Michael Crichton

The United States government is given a warning by the preeminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, seventeen satellites are sent into the outer fringes of space to "collect organisms and dust for study." One of them falls to earth, landing in a desolate area of Arizona. Twelve miles from the landing...

While vacationing in Spain, a young doctor finds himself embroiled in a deadly conflict between rival gangs Peter Ross just wanted a vacation. After years toiling in the radiology department of a large American hospital, he dreams of lying on a Spanish beach with a beautiful girl. The beach proves just as lovely as he hoped. But the girl turns out to be trouble. Angela Locke is on the run from a pair of gangs waging war over a missing artifact, and...

From the creator of Jurassic Park and ER Egyptologist Harold Barnaby has just made the discovery of the century. While retranslating some old hieroglyphs, he has found clues to the location of a pharaoh's lost tomb. But this discovery leads him to make the ultimate choice: rather than share his find with the rest of the world, Professor Barnaby is determined to locate the tomb and keep whatever treasure he finds inside for himself. But to pull...

To uncover the secrets of a superdrug, a doctor must go undercover and risk it all . . . When a Hell's Angel is thrown from his bike at 110 miles per hour, he should probably end up in the morgue. But this Angel survives his crash without a scratch, and ends up sleeping peacefully in the hospital. When Dr. Roger Clark inspects him, he finds only one defect: blue urine. Similar reports start to trickle in from hospitals upstate. It seems that a strange...

In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles--micro-robots--has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour. Every attempt to destroy it has failed. And we are the prey.

Michael Crichton's thrillers traverse the cutting edge of science and then push the envelope. How realistic are his takes on subjects ranging from dinosaur cloning to global warming, nanotechnology to time travel, animal behavior to human genetics? The Science of Michael Crichton gathers essays from prominent experts that examine the amazing inventions of Crichton's books and lift up the hood, revealing the science underneath-exploring which Crichton...

To rescue his girlfriend, a weed dealer scraps for a score The suitcase looks like a standard weekend bag. But like the man who carries it, it isn't what it seems. Lined with tinfoil to mask the smell, it is a smuggler's bag and will soon be filled to the brim with marijuana bricks. The smuggler is a Harvard student who has come to California to make his fortune. He hopes to score not just with his connection but with his new girlfriend, a Golden...