Those bones encased in amber and buried in the nation's capital by a group of concerned scientists, with Alexander Graham Bell in the lead? Sure, they contain the secret of life after death, but they are also linked to an unimaginable horror from the past that could wipe out humankind. And with their unearthing during a construction project, the horror is out, and Sigma Force must join forces with its very worst enemy—the newly resurrected Guild—to defeat it. With a 500,000—copy first printing and a ten-city tour.

Readers with insect phobias may want to avoid bestseller Rollins's terrific 13th Sigma Force novel (after 2016's The Seventh Plague). In 1903, Alexander Graham Bell is on a mission to Italy to retrieve the bones of James Smithson, the man who founded the Smithsonian Institution. Along with Smithson's skeleton, Bell finds a pumpkin-sized chunk of amber containing a small dinosaur with a tiny crown of bones. Smithson's diary warns: "what the Demon Crown holds is very much alive and ready to unleash the very hordes of Hell upon this world." Sure enough, in the present, the secret cabal known as the Guild is about to unleash a massive infestation of giant killer wasps that, once established, will bring the world to its knees. Sigma Force commander Grayson Pierce and partner Seichan are on the beach in Hawaii when the first masses of unrelenting, venomous wasps swarm ashore. Soon all of Sigma Force is working to defeat the evil plan. The chapters written from the wasps' point-of-view are particularly bone-chilling. Agents: Russ Galen, Scovil Galen Ghost Literary Agency; and Danny Baror, Baror International. (Dec.)