DEATH VALLEY EARNS ITS NAME when a terrorist threatens to unleash lethal radioactive toxins -- in America's most fragile national park. Forensic geologists Cassie Oldfield and Walter Shaws embark on a perilous mission to find and stop the terrorist. But this hunt pushes them to their limits. The summer desert is brutal. The material they seek is hotter than the desert in August--and they are each particularly vulnerable to its effects. As the hunt turns dangerous, Cassie and Walter learn that they are up against more than pure human malice. The unstable atom--in the hands of an unstable man--is governed by Murphy's Law. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. And it does. ► All books in the series are complete novels, and can be enjoyed in any order.

From The Edge of Justice to Crossing the Line, Clinton McKinzie has captivated readers with thrillers that combine heart-pounding action with searing human drama–and feature a truly unforgettable hero, Special Agent Antonio Burns. Now McKinzie delivers a new novel filled with his trademarks–the thrill of danger, the clash between the law and the lawless, and the struggles of a family bound by love, loyalty, and a hunger for adventure. Here McKinzie takes us to a stark Wyoming landscape, where one tragic moment plunges Antonio Burns into a whirlpool of hate, violence, and revenge. Badwater Antonio Burns is at a crossroads–he rarely sees his six-month-old daughter, and his career has spiraled downward from hotshot golden boy to nearly having his badge confiscated. And things are about to get even worse. When a ten-year-old boy dies in a drowning incident in Badwater, Wyoming, the townspeople want the tourist they feel is responsible convicted of murder. In an already explosive case, Burns has been forced into working for the prosecution–and when a media-hungry celebrity lawyer takes over the defense, justice turns into a charade. Clinging to his sanity by climbing the crags and caverns of a local canyon, recovering from the near death of his daredevil brother and his breakup with the mother of his child, Antonio tries to turn his back on this situation. But he can’t. He finds one crucial piece of evidence, makes one mistake with a woman, and then turns to his brother, Roberto, for help. Soon he’s all the way in–no matter what the cost to his career, his life, or to the people who still count him as one of their own.… The spellbinding story of a cop drawn to danger, a community steeped in hatred, and an explosive mix of opportunists, idealists, and a few very bad men, Badwater is a taut, thunderous novel–and Clinton McKinzie at his electrifying best.

The Badwater Ultramarathon is commonly referred to as "the toughest footrace on the planet." In 2003, defending champion Pam Reed, Dean Karnazes and 71 other runners took the ultimate challenge of running 135 miles in California from Badwater to the portals of Mount Whitney. Their journey would take them through the hostile environment of Death Valley and subject them to temperatures ranking among the highest ever recorded on earth. Twenty-five runners tell of their adventures in arguably the absolute toughest of "the toughest footrace on the planet" - the good, the bad and yes, the ugly - in this incredible and fascinating compilation. You are certain to gain a respect for the runners you will meet and perhaps an even greater respect for the area known as Death Valley. The runners - who experienced heat exhaustion, dehydration, nausea, blisters, hallucinations, and fatigue during the race - competed in temperatures literally "a few degrees from hell."

Bad Water is a sophisticated theoretical analysis of Japanese thinkers and activists' efforts to reintegrate the natural environment into Japan's social and political thought in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. The need to incorporate nature into politics was revealed by a series of large-scale industrial disasters in the 1890s. The Ashio Copper Mine unleashed massive amounts of copper, arsenic, mercury, and other pollutants into surrounding watersheds. Robert Stolz argues that by forcefully demonstrating the mutual penetration of humans and nature, industrial pollution biologically and politically compromised the autonomous liberal subject underlying the political philosophy of the modernizing Meiji state. In the following decades, socialism, anarchism, fascism, and Confucian benevolence and moral economy were marshaled in the search for new theories of a modern political subject and a social organization adequate to the environmental crisis. With detailed considerations of several key environmental activists, including Tanaka Shōzō, Bad Water is a nuanced account of Japan's environmental turn, a historical moment when, for the first time, Japanese thinkers and activists experienced nature as alienated from themselves and were forced to rebuild the connections.

Barret Baumgart’s literary debut presents a haunting and deeply personal portrait of civilization poised at the precipice, a picture of humanity caught between its deepest past and darkest future. In the fall of 2013, during the height of California’s historic drought, Baumgart toured the remote military base, NAWS China Lake, near Death Valley, California. His mother, the survivor of a recent stroke, decided to come along for the ride. She hoped the alleged healing power of the base’s ancient Native American hot springs might cure her crippling headaches. Baumgart sought to debunk claims that the military was spraying the atmosphere with toxic chemicals to control the weather. What follows is a discovery that threatens to sever not only the bonds between mother and son but between planet Earth and life itself. Stalking the fringes of Internet conspiracy, speculative science, and contemporary archaeology, Baumgart weaves memoir, military history, and investigative journalism in a dizzying journey that carries him from the cornfields of Iowa to drought-riddled California, from the Vietnam jungle to the caves of prehistoric Europe and eventually the walls of the US Capitol, the sparkling white hallways of the Pentagon, and straight into the contradicted heart of a worldwide climate emergency.

An inspirational memoir by Scott Jurek, one of the finest ultrarunners in the world.

One day in a village in the Republic of Uganda, Sanyu and his sister, Masani, find out that they are not going to school. Instead, they have to fetch water for their family. So Sanyu and Masani persist through the hard conditions of the walk--hot weather, a long distance, and toil--in order to collect the water from the river. However, the next morning, the family unexpectedly wakes up on the brink of death. What has happened to the family? What will their fate be?