The novel takes place in Nigeria during the Nigerian-Biafran War in 1967-1970. The effect of the war is shown through the dynamic relationships of four people’s lives ranging from high-ranking political figures, a professor, a British citizen, and a houseboy. After the British left Nigeria, the lives of the main characters drastically changed and were torn apart by the ensuing civil war and decisions in their personal life. The book jumps between events that took place during the early 1960s and the late 1960s, when the war took place. In the early 1960s, the main characters are introduced: Ugwu, a 13-year-old village boy who moves in with Odenigbo, to work as his houseboy. Odenigbo frequently entertains intellectuals to discuss the political turmoil in Nigeria. Life changes for Ugwu when Odenigbo’s girlfriend, Olanna, moves in with them. Ugwu forms a strong bond with both of them, and is very loyal. Olanna has a twin sister, Kainene, a woman with a dry sense of humour, tired by the pompous company she is forced to keep. Her lover Richard is an Englishman who has come to Nigeria to study the arts. Jumping four years ahead, trouble is brewing between the Hausa and the Igbo people and hundreds of people die in the massacres, including Olanna''s beloved auntie and uncle. A new republic,called Biafra, is created by the Igbo. As a result of the conflict, Olanna, Odenigbo, their daughter Baby and Ugwu are forced to flee Nsukka, which is the university town and the major intellectual hub of the new nation. They finally end up in the refugee town of Umuahia, where they suffer as a result of food shortages and the constant air raids and paranoid atmosphere. There are also allusions to a conflict between Olanna and Kainene, Richard and Kainene and Olanna and Odenigbo. When the novel jumps back to the early 1960s, we learn that Odenigbo slept with a village girl, who then had his baby. Olanna is furious at his betrayal, and sleeps with Richard in a moment of weakness. She goes back to Odenigbo and they take in his daughter, whom they call Baby, when her mother refuses her. Back during the war, and Olanna, Odenigbo, Baby and Ugwu are living with Kainene and Richard where Kainene is running a refugee camp. The situation is hopeless as they have no food or medicine. Kainene decides to trade across enemy lines, but does not return, even after the end of the war a few weeks later. The book ends ambiguously, with the reader not knowing if Kainene lives.

