called the Ferrymen has convinced her that The Authority has far more sinister plans in store, and all the justifications they fed to her are lies. Vowing to help the rebels fight The Authority from the inside, Glade must sabotage a captured Ferryman ship that The Authority is planning to use to attack the Ferrymen stronghold. Though Glade is drawn to the brave leader of the Ferrymen, Kupier, she has older loyalties as well. Her friend and mentor Dahn Enceladus is charismatic and ambitious, but although Glade cares for him, she can no longer trust him. Her younger sisters are also in danger of facing Datapoint testing, and now she’s being forced into an upgrade she cannot refuse. But help is about to arrive in an unlikely form: a ghost from her distant past. The Ferrymen Torn in two directions, Glade must make one fateful choice—for herself, and the future of humanity. Glade Io is a rebel. Having fled with her younger sisters to live among the Ferrymen, she knows there is no going back now. She is committed to the cause of overthrowing the brutal Authority, and she trains her new comrades in the art of combating Datapoints like herself—those tasked with the Ferrymen’s destruction. Meanwhile Ferryman leader Kupier longs to travel the stars with Glade, free from constant war, but to do that he believes they must strike The Authority at its heart: the ancestral homeworld of Earth. Glade is hesitant; she hopes taking out the Datapoints living on the Station will be enough. But when the time comes, Glade faces the specter of killing her former friends in cold blood and her former mentor, Dahn Enceladus, tells her that The Authority has eyes and ears within the rebel stronghold. Now Glade faces a dilemma: sabotage The Authority from within, or return to fight alongside the Ferrymen, possibly putting her sisters’ lives in danger.

Carl Sims, a young virologist, discovers a plot hatched by a group of international scientists to cull, in a matter of weeks, two-thirds of the world's population - some 4.5 billion people, by releasing a deadly virus that kills two-thirds of those it infects. Their goal is to reduce Earth's population from an unsustainable seven billion to two billion. What is he to do? Try to stop the conspiracy, or join it? Horrific, yes, but what if this culling could prevent the extinction of some forty percent of our planet's flora and fauna? Or if he was certain it was the only way to prevent an even larger human die-off, incurring significantly more suffering, by the end of this century? Or if he were convinced it represented the only hope for humanity surviving at all? This is at the heart of this thriller, for these viruses do, in fact, exist. Most everything that plagues mankind today - the highest concentration of atmospheric CO2 in 3 million years, escalating extinction rates, habitat loss, fishery collapses, climate change, polar and glacial ice thaws, arable land loss, desertification, aquifer depletions, ocean acidification, unprecedented air pollution, looming famine and social unrest - stems from over consumption which, unchecked, will lead to Earth's sixth mass extinction event. "Robert Johnson's first novel tackles an issue that most in the media, the arts, and entertainment industry--even the environmental community--are afraid to discuss directly: overpopulation. Despite the potential for despair or preachy diatribes, the gravity of the issues is woven into the story with plenty of colorful characters, gallows humor and a suspenseful plot that unravels across continents, making for an entertaining and thought-provoking debut." --New York Journal of Books "This is so real, it is frightening, although the characters are fictional, the story is possible--and very likely. The book will keep you awake nights, thinking about our vulnerability, and worried that we've already gone too far for the planet to survive without a culling." --Pulp Den "Johnson's debut thriller could be more science fact than science fiction. There's a scheme afoot by rogue scientists to release a virulent flu virus and kill two-thirds of Earth's population, a megalomaniacal plot to save the planet from becoming a lifeless rock due to climate change and overpopulation. A scary premise. Get a flu shot. Wash your hands regularly." --Kirkus

A series of child abductions are linked to Jules Devlin's touring circus. A team of CID detectives are deployed and attempt to unravel the mystery. The performers, including a clown, a lion-tamer, a fire-eater, a dwarf, and conjoined twins harbour a terrifying secret. Jimmy Crawford, an ex-CID detective turned private investigator is hired by the parents of a teenage girl, who believe her disappearance is linked to the circus. Crawford is aided in his task by a child psychologist and a priest. Through a handicapped boy, they discover that the circus is not what it seems. DS Jenny Stiles, believing that Devlin is the head of a paedophile ring, soon discovers something more sinister. Could the evil carnival be responsible for the burning of churches and their priests? The Culling is a supernatural thriller set in Whitby and Dartmoor. From Edinburgh, Cleveland and Lourdes in France, strange and unexplainable episodes occur, which leads Jenny to believe that Devlin is indeed evil.

A Teenage Girl Torn from her Family Must Survive a Series of Deadly Trials to Earn her Place in a Dangerous School of Magic, from Bestselling Authors K.F. Breene and Shannon Mayer You don't choose The Academy. The Academy chooses you. I had no idea how those words would change my life, until the day the most dangerous man I’ve ever met waltzed onto my farm and left us a death sentence. My younger brother has been chosen for The Academy: the prestigious, secret school of magic hidden within the folds of our mundane world. A place where there’s no guarantee you’ll make it out alive. If he doesn't go, our entire family will be killed. It’s the same invitation my older brother received three years ago—and he never came home. The Academy has already killed one sibling, and I’ll be damned if they take another. So I do the only thing an older sister can: chop off my hair, strap on two bras to flatten the girls, and take my brother’s place. Magic and monsters are real. Assassins are coming for me, and the dead are prone to rise. What’s a girl faking it as a boy supposed to do? Being accepted into an elite school of magic, monsters, and assassins was not my idea of higher education. But here I am, fighting my way through the deadly physical and mental tests of the Culling Trials to claim my right to be taught. In a cutthroat world where no one is as they seem, the golden rule is simple: Trust no one. The Academy tells us we should just look out for ourselves. That we should leave the fallen behind and ask no questions. Not on my watch.

Culling the Masses questions the widely held view that in the long run democracy and racism cannot coexist. David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín show that democracies were the first countries in the Americas to select immigrants by race, and undemocratic states the first to outlaw discrimination. Through analysis of legal records from twenty-two countries between 1790 and 2010, the authors present a history of the rise and fall of racial selection in the Western Hemisphere. The United States led the way in using legal means to exclude “inferior” ethnic groups. Starting in 1790, Congress began passing nationality and immigration laws that prevented Africans and Asians from becoming citizens, on the grounds that they were inherently incapable of self-government. Similar policies were soon adopted by the self-governing colonies and dominions of the British Empire, eventually spreading across Latin America as well. Undemocratic regimes in Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Cuba reversed their discriminatory laws in the 1930s and 1940s, decades ahead of the United States and Canada. The conventional claim that racism and democracy are antithetical—because democracy depends on ideals of equality and fairness, which are incompatible with the notion of racial inferiority—cannot explain why liberal democracies were leaders in promoting racist policies and laggards in eliminating them. Ultimately, the authors argue, the changed racial geopolitics of World War II and the Cold War was necessary to convince North American countries to reform their immigration and citizenship laws.