But there was one factor that the terrorists didn't take into account when they struck the Capitana platform off the coast of Colombia--slaughtering much of the crew and blowing up the platform--and that was the Capitana crew chief Dewey Andreas. Dewey, former Army Ranger and Delta, survives the attack, rescuing as many of his men as possible. But the battle has just begun.While the intelligence and law enforcement agencies scramble to untangle these events and find the people responsible, the mysterious figure of Alexander Fortuna--an agent embedded into the highest levels of American society and business--sets into play the second stage of these long-planned attacks. The only fly in the ointment is Dewey Andreas--who is using all his long-dormant skills to fight his way off the platform, then out of Colombia and back to the U.S., following the trail of terrorists and operatives sent to stop him.Power Down is a gripping, compelling debut thriller from Ben Coes, a powerful new author, an amazing talent certain to join the ranks of the genre's finest writers.

    One of the nation's top journalists, he's used to dragging himself into the dirt to get the truth. When his adopted son Sam asks him to use his muckraking talents to find his birth mother, Jake is stunned by the ugly secrets he uncovers: an international crime syndicate, a horrifying child trafficking ring, and a corrupt politician, the patriarch of an old New York financial dynasty. Initially galvanized by a career-making story, Jake---and his son---are soon the victims of brutal violence and the targets of Jake's fellow reporters, who dog them for their story. Concerned for the survival of his family, Jake realizes some sins of the past should never be uncovered...

    In his remarkable new thriller, Emerson fuses together a gripping drama with unforgettable scenes of peril that, in this realm, can explode at any second.Jason Gun, a risk-taking rookie firefighter who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, has found in his firehouse the family he never had as a child. Then, in one ill-fated turn of events, it all begins to go wrong.A bizarre accident brings a thrill-seeking woman into Engine Company 29–and into Jason’s life. Suddenly, his future on the job is at risk. Two fellow firefighters know that he missed a call because of some sexual heroics at the wrong time and place. Now, deeply in their debt, he will find out what kind of men his partners really are.When these two firefighters come upon a fortune in missing bearer bonds–money found in a dead man’s house–Jason is forced to become an accessory to their crime. And when evidence of their greed, foolishness, and thievery begins to emerge, Jason is witness to an even darker deed.Suddenly, the twenty-four-year-old, who only wanted to do the right thing, is trapped behind a wall of silence. Trying to undo his mistake, Jason moves further into the darkness, where a beautiful young woman might just be his emotional rescue–or yet one more very wrong move. Unfortunately for Jason, the worst isn’t behind him. Like a fire hit by wind, the killing has raged out of control.Capturing the thin line that separates a hero from a criminal, and an enemy from a friend, Earl Emerson’s new novel is a gripping tale of a man’s dangerous fall from grace–and of his fierce battle for redemption.

    There she’s paired with Jonathan Burke, a straitlaced analyst who has alienated his colleagues with his unorthodox methods and a knack for always being right, political consequences be damned. When a raid on Chinese spies in Taiwan ends in a shoot-out and the release of a deadly chemical, CIA director Kathy Cooke turns to the Red Cell to figure out why China is ready to invade the island nation without any fear of reprisal from the US Navy. Stryker and Burke’s only lead is the top CIA asset in China, code named Pioneer. But when Pioneer reports that Chinese security has him under surveillance, Stryker is offered a chance for redemption with a highly dangerous mission: extract Pioneer from China before he’s arrested and executed. The answers he holds could mean the difference between peace in the Pacific or another world war.From CIA headquarters to the White House to a Navy carrier in the South China Sea and the dark alleyways of Beijing, Red Cell takes readers on a whirlwind race against time as Stryker and Burke work to save Pioneer and discover the hidden threat to America’s power: China’s top-secret weapon.CIA analyst Mark Henshaw infuses expert knowledge of the intelligence world into a pulse-pounding plot to create a fascinating, authentic, and unforgettable read.

    Frank really needs some R & R. He’s just been fired—over a fatal screw up—from the covert operations “shop” he’s worked at for years. But Douglas Meachum—a hard-charging art dealer—needs to be made to feel something more than entitlement: nothing extreme, just a little wake-up call.Given Frank’s background and his expertise in good guy/bad guy tactics, it’s easy for him to set up a scam involving some embarrassing revelations about a faked Mayan sculpture that Meachum sells to one of his clients. But the client isn’t someone who takes kindly to mistakes. She’s a ruthless social-climbing psychopath who, with her surfer-dude husband (the Thomas Alva Edison of designer pharmaceuticals), runs a huge drug operation. And she’s got an invincible thug duo—Vlad and Arturo—to carry out her notions of payback, which make Frank’s wake-up scheme seem positively genteel. What started out as a good (if slightly underhanded) deed quickly veers out of control. How Frank handles the chaos—and what he himself hears in the wake-up call—is the fuel that drives this full-throttle, terrifically entertaining novel.

