Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, masquerading as an ordinary schoolteacher in a quiet small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Mighty Sanze, the empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years, collapses as its greatest city is destroyed by a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heartland of the world's sole continent,...

Learn about the forces inside the Earth that cause volcanoes to erupt and earthquakes to shake the landscape.

On the shores of a tranquil fjord in northern Iceland, a man is brutally beaten to death on a bright summer's night. As the 24-hour light of the Arctic summer is transformed into darkness by an ash cloud from a recent volcanic eruption, a young reporter leaves Reykajvik to investigate on her own, unaware that an innocent person's life hangs in the balance.