Jonathan Maberry's Blog, page 4

ROT & RUIN fans...enter to win a copy of FIRE & ASH http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...

The JOE LEDGER series in order

This is a complete list of all of the Joe Ledger novels and short stories (so far) in the correct reading order.

COUNTDOWN
(teaser prequel to PATIENT ZERO)
Meet Joe Ledger, Baltimore PD, attached to a Homeland task force… who's about to get a serious promotion.
Available for all e-readers (Kindle, Nook, etc)
Available on audio by Blackstone, read by Ray Porter

PATIENT ZERO
NOVEL #1/Published in 2009/ available in trade paperback, eBook and on audio
When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there's either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills... and there's nothing wrong with Joe Ledger's skills. And that's both a good, and a bad thing. It's good because he's a Baltimore detective that has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new taskforce created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can't handle. This rapid response group is called the Department of Military Sciences or the DMS for short. It's bad because his first mission is to help stop a group of terrorists from releasing a dreadful bio-weapon that can turn ordinary people into zombies. The fate of the world hangs in the balance.... Available in trade paperback from St. Martin’s Griffin and on audio from Blackstone
ISBN-10: 0312382855 / ISBN-13: 978-0312382858

ZERO TOLERANCE
Short Story
This sequel to PATIENT ZERO brings Joe Ledger back into action, hunting for zombies in the deadly mountains of Afghanistan. .
Available in print in THE LIVING DEAD 2 edited by John Joseph Adams
Coming soon as an e-story
Available on audio by Blackstone, read by Ray Porter http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Tolerance/...

DEEP, DARK
Short Story
In an underground bioweapons lab a team of scientists working to develop super soldiers instead create something that is far deadlier and infinitely stranger. Joe Ledger and Echo Team must hunt –and be hunted—deep down in the dark.
Available for all e-readers (Kindle, Nook, etc)
Available on audio by Blackstone, read by Ray Porter http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Tolerance/...

MATERIAL WITNESS
Short Story
A stand-alone short story that takes place in the early days of Joe Ledger’s service in the Department of Military Sciences, a top secret division of Homeland Security. Joe Ledger and the DMS must protect a Pine Deep resident spook and author who is in over his head with the wrong people and may know more than he is letting on.
Available for all e-readers (Kindle, Nook, etc)
Available on audio by Blackstone, read by Ray Porter http://www.amazon.com/Material-Witnes...

THE DRAGON FACTORY
NOVEL #2/Published in 2010/ available in trade paperback, eBook and on audio
Joe and the DMS go up against two competing groups of geneticists. One side is creating exotic transgenic monsters and genetically enhanced mercenary armies; the other is using 21st century technology to continue the Nazi Master Race program begun by Josef Mengele. Both sides want to see the DMS destroyed, and they've drawn first blood. Neither side is prepared for Joe Ledger as he leads Echo Team to war under a black flag.
Available in trade paperback from St. Martin’s Griffin and on audio from Blackstone
ISBN-10: 0312382499 / ISBN-13: 978-0312382490

DOG DAYS
Short Story
Joe Ledger returns in this tale that follows the tragic conclusion of THE DRAGON FACTORY. In the wake of a devastating personal loss, Joe Ledger and his new canine partner, Ghost, go hunting for the world's deadliest assassin.
An audio exclusive story available from Blackstone, read by Ray Porter http://www.amazon.com/Dog-Days-Joe-Le...

CHANGELING
Short Story
Joe Ledger teams with a mysterious British agent named Felicity to investigate a dangerous bioweapons factory.
This story will be in Midnight Echo Magazine, May 2013.
http://midnightechomagazine.com/2013/...

