THE PLACE

Antarctica. The Ross Ice Shelf. A floating slab of solid ice the size of France, more than 3,000 feet thick.

THE EVENT

On Thanksgiving weekend, six precisely placed nuclear warheads buried 2,000 feet beneath the ice detonate in sequence, shearing the Ross Shelf from the underwater rises that anchor it.

The nuclear shock wave drives the shelf into the Pacific at 500 miles per hour, creating an initial wall of water 1,400 feel high. Unseen, unsuspected, unstoppable, the displacement wave formed by the wall's collapse radiates northward. In thirty-five hours, it will lay waste to Hawaii. In thirty-eight hours, the southeastern regions of Japan will become little more than swampland. And in forty hours, the entire Los Angeles Basin will be flooded to a depth of twenty feet. By then, the death toll will be measured in the millions.

Set against a split-second race to prevent global devastation, and based on the astounding cutting-edge technologies that will take the U.S. military into the next century, "Icefire" is the story of Navy SEAL Captain Mitch Webber and oceanographer Cory Rey. Once lovers, now enemies, they're plunged into a maelstrom of international intrigue and betrayal reaching from Beijing to the highest levels of the Pentagon.

Critically acclaimed for their earlier works of speculative fiction and suspense, with "Icefire" Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens have become an exciting new voice in contemporary thrillers.