Amazonia
by James Rollins
The Rand scientific expedition entered the lush wilderness of the Amazon and never returned. Years later, one of its members has stumbled out of the world’s most inhospitable rainforest -- a former Special Forces soldier, scarred, mutilated, terrified, and mere hours from death, who went in with one arm missing . . . and came out with both intact. Unable to comprehend this inexplicable event, the government sends Nathan Rand into this impenetrable secret world of undreamed-of perils, to follow the trail of his vanished father toward mysteries that must be solved at any cost.

Goliath
by Steve Alten
Commander Rochelle "Rocky" Jackson is aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan when the "unsinkable" naval vessel and its entire fleet are attacked from the depths and sunk. As Rocky struggles to stay alive, a monstrous mechanical steel stingray surfaces, plowing through the seas it now commands. Simon Covah, a brilliant scientist whose entire family were the victims of terrorism has hijacked the sub. Believing violence is a disease, Covah aims to use the Goliath and its cache of nuclear weapons to dictate policy to the world regarding the removal of oppressive regimes and nuclear weapons. Could the threat of violence forge a lasting peace?

Mr. X
by Peter Straub
Ned Dunstan returns home to Edgerton, Illinois, a raffish and atmospheric Mississippi River city, as his mother, Star Dunstan, lies dying. Impelled to trace his tangled paternal lineage after Star's death, Ned finds himself caught up in a web of murder and other heinous crimes, not only in the present but also in a past that his elderly great aunts Nettie, May, and Joy would prefer remained undisturbed. The aunts, whose remarkable gifts include teleportation and telekinesis, frustrate his search for knowledge, partly to protect their own secrets and also to shield Ned from the mysterious and omnipresent force that seems to dodge his every step.

Side Effects
by Michael Palmer
Kate Bennet. A bright hospital pathologist with a loving husband and a solid future. Until one day her world turns dark. A strange, puzzling illness has killed two women. Now it endangers Kate's closest friend. Soon it will threaten Kate's marriage. Her sanity. Her life. Kate has uncovered a horrifying secret. Important people will stop at nothing to protect it. It is a terrifying medical discovery. And its roots lie in one of the greatest evils in the history of humankind.

The Atrocity Archives
by Charles Stross
In the title piece, Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, completes his theorem on "Phase Conjugate Grammars for Extra-dimensional Summoning." Turing's work paves the way for esoteric mathematical computations that, when carried out, have side effects that leak through a channel underlying the structure of the Cosmos. Out there in the multiverse are "listeners" who can sometimes be coerced into opening gates. In 1945, Nazi Germany's Ahnenerbe-SS performs just such a summoning. A gate opens to an alternate universe through which the SS move people and material-to live to fight another day. But their summoning brings forth more than the SS have bargained for-an evil, patiently waiting all this time while learning the ways of humans, now poises to lunch on Earth.

Ticktock
by Dean Koontz
Tommy Phan is a successful detective novelist, living the American Dream in southern California. One evening he comes home to find a small rag doll on his doorstep. Curious, he brings it inside. That night, Tommy hears an odd popping sound and looks up to see the stitches breaking over the doll's heart. Something terrifying emerges from the pristine white cloth, something that will follow Tommy wherever he goes. It wants Tommy's life and he doesn't know why. He has only one ally, a beautiful, strangely intuitive waitress he meets by chance--or by a design far beyond his comprehension. He has too many questions, no answers, and very little time. Because the vicious and demonically clever doll has left this warning on Tommy's computer screen: The deadline is dawn.

Tommyknockers
by Stephen King
This dark tale depicts a small town's fatal encounter with creatures from outer space. Events start with Roberta Anderson, a writer of Old West novels, unearthing a flying saucer on her remote wooded property. Five hundred pages later alcoholic poet Jim Gardener, Roberts's former English teacher, finds himself aboard the flying saucer in outer space. In the interval the creatures (Tommyknockers) destroy the citizenry of Haven, Maine.

Under the Skin
by Michel Faber
Isserley picks up hitchhikers with big muscles. She, herself, is tiny-like a kid peering up over the steering wheel. She is strangely erotic yet somehow grotesque, vulnerable yet threatening. Her hitchhikers are a mixed bunch of men-trailer trash and travelling postgrads, thugs and philosophers. But Isserley is only interested in whether they have families and whether they have muscles. Then, it's only a question of how long she can endure her pain-physical and spiritual-and their conversation. At once humane and horrifying, "Under the Skin" takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory-our own moral instincts and the boundaries of compassion.