THE KING OF PLAGUES
NOVEL #3/Published in 2011/ available in trade paperback, eBook and on audio
Saturday 09:11 Hours: A blast rocks a London hospital and thousands are dead or injured… 10:09 Hours: Joe Ledger arrives on scene to investigate. The horror is unlike anything he has ever seen. Compelled by grief and rage, Joe rejoins the DMS and within hours is attacked by a hit-team of assassins and sent on a suicide mission into a viral hot zone during an Ebola outbreak. Soon Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences begin tearing down the veils of deception to uncover a vast and powerful secret society using weaponized versions of the Ten Plagues of Egypt to destabilize world economies and profit from the resulting chaos. Millions will die unless Joe Ledger meets the this powerful new enemy on their own terms as he fights terror with terror.
Available in trade paperback from St. Martin’s Griffin and on audio from Blackstone
ISBN-10: 0312382502 / ISBN-13: 978-0312382506

ASSASSIN’S CODE
NOVEL #4/Published in 2012/ available in trade paperback, eBook and on audio
When Joe Ledger and Echo Team rescue a group of American college kids held hostage in Iran, the Iranian government then asks them to help find six nuclear bombs planted in the Mideast oil fields. These stolen WMDs will lead Joe and Echo Team into hidden vaults of forbidden knowledge, mass-murder, betrayal, and a brotherhood of genetically-engineered killers with a thirst for blood. Accompanied by the beautiful assassin called Violin, Joe follows a series of clues to find the Book of Shadows, which contains a horrifying truth that threatens to shatter his entire worldview. They say the truth will set you free… Not this time. The secrets of the Assassin’s Code will set the world ablaze.
Available in trade paperback from St. Martin’s Griffin and on audio from Macmillan
ISBN-10: 0312552203 / ISBN-13: 978-0312552206

MAD SCIENCE
Short Story
Joe Ledger and Violin go after a kill-squad of Red Knights in this sequel to ASSASSIN’S CODE.
A short story exclusive to the LIAR LAIR audiobook anthology; available now from Blackstone Audio.

BORROWED POWER
Short Story
Joe Ledger teams with a mysterious British agent named Felicity to investigate a dangerous bioweapons factory.
A story told in two parts: A young Mr. Church teams with Lilith to hunt monsters in the sewers beneath Paris; and when that ancient evil rises again, Joe Ledger and Violin close in for the kill.
Available in eBook only for all eReaders.

A FOOTNOTE IN THE BLACK BUDGET
Short Story
Joe Ledger, Top and Bunny go to the bottom of the world all the way to the Mountains of Madness in this crossover with H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
***This story is not yet released. It will be included in the anthology THE MADNESS OF CTHULHU, edited by S.T. Joshi, spring 2014.

EXTINCTION MACHINE
NOVEL #5
The President of the United States vanishes from the White House for five hours. Next morning he is found, apparently safe and sound. Except that he claims that during the night he was abducted by aliens. A top-secret prototype stealth fighter is destroyed during a test flight. Witnesses on the ground say that it was shot down by a craft that immediately vanished at impossible speeds. North Korea’s ultra top-secret weapons research lab is destroyed by a volcano –in an area where there has not been an eruption for forty millions years. All over the world reports of UFOs are increasing at an alarming rate. Key military personnel, politicians and scientists begin disappearing. And in a remote fossil dig in China dinosaur hunters have found something that is definitely not of this earth. Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences rush headlong into the heat of the world’s strangest and deadliest arms race, because the global race to recover and retro-engineer alien technologies has just hit a snag. Someone—or something--wants that technology back.

ALIVE DAY
Novella / September 2013
Joe, Top and Bunny go deep into the Afghan desert to confront an ancient horror.
ALIVE DAY
This novella will be included in the new anthology, FOUR SUMMONER’S TALES (Gallery Books, September 2013)

CODE ZERO
NOVEL #6 / Coming March 2014
A rogue scientist takes the Seif al Din pathogen (and dozens of other deadly and exotic weapons) and begins selling them to the highest bidders. Bizarre science-based terrorist attacks tear the nation apart –and at the heart of it are new outbreaks of the zombie plague that first brought Joe Ledger into the DMS. Joe and his crew team up with Arklight (from ASSASSIN’S CODE) in a running battle that leaves a trail of bodies from Los Angeles to the steps of the White House.

