Cirrus@Austlit

'The Silurian Period, approximately 420 million years ago. A time even before the dinosaurs. Evolution was just beginning to flex its muscles, and on land and in the sea, new creatures were evolving.

'In this strange world arrive a team of time-travelling North Korean agents with one goal - change the past and alter the future. And if they are successful, the United States may never exist.

'Following them back in time are Alex Hunter and his team of elite HAWCs. And for Alex, this mission is personal.

'In this strange primordial world, the HAWCs find lifeforms that defy description and test the bounds of reality, or sanity. Things that evolution created and then cancelled. Or perhaps something entirely out of this world, that time wisely kept hidden from us. Until now.

'Alex Hunter, The Arcadian, is in a race to save his team, his country, and the people he loves the most, his family, and literally bring them back from the dead. And pity anyone or any thing that gets in his way.' (Publication summary)

'Below the English town of Ipswich a tunnel boring team is digging through solid rock when unexpectedly, they break into an ancient cave system filled with animal bones. Strangely, there were also the remains of men, knights in armor, some crushed, and some seemed to have had their bones and flesh melted. And there was one more thing found: a huge, egg-shaped ruby that glowed like a setting sun.

'Just over 2000 miles away, still trapped on the lost island of Lemuria, Troy and Anne know that the time of monstrous beings long thought only existing in our legends or lurking in our nightmares, was returning.

'But they now have a chance of escape – they have found the fabled submarine, the Nautilus.

'Together, Troy, Anne, the secretive Elle, and the huge Viking woman, Yrsa, work together to break free so they can warn the world of the terror that is coming.

'Greig Beck’s final novel in the wonderous Mysterious Island trilogy is a tale of horror, thrills, betrayal, and love, that completes this magnificent series with an explosive finale that’ll be remembered long after the last page is turned.'(Publication summary)

'Monsters are real.

'Cate Granger and Jack Monroe are enjoying life far away from the deep-sea horrors of their past. But the ghosts still haunt them.

'Russian billionaire and former friend, Sonya Borashev, tells them of a newly discovered cave in Antarctica that leads deep beneath the frozen continent. It's from these icy depths that Sonya believes a remnant species of megalodon shark has been set loose. And that these ancient monsters are not only alive but thriving.

'With a recent spate of horrifying attacks, Sonya leads an expedition to put an end to the monsters for good. And she wants Cate and Jack with her - whether they like it or not.

'But beneath the dark ice, they uncover things even deadlier, even more dangerous, than they could have ever imagined.

'The final chilling book in the blockbuster Fathomless series delivers a terrifying roller-coaster ride of epic proportions.' (Publication summary)

'The legend of Lemuria, the Mysterious Island, and all its wonders and dangers were all too real. And it has been found.

'But the ancient stories of the great treasure and great horrors that existed through the ice rift and beyond Odin’s Gate, could never have prepared them what they discovered – monstrous creatures that lived in the sea, in the air, and on land. And now Troy Strom and Anne Walsh are trapped there amongst them.

'But they have a plan, and if they can retrieve the Heart of Odin, the massive ruby, they can use it to escape. Until then they must learn to live on a primordial island amongst horrifying life forms that defy the normal rules of evolution. To survive they need to travel into the dragon’s lair, and there find the truth about the ancient dragon of myth and what it guards, and also discover the fate of the first Viking clan that set foot there and what they had become.

'Bestselling author Greig Beck takes us back to the mysterious hidden island, and ramps up the action, adventure, and horror to another level, making it an epic blockbuster on a grand scale.' (Publication summary)

'For the past fifty years, the golden treasures of Troy have been lying in the basement of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Now, as the millennium approaches, Germany and Turkey are both reclaiming the treasures. But who really owns the precious antiquities? And how far is each country prepared to go to claim them as their own?

