The South American Boreal: one of the last truly unexplored jungles on our planet. In its dark heart is an ancient crater basin, sealed in by a living cage, making it a time capsule for an ancient, deadly ecosystem. Matt Kearns, Carla Nero and a team of scientist explorers have found their way in. In the crater's sunken interior are creatures from a primordial nightmare. Dangers lurk in every treetop, under every rock or loom monstrously over them. It is a place where mankind is out of time. Matt and Carla must find out how the terrifying parasite wreaking havoc in the United States can be controlled while staying ahead of things that defy belief and shake their understanding of evolution on our planet. Trapped, with time running out, the team of explorers will find themselves a part of a food chain ... and nowhere near the top. This title is a novella-length episode of The First Bird. The final episode will be released on 1 August. Please visit www.momentumbooks.com.au for release dates, further information and to sign-up to be notified of the next release.

Matt Kearns and the remnants of the scientific team return to a ravaged America. Modern medicine has failed to halt the spread of the flesh-consuming parasite, and humans have been forced to hide, even from each other. The infected roam the cities and suburbs of a ruined nation. But the devastating effects on human physiology are only the beginning. Something has been let loose, something that the team were not prepared for – human nature itself. Matt and Carla must make it back to the CDC headquarters, crossing the apocalyptic countryside that proves every bit as dangerous and deadly as the South American jungle. The race is on to test their eradication cure, before their world suffers the same fate as that of the giant saurians of prehistory. But there is something they don't count on – the solution has a high price. If they don't use the cure it means the end of mankind, but what if the remedy is worse than the disease? This is a novella-length episode of The First Bird. To read the full story, check out The First Bird: Omnibus Edition.

Matt Kearns, linguist, archaeologist and reluctant explorer from Beneath the Dark Ice and Black Mountain returns in his first full-time adventure. And this time he doesn't have Alex Hunter to save him when things get weird. When a fame-hungry scientist brings an impossible, living specimen of a creature long thought extinct back from the wild jungles of South America he unwittingly brings along a passenger. Something with the potential to destroy every living thing on our planet. The infestation begins, rapidly overtaking medical resources and resisting all treatment. One woman knows the danger, Carla Nero, chief scientist of the Centre for Disease Control. She makes Matt an offer he can't refuse and together they join a team heading to the deep jungle in a desperate race to locate the hidden place where the specimen was taken. Only by finding the location of the specimen can the team – and the world – hope to uncover the secret of how to survive the ancient, horrifying parasite that has been released. This title is a novella-length episode of The First Bird. It will conclude with Episode 3 on 1 August. Please visit www.momentumbooks.com.au for release dates, further information and to sign-up to be notified of the next release.

From bestselling author Greig Beck, with new book Extinction Plague: A Matt Kearns Novel 4 out soon. EXTINCTION IS CONTAGIOUS Matt Kearns, linguist, archaeologist and reluctant explorer from Beneath the Dark Ice and Black Mountain returns to help save the world. And this time he doesn't have Alex Hunter to save him when the stuff hits the fan. When a fame-hungry scientist brings an impossible, living specimen of a creature long thought extinct back from the wild jungles of South America he unwittingly brings along a passenger. Something with the potential to destroy every living thing on our planet. The infestation begins, rapidly overtaking medical resources and resisting all treatment. One woman knows the danger, Carla Nero, chief scientist of the Center for Disease Control. She makes Matt an offer he can't refuse and together they join a team heading to the deep jungle in a desperate race to locate the hidden place where the specimen was taken. Only by finding the location of the specimen can the team - and the world - hope to uncover the secret of how to survive the ancient, horrifying parasite that has been released. SHORTLISTED FOR BEST HORROR NOVEL AT THE 2014 AUREALIS AWARDS

The people are starving ... As Fallon and his friends struggle to control a mutinous capital, Feray is preparing to lead a legion of Kottermanis back to the country to free her captured husband, Prince Kemal. But the real danger is coming from the east – Swane and the treacherous Duchess Dina aren't willing to wait to make their play. An army of mercenaries will be unleashed on Fallon when he least expects it ... An epic fantasy perfect for fans of George RR Martin, David Gemmell and Raymond E. Feist.

Alex Hunter, code named Arcadian, wakes up with no knowledge of who he is, in the care of a woman he doesn't recognise, in a country not his own. But there is a calling deep within him, to return home to Black Mountain. Formed a billion years ago, the Appalachian's Black Mountain hosts a terrible legend. Only one elder remains to guard its long-forgotten, deadly secret and there is a fear that there is evil lurking again. Some hikers have gone missing, and the rescue team sent to search for them has not returned. Meanwhile, in nearby Ashville, Professor Matt Kearns is drawn into the mystery of an ancient artefact recovered from the mountainside, and an image too grotesque to be real. A survivor is then found half-alive, covered in blood – blood revealed to be not quite human. Alex must confront an age-old enemy of man and discover the truth about his past, and confront the horror that stalks the frozen mountain, and also the one haunting his very soul.

An arrow of steel and wood severs the sky. And from it breeds a mystery of the deadliest order. A perilous journey of turmoil and madness looms for Lincoln and Zamora, as they struggle in the epic search for the Heart. The journey goes spiraling into forbidding shores where wild men and squallier women rule, to a concealed city built for those who should never be seen. All scrap to find the Heart and the power it will wield to the beholder, and falling into the wrong hands the threat to the province grows. Outcasts plot against royals and those who are something else ascent to take all by the darkness. An empress charades as anything she is not, and a disgraced scum prepares for vicious revenge. Amongst a milieu of lust and murder, mad science and mayhem, the Heart may fall into the hands of the men and women possessed of the reddest of blood or the blackest of hearts. For when honor is tested, the hearts of even the strong shudder. The search for forever continues.