Half of a Yellow Sun

The novel follows David Webb, alias Jason Bourne, as he works to find his old enemy, Carlos the Jackal, who is trying to kill him. As the Jackal enters old age and his infamy fades, he decides that he will do two things before he dies: kill Webb/Bourne, and destroy the KGB facility of Novgorod, where the Jackal was trained and was turned away for being a maniac. Carlos the Jackal uses a diverse collective of aged men devoted to his handiwork known as "The Old Men of Paris." The old men, who are mostly criminals, work for the Jackal in return for their family''s comfort. Webb sends his wife and children to live with his wife''s brother, John St. Jacques, in the Caribbean for protection while Webb himself works with old friend and CIA agent Alexander Conklin, and to a limited degree, the CIA, to hunt down and kill the Jackal first. While in the Caribbean, the St. Jacques Family faces a number of complications. A "War Hero" arrives, who is actually an "Old Man of Paris" is supposed to assassinate the St. Jacques and spray paint "JASON BOURNE" on the wall. At the same time, a former judge, Brendan P. Prefontaine, arrives. The Jackal thinks that Prefontaine was going to foil his murder plan, and bribes a nurse on the island to kill him. However, his plans are foiled when the "war hero" finds out that when he is done with the murder, he is to be assassinated as well. He turns sides and shoots the nurse with his Luger P08 and saves Brendan P. Prefontaine. Upon the close murder, Webb returns to the Caribbean. At the time of his visit, the Jackal himself comes to try to kill Webb, at the same time killing three security guards, the Crown Governor of the island, the "Old Man of Paris" that changed side (strapped explosives on him,) severely beats a kid waiter, and wounds Jason Bourne in the neck by a bullet (ironically, this is the Jackal''s trademark and no one has survived it until now). Webb poses as an important member of Medusa (a newer version than the original he was associated with during the Vietnam era) (see Jason Bourne), now a nearly omnipotent economic force that controls the head of NATO, leading figures in the Defense Department, portions of the American and Sicilian mafia, and large NYSE firms. After several assassinations of key Medusa figures he was interrogating, he realizes that Medusa had nothing to do with the Jackal. The people who wanted to kill him were hired by Medusa and not the Jackal. After that, he goes back undercover and finds Jacqueline Lavier, who pretends to help him. She is part of the Jackal''s group. She phones the Jackal of the location of Bourne''s hotel, but is caught by Bourne. However, Bourne sets a trap for the Jackal, but is foiled by his wife when she sees him. The Jackal realizes it''s a trap and runs. Also, John St. Jacques and Bourne''s children are relocated to a CIA safe house. However, Mr. Pritchard, a clerk, overhears John St. Jacques and Bourne''s phone and tells his uncle, who was bribed by the Jackal for 300 pounds. Then, Alex Conklin, Marie St. Jacques, Jason Bourne, and Mo Panov (Jason''s doctor) go to Russia to meet one of Alex''s long-time friends. The friend helps them several times. When they first meet, Jackal invades the restaurant they meet at and spray paints on the wall the exact location of Jason''s son. Jason immediately calls the CIA and they relocate the children. At the same time, Alex and Jason realize that the Russian contact for the Jackal was high up in the KGB. Their Russian contact searches up a list of 13 people, who he keeps traces on . They catch the traitor when he goes to a church to meet the Jackal, along with Ogilive, an American Medusa traitor. However, Ogilive is set up by the KGB officials and is photographed with the Jackal. Later, the Jackal tells the Russian traitor that he is followed by his own government and shows him proof by killing 2 KGB agents that were following the Russian. The Jackal then kills him. Later, the Jackal meets with a board of Russian traitors. They disavow him and refuse to help him. He goes crazy and kills them all with his Type 56 assault rifle, but leaves a woman barely alive, who identifies the Jackal to the police, who in turn notify Alex Conklin. The Jackal comes to the hotel Webb is at and a furious chase happens, but the Jackal manages to escape to an armory, get weapons, go to Novgorod, and bomb the place. However, Bourne meets him there and they fight. The Jackal runs away, and Bourne throws a grenade, wounding him. One of the officials then closes the gates to the river, and the river rises, drowning the Jackal. Bourne then returns to the Caribbean, where their Russian friend meets them, and the former accepts that Jason Bourne is dead.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Nwokocha Agbadi is a proud, handsome and wealthy local chief. Although he has many wives he finds a woman named Ona more attractive. Ona (a priceless jewel) is the name he has given her. Ona is the daughter of a chief. When she was young, her father took her everywhere he went, saying she was his ornament, and Nwokocha Agbadi would say jokingly, "Why don''t you wear her aroung your neck like an Ona?" (a priceless jewel). It never occurred to him that he would be one of the men to ask her when she grew up. During one rainy season chief Agbadi and his friends have gone elephant hunting and having come too near the heavy creature he is thrown with a mighty tusk into a nearby sugar-cane bush and is pinned to the floor. He aims his spear at the belly of the mighty animal and kills it but not until it has wounded him badly. Agbadi passes out and it seems to all he has died. He wakes up after several days to find Ona beside him. During this period, he has sex with her, and after eighteen days he finds out that his eldest wife Agunwa was very ill and died later. It is thought that perhaps she became ill as a result of seeing her husband pass out. The funeral festivities continue through the day. When it is time to put Agunwa in her grave, everything she will need in afterlife having been placed in her coffin, her personal slave is called. According to custom, a good slave is supposed to jump into the grave willingly to accompany her mistress but this young and beautiful slave begs for her life, much to the annoyance of the men. The hapless slave is pushed into the shallow grave but struggles out, appealing to her owner Agbadi, whose eldest son cries angrily: “So my mother does not deserve a decent burial?” So saying, he gives her a sharp blow with the head of the cutlass. Another relative gives her a final blow to the head and she falls into the grave, silenced forever. The burial is completed. Ona becomes pregnant and delivers a girl child, named Nnu Ego (20 bags of cowries). The baby is born with a mark on her head resembling that made by the cutlass used on the head of the slave woman. Ona gives birth to another son but she dies in premature labour and her son also dies a week afterwards. Nnu Ego becomes a woman but is barren. After several months with no sign of fruitfulness, she consults several herbalists and is told that the slave woman who is her Chi (goddess) will not give her a child. Her husband Amatokwu takes another wife who before long conceives. Nnu Ego returns her father’s house. She is married to new husband whom she does not like but prays that if she can have a child with him, she will love him. She does give birth to a baby boy, whom she later finds dead. Shocked, she is on the verge of jumping into the river when a villager draws her back and comforts her. She subsequently gives birth to four children. Her husband, a laundryman for a white man, is drafted into the army during wartime, but on her own Nnu Ego ensures all her children have a good life, sending two abroad to study. After she dies a lonely death, her children all come home and are sorry they were in a position to give her a better life. She is given the greatest burial in their town. When all her children are unable to have offspring the Oracle reveals that this is because Nnu Ego is angry with them. Stories say that she is a wicked woman even in death. Still, they agree that she has given all to her children and that this is the joy of being a mother.

