Matt Kearns Books in Order

The Matt Kearns books spin out of a supporting character in the Alex Hunter series and give him his own brand of globe trotting horror. Matt is a linguist and archaeologist, more comfortable with dusty manuscripts than guns, who keeps getting dragged into situations where old myths are waking up in the modern world.

In The First Bird a fame chasing scientist brings back a living specimen of a creature thought long extinct, along with a parasite that begins to spread with terrifying speed. As medical systems buckle under a new and untreatable infestation, Matt is recruited by Centers for Disease Control specialist Carla Nero to trace the outbreak back to its source in the South American jungle.

That first mission sets the pattern for the series. Matt interprets carvings, tablets and stories while soldiers and specialists deal with the immediate danger. His job is to understand what ancient people were trying to warn their descendants about, and how the same forces might be returning now that the world is more crowded and technologically advanced.

Book of the Dead pushes him into even stranger territory. Enormous sinkholes are opening around the globe, bringing with them foul smells, disappearances and creatures that should not exist. Clues point toward a long lost text known as the Al Azif, or Book of the Dead, and Matt finds himself racing from modern war zones to the ruins of the Library of Alexandria and down into places that resemble the underworld of legend.

In The Immortality Curse the focus shifts from extinction level events to the age old desire to live forever. A man who seems impossibly old, a murdered family and a trove of mythic artifacts draw Matt into a hunt for something like the Fountain of Youth. The trail leads across deserts, under mountains and into chambers where the price of endless life looks more like a curse than a blessing.

Across the series the tone leans into cosmic horror and ancient gods, but the stories still move quickly and stay grounded in puzzles, expeditions and hard choices. Matt is not a soldier, and much of the tension comes from watching a bright but very human academic try to stand his ground when the only way out may be to run.