'American lawyer Sarah Kaplan, an expert on the reclamation of property, is drawn into the debate when the Turkish government employs her to get the treasure back. But things go horribly wrong and Sarah ends up in a Turkish gaol, accused of theft and blasphemy. Alone in a filthy cell, Sarah's only link with the outside world is the amulet she wears around her neck, passed down to her from her great-grandmother.

'Engraved with the symbols of the bull and owl of Troy, the amulet's origin is a mystery. But gradually, through the interweaving of two stories three thousand years apart, the secret of the amulet becomes known.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In the late 1930s, Eva is a Jewish opera singer living in Hitler?Berlin. When a leading SS officer provides a way out of her poverty, she decides to accept; but from then on her life becomes a tangled web of deceit. Set amidst the extraordinary events of Nazi Germany, the third book in the Amra Trilogy asks provocative questions about what humans will do to survive. Gold sets these personal struggles against the horribly fascinating machinations within the Nazi party. In present day New York, Sarah Kaplan, the famous Jewish lawyer, also struggles with hard questions as she tries to uncover the truth about her grandmother's secret past and a mysterious South American contact.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'On a desolate beach in far northern Scotland, the winter storms have been washing up all manner of things since time began. But buried in the center of one smaller iceberg is a shard of ancient Viking pottery telling a partial tale of a hidden mysterious island beyond the ice and mist, that was home to a great treasure and even greater horrors. Thawing in the same block of ice was a rotting flap of skin that refused to be identified but had similar skin patterns to a creature not seen for 100 million years. Now, Troy Strom and the enigmatic Elle Burgan race to find the mysterious island of legend, while staying ahead of a group of brutal killers who claim to be the rightful owners of the greatest prize of all - Odin’s heart. Bestselling author Greig Beck takes another Verne classic and adds his own blend of horror and action to make it a thrill ride in the tradition of Primordia and the Center Earth trilogies.' (Publication summary)

'100,000 years ago the object hit the lake at the deepest point, quickly sinking into its mile-deep stygian darkness. With it came something horrifying that would threaten every living thing on the face of the planet.

'Over the centuries, legends grew of people vanishing, of strange, deformed animals, and of an unexplained luminescence down in the lake depths.

'When Marcus Stenson won the lucrative contract to create a sturgeon fish farm on the site of disused paper mill on the shore of Lake Baikal, he thought he had hit the jackpot. He refused to listen to the chilling folktales, or even be concerned by the occasional harassment from the local mafia. But then animals were found mutilated in the frozen forest, and people started to go missing. And worse, some came back, changed, horribly.

'In the depths of the lake, something unearthly that had been waiting 100,000 years was stirring. And mankind will become nothing more than a host.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'"A small change today can change our tomorrow. A small change 100 million years ago can change everything."

'No one really noticed when things started to change. Some animals vanished. Some new ones appeared. Then some things appeared that were monstrous. No one seemed to notice except Ben Cartwright and the other survivors of the hidden plateau in the depths of the Amazon Jungle. Only they were aware of the growing threat to the human race.

'While Andy Martin lived out his dreams by venturing north to witness the birth of the American continent and navigate a prehistoric inland sea of the Late Cretaceous, whatever he was doing was rippling forward to change our world. Every day brought new threats in the form of creatures that should have long been extinct, or newly evolved monstrosities that were from mankind's worst nightmares.

'The comet, Primordia, was returning and time was up. They had to go back and find Andy and stop him before mankind vanished from the face of the Earth.

'In the thrilling 3rd installment of the blockbusting PRIMORDIA series, Greig Beck explores a frightening world where evolution has gone wild, while also taking us further into the prehistoric Cretaceous jungle and oceans, to a time in which mankind was never meant to exist.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'It was true – it was all true – and we were never meant to be there. In December 2018, Ben Cartwright, former Special Forces soldier, and a team of naive explorers, followed the clues left by his ancestor to a hidden plateau in the middle of the Amazon jungle. It was said that once every 10 years, a secret pathway was revealed to a world long since gone. They went, and what they found was a place of wonders and of horrors. Only Ben and his childhood love, Emma, survived. But when the doorway to the hidden world closed, Ben was trapped on the wrong side. Now, Emma has waited 10 long years for the doorway to open again. This time she’d be ready. This time she had everything she needed to go back to that hellish place and survive. All she needed was for Ben to be alive when she got there.'  (Publication summary)

'Cate Granger is chasing ghosts.