The Joys of Motherhood

Laurence and Temeraire arrive back in Britain, following their evacuation of Danzig in Black Powder War. Their relief at arriving safely is short-lived as Napoleon continues his preparations for an invasion of the British Isles. When questioned about the lack of British air support for the Prussians, Laurence discovers that Britain had no dragons to spare: a flu-like epidemic has infected the greater part of them, and British science has yet to devise a cure. To combat it, Temeraire, Iskierka and the ferals are forced to fly frantic patrols, both as a show of force and to prevent Napoleon from getting reconnaissance in over the contaminated coverts; at one point Temeraire is forced to knock a French courier-dragon, Sauvignon, out of the sky and down into one of the coverts, risking infection himself. Temeraire and Laurence continue to develop their notions of draconic equality in British society and find common cause with William Wilberforce and the abolitionist movement in exchange for assistance from prominent political leaders. Before they can continue their plans, they are enlisted to return to Africa to seek a cure for the draconic flu, which Temeraire caught and was cured of in Throne of Jade; his immunity is proven when he fails to contract the illness from Sauvignon and the other dragons. The entire formation is shipped to the Cape Colony aboard the Allegiance, along with a black missionary, Father Erasmus, and his wife and daughters. The missionaries are manumitted slaves, causing tension between Laurence and Allegiance captain Tom Riley, a staunch supporter of the trade and sometimes-friend to Laurence. Riley is also further thrown off-balance by the discovery that some of the Aerial Corps'' officers, including Lily''s captain Harcourt, are women (the acid-spitting Longwing breed refuses to accept male handlers). After several weeks of searching, the formation makes land at the Cape of Good Hope; Maximus, the Regal Copper, is so weary that his handler Berkley does not believe he will ever return home. However, enough fungi is found to cure the formation, and with the help of two African boys, Demane and Sipho, and their small dog, they set out to find more. In the end they discover the fungus in a cave, being fertilized by dragon dung: it has been deliberately cultivated. Scarcely has this realization set in that the Aerial Corps are beset by Tswana humans and dragons; the British beasts, who have been sent back to the Cape with their precious cargo, are unable to prevent their aircrews from being captured. The Tswana, in addition to being fiercely offended by the depredations of the slave trade on their people, practice an odd form of ancestor worship in which dragons are brought up to believe they are the reincarnations of former (human) tribe leaders. The captivity is particularly challenging to Catherine Harcourt, who had become intimates with Riley during the voyage and is now bearing his child, but Mrs. Erasmus, a former member of the Tswana people, is able to provide some intercession on behalf of the British. Temeraire and the other dragons are able to organize an escape for their crews, but the Tswana overrun the Cape Colony, and indeed all European ports on the African coast, in vengeance against slavers specifically and all white men in general. Lily''s formation retreat to Great Britain aboard the Allegiance; whilst at sea, Riley marries Harcourt, more at his insistence than hers. Upon returning to Great Britain, they discover that the latest abolitionist bill in Parliament was defeated by strong opposition from Admiral Horatio Nelson, and that Sauvignon, now infected with the plague, has "escaped" back to France. Laurence and Temeraire are horrified to realize that Government and Admiralty alike have countenanced the wholesale slaughter of, not only every French dragon, but quite probably every dragon in Eurasia. Acting on their consciences, they steal a tub of cultivated mushrooms and fly the English Channel to deliver the cure to the French. For this they earn the personal respect of Napoleon Bonaparte, but Laurence turns down the Emperor''s offer of asylum, preferring to return to his beloved Commonwealth and answer for his treason. Naomi Novik went to Africa to do research for Empire of Ivory.

