Sid and Ronnie Abel are a first-rate husband-and-wife detective team, both retirees of the LAPD. Ed and Nicole Hoyt are married assassins-for-hire living in the San Fernando Valley. Except for deadly aim with a handgun, the two couples have little in common -- until they are both hired to do damage control on the same murder case. The previous spring, after days of torrential rain, a body was recovered from one of the city's overwhelmed storm sewers....

By winning the annual Hunger Games, District 12 tributes Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark have secured a life of safety and plenty for themselves and their families, but because they won by defying the rules, they unwittingly become the faces of an impending rebellion.

"A startling chronicle by a brilliant young scientist takes us onto the frontiers of the science of aging, and reveals how close we are to an astonishing extension of our life spans and a vastly improved quality of life in our later years. Aging--not cancer, not heart disease--is the true underlying cause of most human death and suffering. We accept as inevitable that as we advance in years our bodies and minds begin to deteriorate and that we are...