'The monster shark she once encountered was a remnant of the ancient world - one that had escaped an underwater lair previously sealed off for millions of years. At great cost, Cate and her allies had killed the beast.

'So, no more ghosts, no more shadows. All gone.

'Or so Cate thought.

'A research ship is sound-blasting the deep seabed looking for petroleum signatures. But in doing so they disturb something that has been hiding in the trenches for countless millennia.

'What Cate thought was dead rises from the cold depths of hell. She, Jack Monroe, a Russian billionaire and her team of marine biologists are forced once more to enter the abyssal zone of the deepest ocean trenches, to confront a creature from the Earth's distant past.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Ben Cartwright, former soldier, home to mourn the loss of his father stumbles upon cryptic letters from the past between the author, Arthur Conan Doyle and his great, great grandfather who vanished while exploring the Amazon jungle in 1908. Amazingly, these letters lead Ben to believe that his ancestor's expedition was the basis for Doyle's fantastical tale of a lost world inhabited by long extinct creatures. As Ben digs some more he finds clues to the whereabouts of a lost notebook that might contain a map to a place that is home to creatures that would rewrite everything known about history, biology and evolution. But other parties now know about the notebook, and will do anything to obtain it. For Ben and his friends, it becomes a race against time and against ruthless rivals. In the remotest corners of Venezuela, along winding river trails known only to lost tribes, and through near impenetrable jungle, Ben and his novice team find a forbidden place more terrifying and dangerous than anything they could ever have imagined.'  (Publication summary)

'What would you give for eternal life?

'An impossibly old man, a family gruesomely murdered and a woman whose collection of mythological artefacts defies belief: Professor Matt Kearns knows they are connected. These ancient clues bring Matt out of his self-imposed solitude to seek the fabled Fountain of Youth.

'This brings on a perilous odyssey across deserts, oceans and into the heart of a mountain, Matt must overcome horrifying adversaries, creatures of legend, and also unravel a 5000-year-old mystery that will tear at his very sanity.

'In a hidden place, Matt finds that some gifts have a terrible price, and some are not gifts at all, but curses that can last for an eternity.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Carcharodon Megalodon – the largest and most fearsome predator to have ever existed on our planet. Rumors of its existence in our modern oceans have persisted for centuries. Now, in a new adventure, the rumors explode into brutal and terrifying reality in FATHOMLESS, by GREIG BECK.

'Baranof Island, Gulf of Alaska, 1952

'Jim Granger is searching for a place of legend. Known as ‘Bad Water’ by the island’s elders, it’s reputed to be home to many dangerous creatures. Through a seam in a cliff face, Jim finds what he seeks. He also finds, too late, that the water demon he was warned about is horrifyingly real.

'Today, Cate Granger is following in her grandfather’s footsteps. Along with a team of scientists and crew, she accidentally releases a creature from Earth’s primordial past into today’s oceans. The giant Megalodon shark follows its instinct and a genetic memory of a home that once existed millions of years ago along the Californian coast. Nothing is safe on or below the water as the monster stakes its claim on the world’s oceans.

'Now Cate and her team must do battle with a creature that has no rival, knows no fear, and regards humans as nothing more than prey.

'In FATHOMLESS, the greatest predator the world has ever known is coming home in 2016.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In the shifting desert sands of Egypt, rumours abound of a lost papyrus that will reveal the true purpose of the Pyramids of Giza. Could these ancient monoliths be the source of a new kind of energy, one that comes at no cost to the planet? CIA agent Curtis O'Connor and archaeologist Aleta Weizman are determined to find out.

