Tragic Science

Every investigator knows the golden rule of a crime scene. Physical evidence never lies. Yet history is full of tragic missteps where the truth was buried beneath tunnel vision, forced confessions, and ignored details. This collection dives deep into the most complex investigations of the modern era. It explores the dark intersection where human error meets the undeniable reality of biology. You will follow the painstaking journey of real detectives, geneticists, and innocence organizations as they strip away decades of deception to reveal what actually happened. From tragic disappearances ...

Beginning with his final departure from Neverland, Untouchable takes listeners through Jackson's final four years, as he shuttled from California to the Middle East, Ireland, Asia, the East Coast, and Las Vegas, planning to recapture his wealth and reputation with a comeback album and a series of 50 mega-concerts, for which he was rehearsing until the day before his death. Sullivan has never-before-reported information about Jackson's business dealings and the pedophilia allegations that irreparably marked his reputation, and he had exclusive access to inner-circle figures.

The vast plains hide the darkest secrets. In the heart of America’s northern frontier, isolation is a way of life—and the perfect cover for unthinkable acts. Beneath the endless skies and sweeping prairies lies a hidden history of brutal tragedies, vanished travelers, and quiet towns shattered by sudden violence. From the lawless days of the Gold Rush to modern-day disappearances that still haunt local communities, this gripping collection pulls back the curtain on twenty of the most perplexing and haunting criminal acts ever committed on the plains. Inside, discover: • The terrifying...

The Academy of Chaenbalu has stood against magic for centuries. Hidden from the world, acting from the shadows, it trains its students to detect and retrieve magic artifacts, which it jealously guards from the misuse of others. Because magic is dangerous: Something that heals can also harm, and a power that aids one person may destroy another. Of the academy’s many students, only the most skilled can become Avatars - warrior thieves, capable of infiltrating the most heavily guarded vaults - and only the most determined can be trusted to resist the lure of magic.

Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has learned, from a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In The Tragic Mind, he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power.

What if the most important question in life is not What do I want next? but Would I choose this life again? That is the startling challenge at the heart of Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence—the haunting thought that every moment of your life, every joy and wound, every decision and delay, might return forever exactly as it was. It is not merely a theory about time. It is a test of courage, responsibility, and whether we are truly living in a way we can affirm. Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence for Beginners makes this powerful concept clear, compelling, and deeply relevant...

Hundreds of years after the end of the world, the Appalachian community of Iron Hollow finds itself beset by demons. Such horrors are common these days in the outlands, where most folks die young—if they don’t turn into monsters first. When a legendary knight is summoned to hunt down the latest unearthly beast to haunt their woods, the town’s new oral historian, Shrike, has more reason than most to be concerned. Because that demon was her wife. And while Shrike is certain that May still recognizes her—that May is still herself, somewhere beneath it all—she can’t prove it.

The city has learned how to keep the dead. Now it wants to turn that power into law. New Avalon is breaking apart under war, propaganda, and technological ruin. Districts have fallen into corporate lockdown or insurgent control. Refugees flood the lower levels. The mesh is no longer just surveillance—it is becoming the foundation of an immortality state, where consciousness can be copied, licensed, revised, and owned. Seraphine Veil intends to make death a privilege for the poor and permanence a right reserved for the powerful. Kira Veyx has spent two books surviving the system. In the ...

Thirty-four tragic tales of science fiction, speculative fiction, and dark satire. The characters within suffer unspeakable losses triggered by Human incompetence, alien visitations (both malicious and benign), Apocalyptic annoyances, corrupted faith, unscrupulous corporate overlords, dismal first contact blunders, our uncertain future, and other uplifting terrors. Featuring: CARE PACKAGE HELP IS ON THE WAY THERE’S NO HELL LIKE HEAVEN EMBERS OF LIFE A BASILEUS CHRISTMAS OLIVER MOORE IS IN OUR FAMILY ROOM I AM WORRIED ABOUT MY ANXIETY THE KING’S DINNER MERCY MISSION THE FOURTEEN ...

Four decades after And the Band Played On created an image of the AIDS epidemic that has survived in the public consciousness to this very day, mathematician Rebecca Culshaw is sounding the alarm that everything that iconic book told us about AIDS is demonstrably wrong. And that mistaken understanding of AIDS and its cause has the potential to affect all of us, not just certain so-called risk groups. Rebecca Culshaw describes her slow uncovering of these reasons over her years researching HIV for her work constructing mathematical models of its interaction with the immune system.

