Five thousand years after a catastrophic event rendered the Earth a ticking time bomb, the progeny of a handful of outer space explorers--seven distinct races now three billion strong--embark on yet another audacious journey: to return to Earth.

"Boston, present day. A young man from a shadowy government agency shows up at an Ivy League university and offers an eminent professor a lot of money to study a trove of recently discovered old documents. The only condition: the professor must sign an NDA that would preclude him from publishing his findings, should they be significant. The professor refuses and tells the young man to get lost. On his way out, he bumps into a young woman--a low-on-the-totem-pole...

"In his youth, Richard "Dodge" Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia. One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead...

The exploits of an alchemy-rejecting scientist, a vagabond leader, and a former Turkish harem prisoner intersect in the world of the American colonies, the Tower of London, and the courts of Louis XIV.

Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, master of markets, pawn and confident of enemy kings, one-time Turkish harem girl, is stripped of her immense personal fortune by France's most dashing privateer.

"A collection of essays from #1 New York Times bestselling author Neal Stephenson"--

An untested group of Shield-Brethren initiates a stand before the sprawling Mongol army in a bloody circus of sadistic violence, while a hardened company of their finest roam the desolate wasteland of the Mongol empire, wrapping their dead in blood-soaked soil and struggling to find the strength to fight even as they mourn. The warrior-monks, both in the East and the West, sharpen their swords for a final battle.

Set in twenty-first-century Shaghai, it is the story of what happens when a state-of-the-art interactive device falls into the hands of a street urchin name Nell. Her life-and the entire future of humanity-is about to be decoded and reprogrammed.