“At the height of morning rush hour on March 20, 1995, the deadly nerve gas sarin poured into the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 people and injuring 6,000 more. This horrifying attack on the public was carried out by the Aum Supreme Truth cult, a high-tech billion-dollar empire of New Age zealots led by Shoko Asahara, a charismatic charlatan… The cult recruited some of Japan’s brightest students and scientists, indoctrinated them with a paranoid combination of Eastern beliefs and the Judeo-Christian idea of Armageddon, and manipulated them with designer drugs and mind control. Asahara sent cult members to Russia in the confusion following the fall of the Soviet Union in order to gain new converts among the Russian scientific community and to acquire nuclear weapons for the cult. Others were dispatched to Zaire to collect the deadly Ebola virus from the heart of the hot zone. All of these activities had one purpose: to realize Asahara’s vision of the end of the world.”

Publisher: Crown
Hardback: 256 pages

“In more than 2,000 entries from Hecate to Hematomania, Lycanthropy to Lugosi, Mirrors to Montenegro, The Vampire Encyclopedia covers in detail such subjects as the history of the vampire legend; methods of finding, identifying, and destroying vampires; the origin and meaning of the accepted ways of resisting vampires; the manners in which in which one can become a vampire; the importance of blood in vampiric lore; the role of the vampire bat; and the psychological-medical views on vampirism.”

Publisher: Crown
Paperback: 303 pages
Illustrated

“In 1991, a group of tourists found the body of a mountaineer in an Alpine glacier on the Austrian-Italian border… the body of a Neolithic hunter, a man who had died some 5,300 years ago.” This scientific detective story, written by the first scientist on the scene, “details the Iceman’s well-preserved equipment and clothing, and interprets these fascinating clues to the nature of daily life in the Stone Age.” What was he doing miles up in the harsh alpine mountains? What can we learn from the cruciform tattoo on his inner right knee, the birch-bark container found nearby, his grass-cord shoes or his bow-stave, and five crude arrow-shafts? “Finally, how did he die?” This discovery answers many questions about human prehistory. GR

Publisher: Crown
Paperback: 306 pages
Illustrated

A bright and breezy travelogue on the theoretical wonders of the universe, this is science journalism given a Star Trek turn. Publishers Weekly says: “Something else again… Gribbon is having fun… A book that rejoices in paradoxes and delights in reporting that nothing bizarre—baby universes, bubble universes, universe-sized black holes, energy extraction and time travel through wormholes—is denied by the laws of physics.” Chapters on “Warping Space and Time,” “Hyperspace Connections,” “Two Ways To Build a Time Machine,” “Cosmic Connections” and “Dense Stars.” Fascinating, as Spock would say with a raised eyebrow. GR

Publisher: Crown
Paperback: 248 pages
Illustrated