Milwaukee 1932, the Great Depression going full blast, repeal of Prohibition just around the corner, Al Capone in the federal pen, the private investigation business shifting from labor-management relations to the more domestic kind. Hicks McTaggart, a one-time strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he’s found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine case, locating and bringing back the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune who’s taken a mind to go wandering.

Will Navidsons Nerven liegen blank. Sein neu gekauftes Haus hat plötzlich Türen, wo keine sein dürften. Dahinter: der Zugang zu einem Höhlensystem, das sich ständig verändert. Bei dessen Erforschung kommt es zu mysteriösen Zwischenfällen. Wohin verschwinden die Menschen im Labyrinth? Welcher Schrecken wartet in der Dunkelheit? Das Haus gilt als "die literarische Sensation des 21. Jahrhunderts", seine Umsetzung als Hörspiel schrieb Radiogeschichte: Erstmals wurden drei WDR-Hörspiel-Versionen eines Romans simultan auf drei Wellen gesendet. Jetzt gibt’s dieses Ereignis als Hör-DVD – für unbegrenztes Horror-Zapping.

Thomas Quinn is having a hard time. A failed novelist, he's stuck writing short stories and audio scripts for other people's characters. His wife, Imogen, is working on a remote island halfway around the world, and talking to her over the webcam isn't the same. The bills are piling up, the dirty dishes are stacking in the sink, and the whole world seems to be hurtling toward entropic collapse. Then he gets a voicemail from his father, who has been dead for seven years.

Colette Marceau has been stealing jewels for nearly as long as she can remember, following the centuries-old code of honor instilled in her by her mother, Annabel: take only from the cruel and unkind, and give to those in need. Never was their family tradition more important than seven decades earlier, during the Second World War, when Annabel and Colette worked side by side in Paris to fund the French Resistance. But one night in 1942, it all went wrong.

Neal Stephenson is a blazing new force on the sci-fi scene. With the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, he has "vaulted onto the literary stage." It weaves virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility - in short, it is the gigathriller of the information age.