'Close by, a shadowy and powerful group known as Pharos meets in Alexandria, its membership a closely guarded secret. Its first order of business: to orchestrate chaos on international financial markets with a series of spectacular terrorist attacks on the world's fossil-fuel supplies.

'And in Cairo, amid the anarchy of Tahrir Square, thieves have broken into the famed Museum of Antiquities and stolen one of the world's priceless artifacts: the mask of Tutankhamun. Is the audacious theft linked to the Pharos Group?

'Nimbly weaving politics, history and science through a rip-roaring plot, from Afghanistan to Washington, Sydney to London, The Alexandria Connection is a spectacular and stylish ride.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Matt Kearns and the remnants of the scientific team return to a ravaged America. Modern medicine has failed to halt the spread of the flesh-consuming parasite, and humans have been forced to hide, even from each other.

'The infected roam the cities and suburbs of a ruined nation. But the devastating effects on human physiology are only the beginning. Something has been let loose, something that the team were not prepared for – human nature itself.

'Matt and Carla must make it back to the CDC headquarters, crossing the apocalyptic countryside that proves every bit as dangerous and deadly as the South American jungle. The race is on to test their eradication cure, before their world suffers the same fate as that of the giant saurians of prehistory.

'But there is something they don't count on – the solution has a high price. If they don't use the cure it means the end of mankind, but what if the remedy is worse than the disease?' (Publisher's blurb)

'The South American Boreal: one of the last truly unexplored jungles on our planet. In its dark heart is an ancient crater basin, sealed in by a living cage, making it a time capsule for an ancient, deadly ecosystem.

'Matt Kearns, Carla Nero and a team of scientist explorers have found their way in. In the crater's sunken interior are creatures from a primordial nightmare. Dangers lurk in every treetop, under every rock or loom monstrously over them. It is a place where mankind is out of time.

'Matt and Carla must find out how the terrifying parasite wreaking havoc in the United States can be controlled while staying ahead of things that defy belief and shake their understanding of evolution on our planet.

'Trapped, with time running out, the team of explorers will find themselves a part of a food chain ... and nowhere near the top.' (Publisher's blurb)

'An ancient golden amulet with a history of violence and death. A highly organised group of killers who will do anything to keep secret their past identities and their crimes against humanity. A brilliant young New York lawyer with a passion for truth and justice. A Hollywood film director determined to expose the horrors committed on Slovakia under Stalin's regime . . .

'When Josh Krantz wants to reclaim his grandparents' house from the Slovakian government, he has another agenda - to expose the evil crimes committed by Stalin's henchmen against the Krantz family and thousands of others. He engages the services of New York lawyer Sarah Kaplan, and together they travel to Slovakia to begin their fight.

'Dr Laco Plastov - an archaeologist who is amazed by the engravings on Sarah's ancient amulet - joins the two Americans on their crusade. Delving into the past, they uncover the syndicate - an organisation set up to protect the evil killers of thousands of innocent people during Stalin's regime.

'Armed with information that will expose these men and bring them to justice, Sarah, Josh and Laco become involved in a deadly and strategic contest - playing for their very lives.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Lowell tries not to think about the past, about the hijacking that killed his mother. Samantha, on the other hand, cannot let go. As a child she survived the hijacking of Air France 64, and as an adult she obsessively digs for answers, seeking a man called Salamander whom she believes holds key information.

'It is the death of Lowell's father, and his legacy of a blue sports bag crammed with documents and videotapes, that finally brings Lowell and Samantha together and unravels the interconnections between victims and perpetrators, saved and damned.

'But in this murky world of endless aliases and surveillance, who can be trusted? When does the quest for truth become a dangerous obsession? And what difference can the truth make?

'Janette Turner Hospital has crafted a taut and confronting novel that propels us into the chaos of terror and the cruelty - and unexpected hope - of survival. ' (Publication summary)