Michael Crichton

The Caribbean, 1665. Pirate captain Charles Hunter, with backing from a powerful ally, assembles a crew of ruffians to take the Spanish galleon, "El Trinidad," guarded by the bloodthirsty Cazalla, a favorite commander of the Spanish king himself.

An airliner porpoises over the Pacific--dives and rises--killing a number of passengers. Human or technical error? On the answer depend a big overseas sale to China and company jobs. Vice-president Casey Singleton battles TV hounds, intrigues and a hostile CEO as she tries to determine the cause.

In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface of the water, a huge vessel is discovered resting on the ocean floor. Rushed to the scene is a group of American scientists who descend together into the depths of the sea to investigate this astonishing discovery. What they find defies their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanations. It is a spaceship.

In 1967, an extraterrestrial microbe came crashing down to Earth and nearly ended the human race. Accidental exposure to the particle--designated The Andromeda Strain--killed every resident of the town of Piedmont, Arizona, save for an elderly man and an infant boy. Over the next five days, a team of top scientists assigned to Project Wildfire worked valiantly to save the world from an epidemic of unimaginable proportions. In the moments before a...