The Assaults of Chaos


Book Description

In the summer of 1914, H. P. Lovecraft, a few months before his twenty-fourth birthday, receives a strange letter from his father, Winfield Scott Lovecraft—a father he thought had died sixteen years before—speaking cryptically of an urgent task that must be performed to save the world from a nameless fate. Meeting his father in Quinsnicket Park, Lovecraft is engulfed in an adventure that takes him across the water to his beloved England, where he encounters some of the titans of weird fiction. With this unusual but stalwart band of comrades, Lovecraft does indeed find himself facing a cosmic menace too horrible to contemplate . . .In this supernatural novel by leading Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi, the young Lovecraft is brought vividly to life. The shy, retiring, inward-looking recluse is brought out of his shell and brought into contact with such of his literary idols as Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, and Algernon Blackwood. Together, they must deal with a horror from beyond the stars with the only weapons at their disposal—their minds and imaginations.




Chaos Reigning


Book Description

Interplanetary intrigue and romance combine in this electrifying finale to the Consortium Rebellion series. As the youngest member of her High House, Catarina von Hasenberg is used to being underestimated, but her youth and flighty, bubbly personality mask a clever mind and stubborn determination. Her enemies, blind to her true strength, do not suspect that Cat is a spy—which makes her the perfect candidate to go undercover at a rival House’s summer retreat to gather intelligence on their recent treachery. Cat’s overprotective older sister reluctantly agrees, but on one condition: Cat cannot go alone. Alexander Sterling, a quiet, gorgeous bodyguard, will accompany her, posing as her lover. After Cat tries, and fails, to ditch Alex, she grudgingly agrees, confident in her ability to manage him. After all, she’s never found a person she can’t manipulate. But Alex proves more difficult—and more desirable—than Cat anticipated. When she’s attacked and nearly killed, she and Alex are forced to work together to figure out how deep the treason goes. With rumors of widespread assaults on Serenity raging, communications down, and the rest of her family trapped off-planet, Catarina must persuade Alex to return to Earth to expose the truth and finish this deadly battle once and for all. But Cat can’t explain why she’s the perfect person to infiltrate hostile territory without revealing secrets she’d rather keep buried. . . .




Something From Below


Book Description

When 22-year-old Alison Mannering returns to her home in northeastern Pennsylvania after college, she finds a troubling situation. Her father, Guy Mannering, a longtime coal miner, has died recently under suspicious circumstances, and her mother refuses to provide any details of his passing. Alison feels she has no option but to investigate the matter herself, enlisting her high school sweetheart, Randy Kroeber, as well as Randy's twin sister, Andrea called Andy, to assist her. In the process, Alison and her cohorts become enmeshed in an inconceivable horror that goes back a century or more and is somehow involved with the coal mine, now controlled by the remote and enigmatic Conrad Brashear. Beyond the possibility of danger or death to herself and her friends, Alison comes to realise that what is lurking in and below the mine poses a mortal threat to the safety of the planet.




Chaos


Book Description

“When it comes to the forensic sciences, nobody can touch Cornwell.” —New York Times Book Review [PLEASE BOX:] CHAOS From the Ancient Greek (χάος or kháos) A vast chasm or void. Anarchy. The science of unpredictability. On a late summer evening in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her investigative partner, Pete Marino, respond to a call about a dead bicyclist near the Kennedy School of Government. It appears that a young woman has been attacked with almost superhuman force. Even before Scarpetta’s headquarters has been officially notified about the case, Marino and Scarpetta’s FBI agent husband, Benton Wesley, receive suspicious calls, allegedly from someone at Interpol. But it makes no sense. Why would the elite international police agency know about the case or be interested? It soon becomes apparent that an onslaught of harassment might be the work of an anonymous cyberbully named Tailend Charlie, who has been sending cryptic communications to Scarpetta for over a week. Even Lucy, her brilliant tech-savvy niece, can’t trace who it is or how this person could have access to intimate information. When a second death shocks Scarpetta to her core, it becomes apparent she and those close to her are confronted with something far bigger and more dangerous than they’d ever imagined.