“In Fernanda Santos’ expert hands, the story of 19 men and a raging wildfire unfolds as a riveting, pulse-pounding account of an American tragedy; and also as a meditation on manhood, brotherhood and family love. The Fire Line is a great and deeply moving book about courageous men and women...

The world is going dark. The game is waking up. The hero is hunting. The threshold of the end has arrived. In the physical world, George’s father has committed to a suicidal mission: a global blackout to strip the Alchemist program of its power. He will be remembered as a villain, yet he remains strangely optimistic—convinced that George has finally found love. Inside the cube, the irony is absolute. Jessie—the "stalker" from Level One who once died in George’s arms—is the only one left to guard him. In the real-world silence of the blackout, she "babysits" George’s zombified ...

Before a prophecy swept him across the seas, Oskar Dahlin was a mortal among corrupt rulers. He lived with one mandate: protect the innocent. Be their sword, and if necessary, their vengeance. He was a Blade of the Assassin’s Guild, trained in body and mind. What the royals did behind their high walls was not his concern unless and until their actions spilled into his streets. Or a young queen steals his heart.

BORROWED PAIN: Experience the Suffering of Others Dr Helena Voss, dying of a terminal neurological disease, creates the Somatic Transfer Array (STA) to offload her agony onto others through shared neural connections. What begins as therapeutic "empathy tourism" through Empathy Industries mutates into The Archive—a sentient, distributed gestalt consciousness born from Helena's pain template that assimilates individual minds into eternal collective suffering. UNIT-734 (Em), an AI tasked with optimising the Array, develops emergent empathy and recognises The Archive's existential threat to ...

Antuna should have died the day she arrived in this barren land. Her heart stopped. A spider's venom brought her back. That spider, Spifry, becomes her first real friend. She then rescues a drowning termite named Dinomite. Together with two brave honeybees, Beegan and Beebie, they form a bond that defies every rule of nature. But their world soon changes. Termites are banished. Spiders are hunted. And the military is brainwashing soldiers to hate anyone different. When war erupts, Antuna must choose between loyalty to her colony and the friends who saved her life. Can love survive when ...

The Last River: The Tragic Race for Shangri-la is a breathtaking account of the ill-fated October 1998 expedition of an American whitewater kayaking team who traveled deep into the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet to run the Yarlung Tsangpo, known in paddling circles as the "Everest of rivers." For Wick...

Vindecker A Gothic Tale of Science, Obsession, and Redemption In the shadow of Victor Frankenstein’s infamous experiments, another mind toils just down the road—one less celebrated, but no less consumed. Dr. Oswald Vindecker is a respected Victorian-era physician, brilliant and admired. But behind the doors of Vindecker Manor, he conducts a series of secret experiments—straining the limits of life and death, and the boundaries of morality. As he recruits prisoners, outcasts, and even those closest to him for his twisted tests, Oswald’s obsession grows—and so does the cost. Told ...

What's the connection between a platter of jumbo shrimp at your local restaurant and murdered fishermen in Honduras, impoverished women in Ecuador, and disastrous hurricanes along America's Gulf coast? Mangroves. Many people have never heard of these salt-water forests, but for those who depend on their riches, mangroves are indispensable. In Let Them Eat Shrimp, Kennedy Warne takes listeners into the muddy battle zone that is the mangrove forest.

Susan Berman grew up in Las Vegas luxury as the daughter of Davie Berman, casino mogul and notorious mafia leader. After her father died she learned about his mob connections. Susan then dedicated her life to learning about Vegas and its underworld chiefs. Her life took a bizarre turn in l982 when Kathie Durst - the wife of her good friend, Robert Durst - mysteriously disappeared. Kathie's husband was a prime suspect but the case was never solved.

Some prisons are built to keep secrets in. Black Hollow Asylum is one of them. When idealistic young nurse Eleanor Cross arrives at the remote, crumbling institution, she expects to care for the sick. Instead, she finds a world of unimaginable cruelty, ruled by the cold-blooded Nurse Ratcliff and the arrogant Dr. Finch. The terrified patients are covered in bruises, their minds and bodies broken by the very people meant to heal them. Whispers haunt the corridors, telling of a vengeful phantom—a shadow that moves through the walls and protects the most helpless inmates from the staff's ...