Empire of Ivory

The crew of the Starship Challenger - a ten mile long survey ship - have been searching the universe for an Earth-type planet to colonise. Telson, Sharna, Darv and Astra – the third generation crew – are the only survivors of “The Great Meteoroid Strike”. After the Angels – shorten from ANcillary Guardian of Environment and Life, the ship’s control systems – explain to them how their parents died, they plan their return to Earth. However, when they reach their home solar system, they find their planet has gone. Disappointed, Darv and Astra explore an uncontrolled zone of the ship - a place where the Guardian Angels cannot trace them and discover a space shuttle. They use it to visit the moon, which has been left behind. They discover that the Earth has been gone for half a million years and that the Challenger left Earth over one million years ago. It seems, during the Great Meteoroid Strike, the Angels lost their information about the Theory of Relativity and since the ship has been travelling at near light-speed for over one-hundred years, more time has passed on Earth than on the ship. The crew then travel to Kyros, a planet similar to Mars. While there, Darv and Astra are kidnapped by what remains of The Solaric Empire - an organisation that colonised the Solar System. Since the disappearance of Earth, the Empire has been based on Zelda V - one of the moons of a planet similar to our Jupiter. The Emperor Thorden agrees to join the Challenger on its search for Earth. He smuggles an armed space ferry and a warrior android aboard. Thorden explains to the crew that the Angels are just the ships control systems and if they were to find the Central Switching Room, they would be able to end the Angels'' control over them and the ship. The crew and Thorden go into suspended animation. When the crew are woken, they find Thorden is dead. Darv suspects the Angels are to blame. The Challenger picks up another ship on its radar - the Challenger Two. It appears derelict. Sharna and Telson go over in the shuttle to investigate and Thorden''s warrior android Fagor ambushes Darv and Astra. They distract him and follow Telson and Sharna in Thorden''s ferry. When they come to leave Challenger Two, they discover Fagor has taken it away and they must chase it. They manage to overcome an oxygen shortfall and Fagor trying to attack them and recover the Challenger. During their examination of the crew, the Angels discover that Astra is pregnant. They must bring her out of suspended animation to protect her, but to avoid arousing her suspicions, they awake everyone. Astra refuses to go back into suspended animation so she and Darv break away from the control of the Angels. She tells Darv she is pregnant and suspects that the Angels will try to harm the baby. They set up home in an uncontrolled region where they discover a video broadcast from an instrument package left on a planet by the second generation. Darv insists that they tell Sharna and Telson. Darv and Astra say they are leaving the Challenger and they take a shuttle full of supplies down to the planet, where they set up home. Sharna and Telson follow days later.

