To outsiders, the former USSR is always been a place where everything is strangely different. All the more so in the Exclusion Zone around the ill-fated Chernobyl power plant, where after a secret experiment went wrong in 2006, the laws of physics are bent and mysterious phenomena manifest.

In 2011, Al Qaeda detonates nuclear warheads in Kabul. In what was once the Afghan wilderness, apparently a New Zone is created.

Three years later a scientific expedition tries to find out if the creation of the New Zone could be connected to the Chernobyl experiment. When the researchers disappear, a search and rescue operation is launched.

For Major Mikhailo Tarasov, a veteran of the Exclusion Zone, this mission into post-apocalyptic Afghanistan is more than just another dangerous task: in the land where his father died, he must also confront the ghosts of the Soviet past.

Major Tarasov and his Spetsnaz commandos soon find themselves at the mercy of a hostile environment worse than anything they had encountered before. But beyond all the perils of the New Zone, the most lethal danger awaits: betrayal.

Life goes on in the Exclusion Zone around ill-fated Chernobyl — adventurers calling themselves Stalkers hunt for valuable artifacts, mutants hunt for Stalkers and the Zone still decides over the fate of souls living within its wild frontiers. Behind the scenes, the Ukrainian Secret Service is forcing a fallen hero to betray a friend.

In the New Zone, the Exclusion Zone’s vast twin phenomenon and apparently created after nuclear warheads devastated Afghanistan in 2011, renegade US Marines calling themselves the Tribe patrol the mountain ranges, Stalkers try to establish themselves in ruins of Bagram Air Base and mutated predators migrate to the anomaly-infested plains. All these dangers can not dissuade those hardy souls who brave the New Zone. But whatever their motives, however great their courage, a new power is arising and its vicious plan threatens to destroy them all.

Major Tarasov, a Spetsnaz commander turned renegade, knows the New Zone’s darkest secrets. While in a land far away, he receives alarming messages from the Exclusion Zone. Is an old friend in danger? Does someone else know the secrets he discovered? Or could it be a trap set by his former masters to lure him back?

The sequel to , the first English novelization from the acclaimed game series by GSC Game World.

Inocente, fascinante, hermosa, compleja... La novela sobre la emperatriz Isabel de Austria-Hungría que ha enamorado a las lectoras de Estados Unidos, de la autora best seller de The New York Times. Agosto de 1853. Tres mujeres descienden del carruaje que las ha traído desde su palacio a las orillas del lago Starnberg, en Baviera, hasta la Alta Austria. Elena, de dieciocho años, ha venido con su madre y su hermana menor, su principal apoyo. Todas ellas esperan que, en los próximos días, se formalice su compromiso con su primo, el emperador de Austria. Y sin embargo, no es la seria y formal Elena sino Isabel, Sissi como la llaman familiarmente, esa otra prima de quince años, bellísima, independiente, de espíritu libre y que ha sido educada en el ambiente liberal de la residencia de los duques de Baviera la que hechiza a Francisco José I. Nunca estuvo planeado que fuera emperatriz. Pero por una vez en la rígida y estricta corte austríaca el amor triunfó. «Sissi fue una mujer con una personalidad muy compleja que vivió en un período histórico fascinante. Esposa, madre, nuera. Activista por los derechos humanos, viajera incansable, entusiasta de Shakespeare, de la poesía, de la filosofía y de las lenguas extranjeras. Con una vida tumultuosa, teñida de momentos felices y otros trágicos y perturbadores. Su historia es tan buena e intrigante que posee todos los ingredientes necesarios para convertirla en una novela apasionante.»