Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation; Authority; Acceptance

Annihilation is the first volume in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, Authority is the second, and Acceptance is the third.

Area X-a remote and lush terrain-has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.

This is the twelfth expedition.

Their group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers-they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding-but it's the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.

After the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the Southern Reach-the secret agency that monitors these expeditions-is in disarray. In Authority, John Rodriguez, aka "Control," is the team's newly appointed head. From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the secrets of Area X begin to reveal themselves-and what they expose pushes Control to confront disturbing truths about both himself and the agency he's promised to serve. And the consequences will spread much further than that.

It is winter in Area X in Acceptance. A new team embarks across the border on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition who may have been left behind. As they press deeper into the unknown-navigating new terrain and new challenges-the threat to the outside world becomes more daunting. The mysteries of Area X may have been solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound-or terrifying.

"I'm loving the Southern Reach Trilogy. Creepy and fascinating." -STEPHEN KING

"Original and beautiful, maddening and magnificent." -WARREN ELLIS

"Successfully creepy, an old-style gothic horror novel set in a not-too-distant future. The best bits turn your mind inside out." -THE WASHINGTON POST

"Wildly imaginative. . . . VanderMeer's story is thrilling, confusing, disturbing. But its deepest terror lies in its exploration of the vacancies of the human heart, and the terror that can grow from the ways in which we are untrue to each other, and to ourselves." -THE GLOBE AND MAIL

"Part H.P. Lovecraft and part Margaret Atwood. . . . A compelling, elegant and existential story." -LOS ANGELES TIMES

"It's been a long time since a book filled me with this kind of palpable, wondrous disquiet, a feeling that started on the first page and that I'm not sure I've yet shaken." -MATT BELL, AUTHOR OF IN THE HOUSE UPON THE DIRT BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE WOODS

"More than just a horror novel; there's something Poe-like in this tightening, increasingly paranoid focus. But where Poe kept his most vicious blows relatively oblique, VanderMeer drives them deep . . . in a corkscrewing way that is no less cruel and exquisite." -THE NEW YORK TIMES