Shadows of Carcosa


Book Description

From the fictional land of Carcosa that inspired the HBO show True Detective to H. P. Lovecraft’s accursed New England hills, this collection features some of the most legendary landscapes of the cosmic horror genre. The collection includes the following twelve stories: Edgar Allan Poe, "MS. Found in a Bottle" Bram Stoker, "The Squaw" Ambrose Bierce, "Moxon's Master" Ambrose Bierce, "The Damned Thing" Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" R. W. Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations" M. P. Shiel, "The House of Sounds" Arthur Machen, "The White People" Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows" Henry James, "The Jolly Corner" Walter de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt" H. P. Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space" “The true weird tale has something more than a secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains. An atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; a hint of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”—H. P. Lovecraft




The Dark Matter of Children’s 'Fantastika' Literature


Book Description

Following the material turn in the humanities, this book brings perspectives from science and ecology into dialogue with children's fiction written and published in the UK and the USA in the 21st century. It develops the concept of entanglement, which originated in 20th-century quantum physics but has been applied to cultural critique, through a reading of Fantastika literature. Surveying a wide-ranging scope of literary texts, this book covers the gothic, fantasy, the Weird, and other forms of speculative fiction to argue that Fantastika positions entanglement as an ethical imperative that transforms our imaginative relationship with materiality. In so doing, it synthesizes perspectives from a similarly diverse range of areas, including ecology, physics, anthropology, and literary studies, to examine the storied matter of children's Fantastika as ground from which we might begin to imagine an as-yet-unrealised future that addresses the problems of our present.




What Mr. Mattero Did


Book Description

Three junior high school girls accuse their music teacher of inappropriate actions. The story is told through the eyes of one of the accusers, Claire, who lives in the shadow of a disabled younger brother, and the teacher’s daughter Melody. Interwoven in the story are the problems the three accusers face in their own lives and the work Melody does at a horse farm where she helps disabled children – one of whom turns out to be Claire’s brother.




Masters of Chaos


Book Description

Special Forces soldiers are daring, seasoned troops from America's heartland, selected in a tough competition and trained in an extraordinary range of skills. They know foreign languages and cultures and unconventional warfare better than any U.S. fighters, and while they prefer to stay out of the limelight, veteran war correspondent Linda Robinson gained access to their closed world. She traveled with them on the frontlines, interviewed them at length on their home bases, and studied their doctrine, methods and history. In Masters of Chaos she tells their story through a select group of senior sergeants and field-grade officers, a band of unforgettable characters like Rawhide, Killer, Michael T, and Alan -- led by the unflappable Lt. Col. Chris Conner and Col. Charlie Cleveland, a brilliant but self-effacing West Pointer who led the largest unconventional war campaign since Vietnam in northern Iraq. Robinson follows the Special Forces from their first post-Vietnam combat in Panama, El Salvador, Desert Storm, Somalia, and the Balkans to their recent trials and triumphs in Afghanistan and Iraq. She witnessed their secret sleuthing and unsung successes in southern Iraq, and recounts here for the first time the dramatic firefights of the western desert. Her blow-by-blow story of the attack on Ansar al-Islam's international terrorist training camp has never been told before. The most comprehensive account ever of the modern-day Special Forces in action, Masters of Chaos is filled with riveting, intimate detail in the words of a close-knit band of soldiers who have done it all.




Criminal justice analysis


Book Description




In the Space of Chaos


Book Description

In 2016, a team of US Navy analysts stationed in a secret base near Bremerton, Washington, led by the no-nonsense Commander Tull, find themselves in the midst of chaos when a magnitude 9.3 earthquake strikes off the South Coast of Washington. Amid the chaos, one analyst, Abbigail Connors, stands out for her remarkable composure. Commander Tull is impressed and secretly puts her in charge of his newly created Special Tactics and Recovery Team (START) to investigate the cause of the earthquake. As Abby delves deeper into her research, she discovers hidden messages that suggest something unnatural or man-made caused the earthquake. However, the government is aware of her findings and tries to take her into custody. In the meantime, Abby's husband, Capt James Connors, is part of the START team under a different name. When Abby discovers the truth about James' identity, their relationship is tested. Meanwhile, a billion years ago in the same solar system as Earth, different races are trying to work together despite their differences. The Monuans govern their people through scientific consensus, while the Martuans are recovering from a civil war between the united people and the King-Priests. The Ventusians are a battle-ready society where deeds from military service determine leadership. The Phoetuans are a hostile, combative, and untrusting military race. The Exalted is the political group of the different world's leadership that strives to work out deals, trade, technology, and conflicts. Each race has its own struggles and agendas. As the earthquakes continue to wreak havoc, Tull sends the START team to rescue Abby before other government agencies can get to her. They discover that the signals causing the earthquakes come from a strange device called Nah-Mah by the Monuans. In the past timeline, the different races finally come together to work against a common enemy. However, they are tested by mysterious villains called the Vrill. The story culminates in a thrilling climax as both timelines converge at the Nah-Mah.