Annihilation (Southern Reach #1)

“Successfully creepy, an old-style gothic horror novel set in a not-too-distant future. The best bits turn your mind inside out.”
—Sara Sklaroff, The Washington Post

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for years. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. Expeditions into Area X have ended in disaster or death.

In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Quartet, we join the latest expedition. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and the narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover lifeforms that surpass understanding. But it’s the secrets they carried across the border with them that change everything.