It is winter in Area X. 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.

Area X has claimed the lives of members of eleven expeditions. The twelfth expedition consisting of four women hopes 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.

Jonathan Lambshead will inherit has grandfather's mansion-- after he and two schoolmates catalog its contents. They discover that the mansion's basement contains portals, with one leading to an alt-Earth called Aurora. There magic abounds, history has been re-written, and an occult dictator called Aleister Crowley leads an army pillaging alt-Europe. Jonathan pieces together his destiny as a member a secret society devoted to keeping our world separate...

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Area X has claimed the lives of members of eleven expeditions. The twelfth expedition consisting of four women scientists hopes 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.

"From the author of the Southern Reach Trilogy comes a story about two humans, and two creatures. The humans are Rachel and Wick -- a scavenger and a drug dealer -- both with too many secrets and fears, ready with traps to be set and sprung. The creatures are Mord and Borne -- animal, perhaps plant, maybe company discard, biotech, cruel experiment, dinner, deity, or source of spare parts"--

"At the centre of Secret Life is The Building, an office building wherein several factions vie for dominance... Jeff VanderMeer's ecological speculations overlap with Theo Ellsworth's deep-layered style to create a mind-bending narrative that defamiliarizes the mundanity of office work and makes the arcane rituals of The Building home... Secret Life observes the sinister individualism of bureaucratic settings in contrast with an unconcerned natural...

Biologist and former soldier Lena is shocked when her missing husband comes home near death from a top-secret mission into The Shimmer, a mysterious quarantine zone from which no one has ever returned. Now, Lena and her elite team must enter a beautiful, deadly world of mutated landscapes and creatures, to discover how to stop the growing phenomenon that threatens all life on Earth.