Earthsearch

The novel begins with a woman''s wave to her swim instructor: "She walked around the pool toward the exit. She passed the lifeguard, and after she had gone some three or four steps beyond him, she turned her head, smiled, and waved to him. At that instant I felt a pang in my heart! That smile and that gesture belonged to a twenty-year-old girl! Her arm rose with bewitching ease. It was as if she were playfully tossing a brightly colored ball to her lover. That smile and that gesture had charm and elegance, while the face and the body no longer had any charm. It was the charm of a gesture drowning in the charmlessness of the body. But the woman, though she must of course have realized that she was no longer beautiful, forgot that for the moment. There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless. In any case, the instant she turned, smiled, and waved to the young lifeguard (who couldn’t control himself and burst out laughing), she was unaware of her age. The essence of her charm, independent of time, revealed itself for a second in that gesture and dazzled me. I was strangely moved. And then the word Agnes entered my mind. Agnes. I had never known a woman by that name." Divided into seven parts, Immortality centers on Agnes, her sister Laura and her husband Paul. Part One: the Face establishes these characters. Part Two: Immortality depicts Goethe''s fraught relationship with Bettina, a young woman who aspires to create a place for herself in the pantheon of history by controlling Goethe''s legacy after his death. Part Three: Fighting returns to Agnes and Laura, detailing the deteriorating state of Laura''s relationship with Bernard Bertrand. Part Four: Homo Sentamentalis chronicles Goethe''s afterlife and postmortem friendship with Ernest Hemingway. Part Five: Chance sees Agnes'' death, and intersects these fictional events with Kundera''s seemingly autobiographical account of a conversation with Professor Avenarius. Part Six: the Dial introduces a new character, Rubens, who had an affair with Agnes years prior to the onset of the main events in the plot. Part Seven: the Celebration concludes the novel in the same health club where Kundera first observed the inspirational wave gesture.

Immortality

The novel is set in the year 2074, in a future U.S., now called the United Safer States of America, that has become obsessed with safety and security. Nearly every potentially unsafe action has been criminalized, including school fights. The main character is Bo Marsden, a 16-year-old at high school. Bo''s father and brother are in prison, and Bo tends to see his own rash behavior as genetic. Things get out of control when Bo tries to assault his classmate, Karlohs Mink, and is arrested. As a result, Bo is sentenced to work making pizzas in the Canadian tundra, where he is surrounded by hungry bears and eats only pizzas everyday. Bo finds prison life boring and dangerous, and he is tired of eating pizzas. However, on the strength of his running ability, Bo is soon invited to join the Goldshirts, together with his extremely strong roommate Rhino. The Goldshirts are a specially privileged group at the camp because they play football for the camp warden, Hammer, who bets money on the matches. Training to play the sport, which is now highly illegal, makes Bo stronger and more self-confident. At the same time, Bork, an artificial intelligent being which Bo invents for his science project in the school, mutates and becomes a rogue, spreading across the web. Using its great knowledge of criminal law, Bork arranges the early release of Bo and his family members. Rogue AI programs are illegal, and Bork is eventually discovered and destroyed by Security&Safety. Bo, however, has already gained what he needs: his high school graduation certificate and the skills of running and football. He takes his grandfather''s shoes and decides to go to South America to play football, as it is still legal there.

Rash

Amber and Ashes is set in Krynn shortly after the death of Takhisis at the end of the War of Souls. Magic is back, and so are the gods. But the gods are vying for supremacy, and the war has caused widespread misery, uprooting entire nations and changing the balance of power on Ansalon. The mysterious warrior-woman Mina, brooding on her failure and the loss of her goddess, makes a pact with evil in a seductive guise. As a strange vampiric cult spreads throughout the fragile world, unlikely heroes—a wayward monk and a kender who can communicate with the dead—join forces to try to uproot the cause of the growing evil. It begins with Chemosh talking to himself in an abandoned temple about his plans to rule the pantheon and obtaining living servants as opposed to the dead. Shortly after, Mina and Galdar are seen. Mina is grieving the death of Takhisis and is about to kill herself when Chemosh intervenes and makes her his lover. It is then that the plot to create the Beloved of Chemosh begins.

