Warren Miner-Williams

Set in New Zealand, CRYSTAL ICE describes the empire of two brothers who own a successful Brazilian restaurant on Auckland's busy Viaduct Harbour. A restaurant that is the legitimate front for the manufacture of crystal methamphetamine that takes place on a small rural farm near Runciman, just south of Auckland. The meth lab is the money mine that funds the development of a genetically engineered variant of the 1918 Spanish flu. Unlike COVID-19 this is a weaponized virus so terrible that it has the potential to become a global pandemic, killing millions of people. CRYSTAL ICE also tells of an Auckland-based motorcycle gang called the Skorpions that has the distribution network that allows it to sell crystal methamphetamine in New Zealand and the mutualistic relationship that exists between the Croatian restaurateurs and the Skorpion leadership. It is a relationship that hinges on the Croatians successfully smuggling the precursor chemicals into the country and receiving 60% of the vast amounts of money generated by this illicit trade. When this relationship is threatened, by one of the Skorpion co-leaders withholding monies from the brothers, the Croatian's revenge is both swift and brutal, resulting in the execution of the renegade Skorpion leader. The killing is the catalyst to a series of events that ultimately threatens the illicit drug ring. Parallel to the power flux between the Croatians and the Skorpions is a young and na ve New Zealand Customs officer who gradually uncovers small and sometimes, seemingly insignificant clues that eventually leads him to discover the connection between the Croatian restaurateurs who manufacture the drugs, the Auckland motorcycle gang who distribute them and finally the terrorist cell that released the virus in the United States. Unlike "Contagion" written by Scott Burns in 2010 this is the story of a terrorist weaponized virus released by aerosol across the North Eastern states of America. Similar to COVID-19 the outbreak initially catches USAMRIID and the CDC off-guard. However, they soon implement the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza and initiate inter-agency field teams to investigate and identify the point sources of contagion. This novel does not detail the effects COVID-19 has had on the United States, it only details the effect the fictional weaponized virus has had before its distribution was disrupted.

Dream Thieves The plot revolves around the discovery of a hallucinogenic mind-altering drug that is later called Delirium. Extracted from the root of an Amazonian plant Delirium allows two people, who have ingested it, to share the same dream. In that dream the two share a common reality, a fifth dimension, and what they do in this dream state echoes in the real world. The story begins with an anthropological expedition to the Amazon Basin to study a tribe of Indians who have had no contact with the twenty first century. The expedition soon goes horribly wrong when they are captured by the very Indians they wanted to study. During their brief captivity a Shaman forces the female anthropologist to eat a piece of tree root and though she is constantly observed throughout the night in the morning she claims that she has been raped. When the main character Costas Romero becomes a victim of this drug, he is able to escape into the rainforest. Eventually Costas reaches safety and in Tef is taken in by a doctor and his wife. In Tef Costas meets up with a lifelong friend and a female research pharmacologist, Ruth Anderson. Ruth is intrigued by Costas' story and offers to analyse a piece of the tree root from which the drug is extracted. Ruth sends a sample of the root to her brother Lee, a research biomolecular scientist in the U.K. Following the illicit analysis of the drug Lee Anderson prepares a number of pure samples of the drug he calls Delirium. Once the properties of the drug are known it is abused by Lee and others that use it to rape a number of defenceless women. Soon after two revenge attacks on Lee's ex-girlfriend, she and her new boyfriend are brutally murdered. Dream Thieves is a story of mystery and intrigue interspersed with both love and betrayal. As revenge plunges one of the main characters towards self-destruction, will the love he shares with another be enough to save him? A sub plot of lust and cruelty bubbles just below the surface whilst a sadistic killer weaves a web of deceit in order to ensnare the innocent. Will justice finally descend upon the guilty?

In the remote north eastern corner of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), close to the border with Russia and China, is the country's largest concentration camp. Hidden in the mountains, just 20 kilometres outside the city of Hoeryŏng, lies Camp 22, a bestial, godless place. Larger in area than Auschwitz or Dachau, it holds over 50 000 political prisoners and their families, and for good reason, it is called the "Killing Compound". Concentration camps in North Korea came into being at the close of World War II. Anyone considered being "adversary classes" were rounded up and imprisoned in large labour camps, similar to the Russian gulags. Estimates of between 400 000 and 1 million political prisoners have perished in these camps since 1972. Termed kwan-li-so, political penal-labour colonies, may hold up to 200 000 men, women and children. So-called political offenders face life sentences without trial, for offences as trivial as failing to bow to portraits of the current "Great Leader". Camp 22 is the story of a Christian family arrested and detained in camp 22. A story of tragedy, brutality, and ultimately survival.

Tom has grown up with a teddy bear his grandfather bought him from birth. The colour of a ginger biscuit Hugo the bear is his constant companion in all his adventures. After five years of dragging Hugo around the house and garden by his ear, the bear was a little worse for wear. So for his fifth birthday, Tom was bought another bear to replace the shabby old one. The new bear taunted Hugo the old shabby bear. That was until the new bear was lost, lonely, and frighted; then learned what it was like to be taunted by another toy. Reunited with the other toys he admits he was cruel and says sorry to Hugo the ginger biscuit coloured bear.