A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM ALEX GARLAND, STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC The Southern Reach Trilogy begins with Annihilation, the Nebula Award-winning novel that "reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world" (Kim Stanley Robinson). Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself. They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.

London is Lydia Crow's city so when a man is found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge, she takes it personally. Driven by her desire to improve her fledgling P.I. skills and an innate sense of justice, Lydia investigates. Even when it seems as if the Silver Family might be involved, Lydia refuses to back down. The Silver Family, who run the finest law firm in London, have a gift for persuasion. In the Bad Old Days it was said they could make a man jump off a roof by convincing him he could fly. But that's all in the past... Isn't it? Everybody wants something from Lydia: Her Uncle Charlie wants her to join the infamous Family Business, her ghostly flatmate wants her to test her power, DCI Fleet wants a relationship, and the Silver Family want her to keep her nose out. Trouble is, Lydia has never been much good at taking orders. And London in a heatwave is a dangerous place to be... 'My favourite new urban fantasy series, clever and twisty and deliciously magical.' Stephanie Burgis, author of Snowspelled