Amber and Ashes

Eldrinson Valdoria took over a year to heal from serious injuries inflicted on him by the Aristo Vitarex. He is happy to reconcile with his daughter Sauscony (Soz) whom he disowned for leaving home to become a Jagernaut. But he can''t do the same with his son Althor, who is lying near death in a military hospital after sacrificing himself to save billions of Skolian citizens during a battle with the Eubian Traders. As part of her military training, Soz is assigned to the battlecruiser Roca''s Pride, named in honor of her mother Roca Skolia. The training, however, turns out to be hard reality after her half-brother Imperator Kurj is nearly assassinated and falls into a coma. Traders simultaneously launch an attack against the planet Parthonia, seat of the Skolian government. This brings the psiberweb, the most important part of Skolian defence, to a collapse. Using an ancient device called Dyad Chair, Soz struggles to keep at least parts of the psiberweb intact. To repair psiberweb and save Skolia from Eubian invasion, Soz’s father Eldrinson has to join the Dyad, expanding it to a Triad with the risk that this could kill either him or one of the other Triad members. The book also shows the fates of other Ruby Dynasty family members: Soz''s brother Shannon dealing with the mystic Blue Dale archers, their mother Roca captured by Traders and Ruby Pharaoh''s husband Eldrin who leaves Parthonia on a ship with Skolian refugees while making a withdrawal from the addictive medicament phorine.

The Final Key

In recent years, the career of Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has been stalled-and, in fact, very nearly destroyed-by the petty animosities of his politically ambitious senior officer Chief Constable Riddle. But when nude pictures of Riddle’s runaway teenage daughter show up on a pornographic Web site, he turns to Banks for help. The trail leads Banks first to London’s Soho, an area of strip clubs and sex shops, then to the upmarket Little Venice, where Emily Riddle is living with a dangerous gangster with ties to world of rock music. At first she refuses to come home, but later Emily turns up at Banks’s hotel, bruised and frightened and asking for his help. Soon she is back with her family in Yorkshire, and Banks’s work appears to be done. Other concerns occupy Banks’s time. A major reorganization and expansion of Eastvale Regional Headquarters has brought Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot back into his life, and she soon finds demons of her own to face. As they begin an investigation into the slaying of Charlie Courage, a low-level petty crook, a murder occurs at an Eastvale nightclub, filling the tabloids with headlines that scream of scandal, sex and high-level corruption. It is a cold and savage homicide that shakes Banks to his core, and it soon leads to shocking revelations that suggest it is somehow linked to the Charlie Courage affair. The grim discoveries of the unfolding investigation lead Banks in a direction he does not wish to go: the past and private world of his most powerful enemy, Chief Constable Riddle.

