Cirrus@Austlit

'Matt Kerns - linguist, archaeologist and reluctant explorer from Beneath the Dark Ice and Black Mountain - returns in his first full-time adventure. And this time he doesn't have Alex Hunter to save him when the stuff hits the fan. When a fame-hungry scientist brings an impossible, living specimen of a creature long thought extinct back from the wild jungles of South America he unwittingly brings along a passenger. Something with the potential to destroy every living thing on our planet. The infestation begins, rapidly overtaking medical resources and resisting all treatment. One woman knows the danger: Carla Nero, chief scientist of the Centre for Disease Control. She makes Matt an offer he can't refuse and together they join a team heading to the deep jungle in a desperate race to locate the hidden place where the specimen was taken.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When a massive sinkhole opens up and swallows a retired couple from Iowa it seems like a freak occurrence. But it’s not the only one. Similar sinkholes are opening all over the world, even on the sea floor. And they’re getting bigger.

'People living near the pits are reporting strange phenomena: vibrations, sulfurous odors, and odd sounds in the stygian depths. Then the pets begin to go missing.

'When people start disappearing as well, the government is forced to act. Professor Matt Kearns and a team of experts are sent in by the military to explore one of the sinkholes, and they discover far more than they bargained for.

'From the war zones of the Syrian Desert to the fabled Library of Alexandria, and then to Hades itself, join Professor Matt Kearns as he attempts to unravel an age-old prophecy. The answers Matt seeks are hidden in the fabled Al Azif known as the Book of the Dead and he must find it, even if it kills him. Because time is running out … not just for Matt Kearns, but for all life on Earth.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'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)

'Around the world entire towns are being wiped out, a trail of boneless bodies left behind.

'Professor Matt Kearns, paleo-linguist, and a team of scientific and military specialists, rush to decipher the hidden secrets of a pair of ancient stones that prophesize the next great extinction on Earth. They soon discover that the ominous predictions are linked to a plague of unstoppable creatures that have risen from the center of the Earth.

'In a heart-pumping adventure that begins in the hold of a sunken German U-boat, Matt Kearns travels to the lost Nazi treasure tunnels in Poland and dives deep down to sunken caves below Easter Island. Matt is fighting for his life, the ones he loves, and the existence of the entire human race.' (Publication summary)