The Taking is a 2004 novel written by Dean Koontz.

In the midst of an oddly sudden rain storm, author Molly Sloan awakens in the middle of the night. Unable to return to sleep, she leaves her husband Neil slumbering in bed and goes downstairs to work on a manuscript in progress.

Dark shapes huddle on her porch - coyotes from the nearby forest. She wonders what could have frightened such animals into leaving the sanctuary of the deep woods to brave the proximity of human beings. Disturbed, she steps outside, to stand among the wild beasts, and is frightened herself - not by the animals, but by the strange, oddly luminiscent rain.On an instinctual level, she realizes that there is something unclean about the rain. Upon further thought, she recognizes that the odd, but familiar smell of the rain, is the smell of semen.

Once she comes back to the house, Molly and her husband Neil search for information in the news. They are only able to gather that the same phenomena is taking place all over the world, before all communications are lost. They decide to flee their isolated home, gathering with the residents of the nearby small mountain town, in order to prepare a resistance, though they are not even sure against what they will be fighting. After 10 hours of downpour, the rain stops. In it's place, a thick, ominous fog obscures everything, reducing trees and buildings to looming shadows. By then, Molly and Neil are in the town's tavern, where around 60 people have gathered with dogs and children. It is implied that the phenomena is the product of an alien invasion.

Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom (born 13 January 1977) is an English actor. He had his break-through roles in 2001 as the elf-prince Legolas in The Lord of the Rings and in 2003 as blacksmith Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. He subsequently established himself as a lead in Hollywood films, including Elizabethtown and Kingdom of Heaven. He appeared in the ensemble films New York, I Love You, Sympathy for Delicious, and Main Street. Bloom made his professional stage debut in West End's In Celebration at the Duke of York's Theatre, St. Martin's Lane, which ended its run on 15 September 2007. On 12 October 2009, Bloom was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Orlando Bloom was born in Canterbury, Kent, England, and has one sister, Samantha Bloom, who was born in 1975.

His mother, Sonia Constance Josephine (née Copeland), was born in the British section of Kolkata, India, the daughter of Betty Constance Josephine Walker and Francis John Copeland, who was a physician and surgeon. Through her, Bloom is a cousin of photographer Sebastian Copeland. Bloom's maternal grandmother's family lived in Tasmania, Australia, Japan, and India, and were of English descent, some of them having originally come from Kent. During his childhood, Bloom was told that his father was his mother's husband, Jewish South African-born anti-Apartheid novelist Harry Saul Bloom; however, when he was thirteen (nine years after Harry's death), Bloom's mother revealed to him that his biological father was actually Colin Stone, his mother's partner and family friend. Stone, the principal of the Concorde International language school, was made Orlando Bloom's legal guardian after Harry Bloom's death. Bloom is named after the 16th century composer Orlando Gibbons.^{[citation needed]}

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Michael Andrew "Duff" McKagan (born February 5, 1964) is an American musician and writer. He is best known for his twelve-year tenure as the bassist of the hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During his later years with the band, he released a solo album, Believe in Me (1993), and formed the short-lived supergroup Neurotic Outsiders.

Following his departure from Guns N' Roses in 1997, McKagan briefly reunited with his pre-success Seattle punk band 10 Minute Warning. He then formed the still-active hard rock band Loaded, in which he performs lead vocals and rhythm guitar. Between 2002 and 2008, he played bass in the supergroup Velvet Revolver with his former Guns N' Roses band mates Slash and Matt Sorum. He joined Jane's Addiction for a brief tenure in 2010. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 as a member of Guns N' Roses.

In addition to his musical career, McKagan has established himself as a writer. He has written weekly columns on a wide variety of topics for SeattleWeekly.com,Playboy.com, and ESPN.com. A former high school drop-out, he attended Seattle University's Albers School of Business and Economics in the early 2000s, and subsequently founded the wealth management firm Meridian Rock.

Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG (born 11 March 1931) is an Australian American media mogul. Murdoch became managing director of Australia's News Limited, inherited from his father, in 1952. He is the founder, Chairman and CEO of global media holding company the News Corporation, the world's second-largest media conglomerate.

In the 1950s and '60s, he acquired various newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World followed closely by The Sun. He moved to New York in 1974 to expand into the US market and became a naturalised US citizen in 1985. In 1981, he bought The Times, his first British broadsheet.

In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, he consolidated his UK printing operations in Wapping, causing bitter industrial disputes. His News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989) and The Wall Street Journal (2007). He formed BSkyB in 1990 and during the 1990s expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000 Murdoch's News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries with a net worth of over $5 billion.

Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and film producer. He first rose to prominence when he joined the cast of the medical drama, St. Elsewhere, playing Dr. Philip Chandler for six years. He has received much critical acclaim for his work in film since the 1990s, including for his portrayals of real-life figures, such as Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Melvin B. Tolson, Frank Lucas and Herman Boone.

Washington has received two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe awards, and a Tony Award. He is notable for winning the Best Supporting Actor for Glory in 1989; and the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2001 for his role in the film Training Day.

Denzel Washington was born in Mount Vernon, near New York City, New York on December 28, 1954. His mother, Lennis "Lynne", was a beauty parlor-owner and operator born in Georgia and partly raised in Harlem. His father, Reverend Denzel Hayes Washington, Sr., a native of Buckingham County, Virginia, served as an ordained Pentecostal minister, and also worked for the Water Department and a local department store, S. Klein.