Cold is the Grave

The novel opens with a lunar find by the Apollo 17 astronauts, which is suppressed. Tom Broadbent (who first appeared in Preston''s novel The Codex) is riding in the New Mexico desert when he hears gunshots coming from Tyrannosaur Canyon (a fictional canyon east of the Rio Chama Gorge, on Mesa Viejo, and north of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert). Following the sound, he comes upon an old prospector who has been shot by a sniper. He gives Tom a notebook just before he dies, and Tom rides off on his horse to find help. The murderer, Jimson Maddox, is furious that the notebook is gone by the time he reaches the body; he has been hired to retrieve it at any cost. He does, however, find an interesting rock sample. When Tom returns to Tyrannosaur Canyon with the police, the prospector''s body has disappeared without a trace. The notebook is filled with numbers, some kind of code Tom is unable to decipher. He brings the book to Wyman Ford, a monk in training at a nearby monastery. Ford is a retired CIA analyst and he takes the notebook to try to decipher it. Ford discovers that the numbers are not a code but a sequence of ground-penetrating radar readings. When processed, they form the image of a fully intact Tyrannosaurus. The rock sample Maddox found turns out to be a fragment of the Tyrannosaurus. Maddox''s employer, Iain Corvus, is a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, and he convinces a lab assistant, Melodie Crookshank, to examine the sample in secret. Corvus intends to steal her research, acquire a permit to excavate the Tyrannosaur, and thus secure tenure at the museum, as well as wealth and fame. Melodie discovers tiny particles within the sample which she calls "Venus particles". Upon making this discovery, Melodie calls Corvus to describe it to him, and the NSA hears the call. They initiate a black op led by J.G. Masago to cover up evidence of the particles, kill any witnesses, and retrieve the specimen. Meanwhile, Ford goes into the desert to look for the dinosaur. At the same time, desperate to recover the notebook, Maddox kidnaps Tom Broadbent''s wife. He takes her to an abandoned mine to use as a bargaining chip, forcing Tom to hand over the notebook. Now that Maddox has the notebook, however, he intends to kill Sally so he can not be identified. She manages to break free, Tom rescues her, and the two of them escape into the desert on foot, pursued by Maddox and his rifle. Masago infiltrates the museum and kills Corvus, stealing the samples and his research. But Melodie, realizing previously that Corvus would try to steal the credit from her, had made copies of everything and hid them, along with more samples of the dinosaur. When she sees that he has been murdered and that his work is missing, she realizes she is the next likely target. Her only chance is to complete the research and post it to the Internet, so killing her would no longer serve the purposes of a cover-up. During her final research, she discovers that the 65-million-year-old Venus particles are still alive. They are a type of virus that destroys the cell structure of reptiles, evidently introduced to the earth by the Chicxulub meteorite. She posts her findings to the web to show the world. Back in the desert, the black ops team has tracked Ford down, and Maddox is gaining on Tom and Sally. They manage to overpower Maddox and kill him, retrieving the notebook, and Ford leads them out of the canyon in an effort to evade the government assassins. Trapped in an old Anasazi cave, they discover the partially excavated Tyrannosaurus Rex. Ford convinces Masago''s team to turn on him. Masago tells them about the Venus particles, which had also been found on the moon, thus establishing convincingly their extraterrestrial origin. All leave in a helicopter. Masago breaks free and causes the helicopter to crash, killing most on board. Tom, Sally, Ford, and Masago''s former right-hand man escape alive. By the time they arrive with news about the dinosaur''s location, Melodie''s research has spread across the Internet. All those involved are made famous, including Robbie Weathers, the old prospector''s daughter. The Smithsonian Institution funds a program to research the Venus particles and the dinosaur itself and the theory is raised that the particles may have been intentionally developed by an alien race to destroy the dinosaurs and allow humans to begin their evolution.

Tyrannosaur Canyon

While on holiday, the protagonist (Scott Carey) is exposed to a cloud of radioactive spray shortly after he accidentally ingests insecticide. The radioactivity acts as a catalyst for the bug spray, causing his body to shrink at a rate of approximately 1/7 of an inch per day. A few weeks later, Carey can no longer deny the truth: not only is he losing weight, he is also shorter than he was and deduces, to his dismay, that his body will continue to shrink. The abnormal size decrease of his body initially brings teases and taunting from local youths, then causes friction in his marriage and family life, because he loses the respect his family has for him because of his diminishing physical stature. Ultimately, as the shrinking continues, it begins to threaten Carey''s life as well; at seven inches tall, he has a battle with the family cat that drives him outdoors, where he is attacked by a swallow in his garden; the conflict drives him through a window into the cellar of his house. Although he survives on the cheese left over in a mousetrap for a while, his size is eventually reduced to less than half an inch, at which point he is forced to engage in a victorious battle with a black widow spider that towers over him. As Carey continues shrinking, he realizes that his original fear that he would shrink into non-existence is incorrect; that he will continue to shrink, but will not disappear as he originally feared, and utters his famous closing line: "If nature existed on endless levels, so also might intelligence."

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Half of a Yellow Sun

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Bourne Ultimatum

By Robert Ludlum

The Joys of Motherhood

By Buchi Emecheta

Empire of Ivory

By Naomi Novik

Earthsearch

By James Follett

Immortality

By Milan Kundera

Rash

By Pete Hautman

Amber and Ashes

By Margaret Weis

The Final Key

By Catherine Asaro

Cold is the Grave

By Peter Robinson

Tyrannosaur Canyon

By Douglas Preston

The Shrinking Man

By Richard Matheson