PREDATOR ONE
NOVEL #7 / Coming March 2015

Also….JOE LEDGER makes cameo appearances in…

FLESH & BONE
Book #3 of the ROT & RUIN series / Available now in hardcover and eBook from Simon & Schuster

TOOTH & NAIL
An eBook exclusive set between FLESH & BONE and FIRE & ASH


FIRE & ASH
Book #4 of the ROT & RUIN series / Debuts August 2013 from Simon & Schuster)

Happy Holidays to my readers! As my way of saying thanks to everyone who has read (or is reading) my latest novel, DEAD OF NIGHT, I've put together some additional free bonus scenes. Here's how to download the chilling freebies http://jonathanmaberry.com/happy-holi...

DEAD OF NIGHT by Jonathan Maberry
NOW AVAILABLE
St. Martin’s Griffin; Trade paperback $14.99; $9.99 for e-book
(Also available from Macmillan Audio read by William Dufris)

A prison doctor injects a condemned serial killer with a formula designed to keep his consciousness awake while his body rots in the grave. But all drugs have unforeseen side-effects. Before he could be buried, the killer wakes up. Hungry. Infected. Contagious.

Small town cop Dez Fox and her partner JT are caught in a wave of murder as everyone they know and love die...only to rise again as the ravenous living dead. If Dez and JT can’t contain the plague inside the town limits, the infection will spread beyond all control.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang…but a bite.

Praise for DEAD OF NIGHT:

“Jonathan Maberry is the top gun when it comes to zombies, and with DEAD OF NIGHT, he's at the top of his game. Frankly, I'm shocked by how effortlessly he moves between the lofty intellectual heights of T.S. Eliot's poetry and the savage carnality of the kill. DEAD OF NIGHT develops with the fevered pace of a manhunt, and yet still manages to hit all the right notes. Strap in, because Maberry's latest is one hell of a wild ride. I loved it.” - Joe McKinney, author of DEAD CITY and FLESH EATERS

“Jonathan Maberry has created an homage to death itself and an homage to the undead that is as poetic as it is terrifying. It's a brand new and intriguingly fresh slant on the zombie genre that we all love!” -John A. Russo co-screenwriter of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

“Maberry is a master at writing scenes that surge and hum with tension. The pacing is relentless. He presses the accelerator to the floor and never lets up, taking you on a ride that leaves your heart pounding. It’s almost impossible to put this book down. Dead of Night is an excellent read.” —S.G. Browne, author of BREATHERS

"It would be enough to say that Jonathan Maberry had topped himself yet again with an epic zombie novel that is as much fun as it is terrifying. But that he has also created a story of such tremendous heart and social relevance only further cements his place as a master of the genre. It also doesn't hurt that in DEAD OF NIGHT he has created one of the most compelling heroines I've read in years. Dead of Night blew me away!" --Ryan Brown - Author of PLAY DEAD

“Once again, Jonathan Maberry does what he does best; Take proven science, synthesize it and create something truly terrifying. In DEAD OF NIGHT, Maberry lays the groundwork for a Bioweapon that could very well create zombies in the real world. Combining great characters (I fell in love with Dez Fox from the moment she was introduced) and taut, blindingly fast action, DEAD OF NIGHT, is a runaway bullet train of a ride. This is Jonathan Maberry's best writing yet.” –Greg Schauer, owner Between Books, Claymont, DE

“Dead of Night stands drooped head and lurching shoulders above most zombie novels. The nightmare increases exponentially - from minor outbreak to major crisis with unstoppable speed, building to a heart-stopping climax you won't be able to put down.” --David Moody, author of the HATER and AUTUMN books

“Fans of the genre will want—absolutely—to read this highly entertaining yarn. – BOOKLIST

"Gruesome, imaginative and grateful to its inspirations." –KIRKUS

“Maberry grounds the story with scientific confidence, spares no attention to detail, and presents the undead as more than faceless targets." -Publishers Weekly

Dead of Night: A Zombie Novel

I started laying the groundwork for ROT & RUIN when I was ten years old. 




