Infected Ragers on one side, Marauders on the other, Hatcher and his people find themselves pinned between a rock and a hard place. On the off-shore Navy frigate Kauffman, an infected researcher threatens the lives of everybody onboard the new floating CDC laboratory. Within the infected, certain disturbing traits are observed that cause survivors to question everything they thought they knew about the virus that devastated mankind. In the battle for supremacy, who will come out on top?
While Hatcher and the survivors strengthen the defenses of their new home, the people’s resolve begins to waver. New and unexpected faces join their ranks and the survivors must deal with the threats that the new world throws at them. The Marauders have been broken, but Simon continues his crusade. His forces are scattered and face uncertain fates while he plots his revenge. If he can’t have his toys, nobody will. The government continues to work towards a cure, but their best minds begin to feel that something more is wrong than just a species decimating virus. Paranoia creeps into the picture and the lead researchers feel forced to abandon the safety of their flotilla. The Ragers are starving…and changing. What more can happen as the cannibalistic creatures begin to plot against the uninfected?
The Herons take to the high seas to fend off pirates and rescue the heir to an empire in the newest adventure from John Flanagan, author of the worldwide bestselling Ranger's Apprentice! Includes BONUS content--a brand-new Ranger's Apprentice short story featuring fan-favorites Will and Maddie! In Hallasholm, Stig is contesting the annual Maktig competition to decide Skandia’s greatest warrior. But a late-night knock on the door brings someone Stig never expected to see again, along with a request the Herons are hard-pressed to refuse: a rescue mission of epic proportions. Across the ocean, the southern city-state of Byzantos is plagued by a crew of pirates who’ve kidnapped the son of Empress Justina. Slipping out of Hallasholm under the cover of darkness, the brotherband sets sail to recover the boy from his kidnappers, heading south to the island of Santorillos where a near-impenetrable fortress stands atop a cliff, surrounded by a lagoon—a caldera—formed by the crater of a volcano. In this explosive seventh book in the action-packed Brotherband Chronicles, the Herons battle pirates amid stormy seas as the fate of an empire rests on their shoulders.
This book reviews advances in understanding of the past ca. two million years of Earth history - the Quaternary Period - in the United States. It begins with sections on ice and water - as glaciers, permafrost, oceans, rivers, lakes, and aquifers. Six chapters are devoted to the high-latitude Pleistocene ice sheets, to mountain glaciations of the western United States, and to permafrost studies. Other chapters discuss ice-age lakes, caves, sea-level fluctuations, and riverine landscapes. With a chapter on landscape evolution models, the book turns to essays on geologic processes. Two chapters discuss soils and their responses to climate, and wind-blown sediments. Two more describe volcanoes and earthquakes, and the use of Quaternary geology to understand the hazards they pose. The next part of the book is on plants and animals. Five chapters consider the Quaternary history of vegetation in the United States. Other chapters treat forcing functions and vegetation response at different spatial and temporal scales, the role of fire as a catalyst of vegetation change during rapid climate shifts, and the use of tree rings in inferring age and past hydroclimatic conditions. Three chapters address vertebrate paleontology and the extinctions of large mammals at the end of the last glaciation, beetle assemblages and the inferences they permit about past conditions, and the peopling of North America. A final chapter addresses the numerical modeling of Quaternary climates, and the role paleoclimatic studies and climatic modeling has in predicting future response of the Earth's climate system to the changes we have wrought.
