Dead Zero

Bob Lee Swagger tracks down an AWOL Marine sniper who resurfaces to complete his last mission.

Taking Grandpa to the mall wasn't supposed to be a life or death (and after death) situation. Thom Sheldon avoids visiting his aging father as much as he possibly can. Even now that Rick started taking a new experimental drug that seems to be helping his Alzheimer's, it's still an unpredictable and rarely pleasant errand. If Thom could avoid visiting his old man without getting guilt-tripped by his wife or hounded by his own conscience, he would. But today Thoms' wife Carly and son Brendan are along for the ride, and there is no getting out of taking Rick to the mall. No one could have guessed that the zombie apocalypse would start near the food court. Except for Rick. This is how the apocalypse starts ... Dead Zero is a stand alone novel built inside of Platt & Truant's Dead World Trilogy, an intelligent, hard science fiction exploration of the zombie subgenre.

From New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Hunter comes a thriller that pits former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger against the only man who might be able to outshoot him. A marine sniper team on a mission in tribal territories on the Afghan-Pakistan border, Whiskey 2-2 is ambushed by professionals using the latest high-tech shooting gear. Badly wounded, the team’s sole survivor, Gunnery Sergeant Ray Cruz, aka “the Cruise Missile,” is determined to finish his job. He almost succeeds when a mystery blast terminates his enterprise, leaving a thirty-foot crater where a building used to be—and where Sergeant Cruz was meant to be hiding. Months pass. Ray’s target, an Afghan warlord named Ibrahim Zarzi, sometimes called “The Beheader,” becomes an American asset in the region and beyond, beloved by State, the Administration, and the Agency. He arrives in Washington for consecration as Our Man in Kabul. And that brings Ray Cruz out of hiding. Swagger, the legendary hero of seven of Hunter’s novels from Point of Impact to last year’s bestselling I, Sniper, is recruited by the FBI to stop the Cruise Missile from reaching his target. The problem is that the more Swagger learns about what happened in Zabol, the more he questions the US government’s support of Zarzi and the more he identifies with Cruz as hunter instead of prey.

After September 11, with New Yorkers reeling from the World Trade Center attack, Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch proclaimed that his staff would do more than confirm the identity of the individuals who were killed. They would attempt to identify and return to families every human body part recovered from the site that was larger than a thumbnail. As Jay D. Aronson shows, delivering on that promise proved to be a monumentally difficult task. Only 293 bodies were found intact. The rest would be painstakingly collected in 21,900 bits and pieces scattered throughout the skyscrapers’ debris. This massive effort—the most costly forensic investigation in U.S. history—was intended to provide families conclusive knowledge about the deaths of loved ones. But it was also undertaken to demonstrate that Americans were dramatically different from the terrorists who so callously disregarded the value of human life. Bringing a new perspective to the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Who Owns the Dead? tells the story of the recovery, identification, and memorialization of the 2,753 people killed in Manhattan on 9/11. For a host of cultural and political reasons that Aronson unpacks, this process has generated endless debate, from contestation of the commercial redevelopment of the site to lingering controversies over the storage of unclaimed remains at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum. The memory of the victims has also been used to justify military activities in the Middle East that have led to the deaths of an untold number of innocent civilians.

The United States and the United Kingdom are lost to the necrotic plague. Europe, desperate to keep the disease from its shores considers the most drastic of measures: nuking the US and UK to eradicate the disease entirely and start over. Meanwhile, pieces move around the puzzle inside the States until we learn that Necrosis has a natural course that, if we leave it alone, will reach a new evolutionary equilibrium instead of devolving into mindless biting and chaos. But if we let necrotic nature take its course, will there be any uninfected left to survive it?

"A ... new philosophy and ... guide to getting the most out of your money--and out of life--for those who value memorable experiences as much as their earnings"--

Describes control systems for boilers and heat-recovery steam generators (HRSGs) in a variety of applications, from waste-to-energy plants to combined-cycle gas-turbine power stations. Basics such as methods of connecting instruments are explained, and more advanced discussions of design features of distributed control systems are also included. At every stage, emphasis is given to the interactive nature of plants and to troubleshooting and problem solving. Includes chapter summaries. The author is Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and the Institute of Marine Engineers, and is a Senior Member of the Instrument Society of America. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A dead body. A missing will. An evil relative. The good news is, Great Grammy has a plan. The bad news is, she's the dead body. Rosie and Baker are hiding something. Something big. Their great grandmother made them promise to pretend she's alive until they find her missing will and get it in the right hands. The will protects the family house from their grandmother, Grim Hesper, who would sell it and ship Rosie and Baker off to separate boarding schools. They've already lost their parents and Great Grammy--they can't lose each other, too. The siblings kick it into high gear to locate the will, keep their neighbors from prying, and safeguard the house. Rosie has no time to cope with her grief as disasters pop up around every carefully planned corner. She can't even bring herself to read her last-ever letter from Great Grammy. But the lies get bigger and bigger as Rosie and Baker try to convince everyone that their great grandmother is still around, and they'll need more than a six-month supply of frozen noodle casserole and mountains of toilet paper once their wicked grandmother shows up! This unexpectedly touching read reminds us that families are weird and wonderful, even when they're missing their best parts. With humor, suspense, and a testament to loyalty, Ena Jones takes two brave kids on an unforgettable journey. Includes four recipes for Great Grammy's survival treats.

Includes an excerpt from Third bullet, by Stephen Hunter.