That’s when Night of the Living Dead opened in Philadelphia.  October 1968.  I snuck into the deserted balcony of the old Midway Theater, one of those vast old Art Deco theaters.  No one was supposed to be up there, and no one my age was supposed to be in the theater. 




By age ten I’d seen just about every monster movie there was.  Vampires, werewolves, giant bugs –the works.  I was kind of jaded.  I thought I had a good working plan for how to deal with monsters.  Crosses, silver bullets, that sort of thing.  Then George A. Romero made all of the dead rise to attack the living.  Not one, not a pack…all of them.




Talk about game changers.  Sure, I could figure out how to deal with one or two.  But legions of flesh-eating monsters?




That movie scared me more than anything I’d ever seen, read or imagined.  Scared me almost sick.  So….I stayed to watch it again.




Since then, I’ve seen every zombie flick, read all of the books and movies, and I’ve spent an absurd amount of my time thinking about how I would survive a zombie apocalypse.  That ten year old kid in me was still trying to out-think Romero.




As I grew older and (I hope) wiser, I applied what I knew of forensic science, martial arts, basic survival, and common sense to the problem.  I thought of what to do during the crisis and what could be done after –especially if zombies completely overwhelmed civilization as we know it.  I’ve discussed this as a guest on scores of zombie panels.  I wrote about it in books like ZOMBIE CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead and PATIENT ZERO.




But all of that was really tackling it from the point of view of an adult.  I’m a very big guy, I’m an 8th degree black belt jujutsu master and former bodyguard, and I have over fifty years of life experience to draw on.




It still left me with the question of what would I have done if this happened when I was a kid?  Or, what if it had happened when I was a baby and my whole life had been lived after the fall of mankind.  Tough questions.




I’m a writer, and when I have something tough to figure out, I tend to write about it.  Which is how ROT & RUIN got started.  To explore it, I wrote it.




I started with a kid –Benny Imura-- who was a toddler when the dead rose and is now fifteen.  Everything in his world has been changed because of that.  Benny doesn’t truly know what life was before the terrible events of ‘First Night’.  Almost all of the adults he knows have lost all faith in everything that had been part of their world: society, politics, religion, technology, the military.  They are all suffering from a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder.  But Benny is fifteen.  He expects to have a life and a future.  He and his friends may have been handed a broken world, but it’s the world they’re going to have to live in.  They don’t accept the idea that there is no future.




At the same time, everything in Benny’s world is defined by death.  Everyone has lost someone (and even Benny has vague memories of his parents from First Night).  The specter of death looms over everything and pollutes Benny’s world.  This is where we meet him, and ass Benny explores this world –dealing with the constant threat of zombies, entrenched fears, violence, and the enduring corruption of evil men…he learns what it means to be alive.  And to be human.




Benny Imura is an ordinary teenager, but ‘ordinary’ is a funny word, because when you scratch the surface of every single ordinary person you find an extraordinary uniqueness.  Benny discovers his own weaknesses and learns the value of courage, trust, love, optimism and honor as he struggles to survive in world where zombies are really the least of his problems.


Get more on Jonathan Maberry at SimonandSchuster.com

I maintain an active publishing-industry blog at http://www.jonathanmaberry.com

I call it THE BIG SCARY BLOG, and over the last two years I've interviewed folks like John Saul, Sandra Brown, Jonathan Kellerman, Douglas Preston, James Rollins, Jeff Abbott, Alafair Burke, Jason Pinter, Laurell K. Hamilton, Barry Eisler, David Hewson, David Morrell, F. Paul Wilson, Jack Ketchum, John Connolly, JT Ellison, Steve Berry, Tess Gerrittsen, Gayle Lynds, William Kent Kreuger, David Housewright, Earl Emerson, JD Rhoades, Steve Hamilton, Christopher Golden, Deborah LeBlance, Ellen Datlow, Joe R. Lansdale, Ray Garton, Ramsey Campbell, Scott Nicholson, Joe Nassise, Brett Battles, Ken Isaacson, Robert Gregory Browne. Upcoming blogs include well...just about everyone.

Check it out.

-Jonathan Maberry