Twenty Seconds to Midnight

Crime, Thriller & Mystery

Pages: 252 Ratings:

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*Your order will be dispatched after the publication date of 05-12-2025

Each year the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists sets the Doomsday Clock after consultation with its board of sponsors, which includes nine winners of the Nobel Prize. The clock is a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to global catastrophe brought about by man-made technologies.

On January 29, 2025, the Atomic Scientists shifted the clock’s hands to 89 seconds to midnight, citing the combined threats of climate change, nuclear war, and misuse of artificial intelligence.

Working at a point in the future, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. Clare McGarrity has developed a formula making the Mojave Desert in Death Valley bloom. She has been tasked with trying to expand and refine her formula for use in the great Sahara Desert with the goal of helping feed the starving people of Africa and soon, the Middle East.

Unknown to her, the research assistant working beside her is a terrorist, ordered by his government to steal her formula.

Lorraine Martin Bennett is a print, web, and broadcast journalist from Murphy, North Carolina, USA, who graduated with her high school journalism medal and received a scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she completed her degree in journalism.

Her print reporting career includes the Atlanta Journal, Los Angeles Times, and, in retirement, the Clay County Progress, where she covers the Town Council, researches special projects, and copy edits.

At KABC Television in Los Angeles and CNN in Atlanta, she worked as assignment editor, news writer, copy editor, producer, and editorial manager before ending her career at CNN International, where she was senior copy editor of a morning show airing in Hong Kong.

In retirement, she writes poetry, essays, short stories, and flash fiction. Her two novels, Cat on a Black Moon and the sequel, Darla, both published by Austin Macauley Publishers, are available on Amazon, Kindle, Barnes & Noble, and other websites. This is her third novel.