In the heart of crime-ridden Hutt Space, a Jedi Scholar searches for justice. While trying to obtain the coordinates of a secret, peril-packed, but potentially beneficial trade route, a novice Jedi is killed—and the motive for his murder remains shrouded in mystery. Now his former Master, Jedi archivist Mander Zuma, wants answers, even as he fights to erase doubts about his own abilities as a Jedi. What Mander gets is immersion into the perilous underworld of the Hutts as he struggles to stay one step ahead in a game of smugglers, killers, and crime lords bent on total control.

In this dystopian fantasy from a New York Times–bestselling author, a teen put in quarantine due to a mysterious illness uncovers a government conspiracy. As a lethal plague sweeps through the land, Ani Mells is shocked when she is unexpectedly captured by the governor’s wardens and forced to submit to a test for the deadly Scourge. She is even more surprised when the test results come back positive, and she is sent to Attic Island, a former prison turned refuge—and quarantine colony—for the ill. The Scourge’s victims, Ani now among them, can only expect to live out short, painful lives there. However, Ani quickly discovers that she doesn’t know the whole truth about the Scourge or the Colony. She’s been caught in a devious plot, and, with the help of her best friend, Weevil, Ani means to uncover just what is actually going on. But will she and Weevil survive long enough to do so? The Scourge is an explosively thrilling tale of adventure and intrigue, courage and heart from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer A. Nielsen. “Nielsen’s polished fantasy smoothly combines medieval elements with hints of mystery and romance . . . it delivers a significant message about how misinformation breeds intolerance.” —Publishers Weekly “The characters are well defined and memorable. Feisty Ani, a likable character who is thoughtful and strong, drives the story forward and keeps readers wanting to know more . . . “ —School Library Journal

A historical novel of prejudice and plague, The Scourges of Heaven sweeps gracefully, joyfully, painfully across centuries and generations. Through Cynthia Anne Ferguson, orphaned aboard a vessel carrying immigrants, hopes, dreams, and cholera from the Old World to the New, David Dick paints a world where the causes of disease are little understood, where faith is not always a comfort, where human questioning often goes unanswered, and where unexpected death is frequently attributed to the wrath of an angry God. Cynthia's story unfolds in the midst of the first of four great cholera epidemics to sweep America in the mid-nineteenth century, and her journey through life, from New Orleans up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and across the Bluegrass to Lexington, parallels the track followed by the deadly scourge. More powerfully told than any factual, statistical, or scientific account could ever manage, yet based upon historical events, this tale of disease, ignorance, and narrow-mindedness is supported by a central theme of hope that ultimately brings redemption.

In this book, eleven scholars “take their stand” on the controversial issue of disease as it occurs in the context of the American South. Playing on the popular vision of the South as an ill region on several levels, the European and American contributors interpret various aspects of the regional “sickly” culture as not so much southern “problems”, but, rather, southern opportunities, or else, springboards to yet another of the South’s cultural revitalizations, “health”. As Thomas Ærvold Bjerre and Beata Zawadka note in their introduction, the so-called “Healthy South” has never been an easy topic for scholars dealing with the region. One reason for this is that researchers have been taught to approach so formulated a topic no further than to the point when it turns out it is a contradiction in terms, and, indeed, there is much in southern history and the present situation that justifies such an approach. This volume, however, comprises a collective effort of southernist historians, literature experts, and culture critics to transcend the “contradictory” concept of the “Healthy South,” and does so by reinventing the notion of the southern disease and, consequently, the role of the South as a “scourge” in American culture in terms of this culture’s bountiful gift.

A mutating plague is spreading. It's killing two of every three people on Earth. And Mike Crenshaw is totally unprepared. From the world of The Traveler Series comes a new cast of characters, new obstacles, and the same devastating, world-altering virus which plunges society into the depth of a dystopian hell. UNPREPARED begins in the hours before The Scourge takes hold. As if ripped from today's headlines, governments react too slowly and the disease spreads too fast. Quarantines don't work. Infrastructure fails. People die. Follow Mike and his friends as they try to survive this new landscape and find out how the world in which The Traveler Series was set came into being. It's a thrill ride that will keep you up at night with the lights on and the doors locked.

A history of one of the world's deadliest diseases traces the influence of the smallpox plague on the course of human civilization, describes Jenner's creation of a vaccine against it and the World Health Organization's global efforts to eradicate it, and examines the dangers it still poses today as

I have never seen plague bring a man back from the dead. Nor do I know of any sickness, in England or upon the continent, that gives its victims a taste for living flesh. So declares Sir Edward Dallingridge, a noble knight whose years defending England on the battlefield haven't prepared him to face an enemy as chilling -- and relentless -- as the living dead. But even as his countrymen flee in horror, Sir Edward rides straight into the unholy infestation. For his lady love lies trapped behind a hundred miles of fiendish terror, and nothing will keep him from her. With little more than the armor on his back, the blade in his hand, and the loyalty of the two fellow warriors at his side, he is willing to spill an ocean of tainted blood to reclaim the country he serves and the bride he worships.