An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Creatures once extinct now roam Jurassic Park, soon-to-be opened as a theme park. Until something goes wrong...and science proves a dangerous toy.... "Wonderful...Powerful." THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD Unless your species evolved sometime after 1993 when Jurassic Park hit theaters, you're no doubt familiar with this dinosaur-bites-man disaster tale set on an island theme park gone terribly wrong. But if Speilberg's amped-up CGI creation left you longing for more scientific background and ... well, character development, check out the original Michael Crichton novel. Although not his best book (get ahold of sci-fi classic The Andromeda Strain for that), Jurassic Park fills out the film version's kinetic story line with additional scenes, dialogue, and explanations while still maintaining Crichton's trademark thrills-'n'-chills pacing. As ever, the book really is better than the movie. --Paul Hughes I sell books for a living. There are just a handful of authors in the world who sell at the multiple million copy level and if you're a reader you can probably name them just as well as I can. (King, Koontz, Crichton, Rice, Ludlum, Clancy, Grisham, Steel etc.) And yet just because an author sells a lot of copies doesn't mean each time a new one is released it's an event, because everyone's become accustomed to having the author sell well. An event becomes defined by the intensity of the sale and the magnitude by which the public is clamoring. Remember Peter Benchley's JAWS? Thanks to the movie, that was an event. But I didn't sell JAWS, which leads me to the other point. You may see a selling "event" once during a career, if at all. I happened to be selling JURASSIC PARK when the movie released and I don't expect to have an experience quite like it ever again. Whereas a big best seller for me at the time would have been 40-50,000 copies in my territory, I literally sold hundreds of thousands of copies of JURASSIC PARK. It was incredible. I've never approached that number again. The success of this book changed the way publishers and authors looked at movies as a vehicle to sell books; it was truly an event. It's also the reason why I recommend it. --Ron Lundquist, Ballantine Sales Rep. An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Creatures once extinct now roam Jurassic Park, soon-to-be opened as a theme park. Until something goes wrong...and science proves a dangerous toy.... "Wonderful...Powerful." THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD Michael Crichton ’s novels include The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, Congo, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure, and The Lost World . He was as well the creator of the television series ER . Crichton died in 2008. ALMOST PARADISE Mike Bowman whistled cheerfully as he drove the Land Rover through the Cabo Blanco Biological Reserve, on the west coast of Costa Rica. It was a beautiful morning in July, and the road before him was spectacular: hugging the edge of a cliff, overlooking the jungle and the blue Pacific. According to the guidebooks, Cabo Blanco was unspoiled wilderness, almost a paradise. Seeing it now made Bowman feel as if the vacation was back on track. Bowman, a thirty-six-year-old real estate developer from Dallas, had come to Costa Rica with his wife and daughter for a two-week holiday. The trip had actually been his wife’s idea; for weeks Ellen had filled his ear about the wonderful national parks of Costa Rica, and how good it would be for Tina to see them. Then, when they arrived, it turned out Ellen had an appointment to see a plastic surgeon in San Jose. That was the first Mike Bowman had heard about the excellent and inexpensive plastic surgery available in Costa Rica, and all the luxurious private clinics in San Jose. Of course they’d had a huge fight. Mike felt she’d lied to him, and she had. And he put his foot down about this plastic surgery business. Anyway, it was ridiculous, Ellen was only thirty, and she was a beautiful woman. Hell, she’d been Homecoming Queen her senior year at Rice, and that was not even ten years earlier. But Ellen tended to be insecure, and worried. And it seemed as if in recent years she had mostly worried about losing her looks. That, and everything else. The Land Rover bounced in a pothole, splashing mud. Seated beside him, Ellen said, “Mike, are you sure this is the right road? We haven’t seen any other people for hours.” “There was another car fifteen minutes ago,” he reminded her. “Remember, the blue one?” “Going the other way . . .” “Darling, you wanted a deserted beach,” he said, “and that’s what you’re going to get.” Ellen shook her head doubtfully. “I hope you’re right.” “Yeah, Dad, I hope you’re right,” said Christina, from the backseat. She was eight years old. “Trust me, I’m right.” He drove in silence a moment. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Look at that view. It’s