MJQ

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.

On the run from desperate, well-armed adversaries, Book, Rachel, and Samuel are all tested to their limits. If they're going to survive the night, a whole community will have to bear witness.

With little warning, a solar super flare erupts from the sun. A billion tons of superheated plasma hurtles through space. As multiple solar storms strike Earth, transformers explode, the power grid fails, and communication networks collapse. Half the world goes dark, thrusting the planet into utter chaos.

With enemies closing in on every side, the survivors of Fall Creek find themselves facing impossible odds. Do they flee for their lives? Or, do they defend their town and risk losing it all? Some things are worth fighting for, even dying for. This may be their last stand. When the country goes dark, ordinary people find themselves facing the end of the world as they know it.

When Holly White's fiancé cancels their Christmas Eve wedding with less than two weeks to go, Holly heads home with a broken heart. Lucky for her, home in historic Mistletoe, Maine is magical during Christmastime - exactly what the doctor prescribed. Except her plan to drown her troubles in peppermints and snickerdoodles is upended when local grouch and president of the Mistletoe Historical Society, Margaret Fenwick, is bludgeoned and left in the sleigh display at Reindeer Games, Holly's family tree farm.

In the dead of winter, an EMP attack destroys the U.S. power grid. No electricity. No cars or phones. The country is plunged into instant chaos. But for Hannah Sheridan, it's the best day of her life. For the last five years, she's been the captive of a sadistic psychopath—until the EMP releases the lock of her prison.

Former mean girl Dixie Davis is back in town, and it's payback time. Literally. Dixie is flat broke, and her best - make that only - friend, Landon, is throwing her a lifeline from the Great Beyond. Dixie stands to inherit his business...which is a phone sex empire. Wait, what? Plum Orchard, Georgia, is about to get even juicier.

Raised in the wilderness by her late great-uncle, Vida is a young woman with an almost preternatural affinity for nature, especially for the wolves that also call the forested mountains home. Formed by hard experience, by love and loss, and by the prophecies of a fortuneteller, Vida just wants peace. If only nearby Kettleton County didn’t cast such a dark shadow.

Called in to examine what is left of a person thought to have been struck by lightning, Tempe traces an unusual tattoo to its source and is soon embroiled in something much larger. Young men—tourists—have been disappearing on the islands of Turks and Caicos. Seven years earlier, the first victim was found in a strange location with his left hand hacked off; subsequently, two other visitors vanished without a trace. But recently, tantalizing leads have emerged.

Winter has come to North Carolina and, with it, a drop in crime. Freed from a heavy work schedule, Tempe Brennan is content to dote on her daughter Katy, finally returned to civilian life from the army. But when mother and daughter meet at Tempe’s place one night, they find a box on the back porch. Inside: a very fresh human eyeball.