    The world is shocked by the family’s sensational disappearance. Were they eliminated by the Soviet intelligence service? Or have the Digbys defected to Moscow with a trove of the West’s most vital secrets?Four years later, Ruth Macallister receives a postcard from the twin sister she hasn’t seen since their catastrophic parting in Rome in the summer of 1940, as war engulfed the continent and Iris fell desperately in love with an enigmatic United States Embassy official named Sasha Digby. Within days, Ruth is on her way to Moscow, posing as the wife of counterintelligence agent Sumner Fox in a precarious plot to extract the Digbys from behind the Iron Curtain.But the complex truth behind Iris’s marriage defies Ruth’s understanding, and as the sisters race toward safety, a dogged Soviet KGB officer forces them to make a heartbreaking choice between two irreconcilable loyalties.

    Returning home to New York brings with it memories of childhood, many of them painful, and yet Harper could never have prepared himself for the truth.Confronted with the reality of his father's existence, Harper finds himself seduced by a lifestyle that he seems to have inherited--an underworld life of power, treachery, and menace. As he desperately tries to uncover the facts of his own past, he is faced with one lie after another, and with each new discovery he becomes more and more entangled in a dark and shocking conspiracy.From the acclaimed author of A Quiet Belief in Angels and A Simple Act of Violence, City of Lies is a tense and gripping thriller, each twist and turn more shocking than the last.

    In this adventure he must find and seize a golden Buddha - the artifact and its contents are vital to striking a deal with the Russians and the Chinese and restoring the Dalai Lama to power in Tibet.

    for the best mystery of 1999, this complex literary thriller may be one of the most satisfying suspense novels to come along in some time. Robert Wilson has written several political thrillers, most of which are set in West Africa, but they are, alas, largely unavailable in the U.S.In A Small Death in Lisbon, the narrative switches back and forth between 1941 and 1999, and Wilson's wide knowledge of history and keen sense of place make the eras equally vibrant. In 1941 Germany, Klaus Felsen, an industrialist, is approached by the SS high command in a none-too-friendly manner and is "persuaded" to go to Lisbon and oversee the sale--or smuggling--of wolfram (also known as tungsten, used in the manufacture of tanks and airplanes). World War II Portugal is neutral where business is concerned, and too much of the precious metal is being sold to Britain when Germany needs it to insure that Hitler's blitzkrieg is successful.Cut to 1999 Lisbon, where the daughter of a prominent lawyer has been found dead on a beach. Ze Coelho, a liberal police inspector who is a widower with a daughter of his own, must sift through the life of Catarina Oliveira and discover why she was so brutally murdered. Her father is enigmatic, her mother suicidal; her friends were rock musicians and drug addicts.The reader is treated to a wonderful portrait of Lisbon in the aftermath of the 1974 revolution that ousted Salazar from power, and the scars from that conflict are still close to the surface for the citizens of Lisbon, including Coehlo and his colleagues. We also see World War II in a slightly different manner from that to which we are accustomed--through the eyes of the Germans and the Portuguese. The pace of the book is leisurely but compelling as the events of 1941 and those in 1999 merge in an extraordinary climax

    Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls is a cover for an all-female investigative unit called The Agency, and at seventeen, Mary is about to put her training to the test. Assuming the guise of a lady’s companion, she must infiltrate a rich merchant’s home in hopes of tracing his missing cargo ships. But the household is full of dangerous deceptions, and there is no one to trust — or is there? Packed with action and suspense, banter and romance, and evoking the gritty backstreets of Victorian London, this breezy mystery debuts a daring young detective who lives by her wits while uncovering secrets — including those of her own past.

    Drowning his troubles in mindless traffic duty and lots of scotch, he's awakened to action when a young woman journalist is brutally murdered. She had recently made some errors in the obituary of a man from a local retirement home, but that's not the kind of mistake that brings professional hit men to your door-or the FBI to town. Attempting to unravel the puzzle, Justin finds that everyone-the cops, the FBI, and one of the strangest professional killing teams ever seen-seems to be one step ahead of him, disposing of witnesses and setting him up for the fall. But this reality check is just what Justin needs, and he'll stop at nothing to discover the true meaning of "Aphrodite"-and maybe save himself.

    In the 1960s, while in Virginia blacks fighting for their civil rights face the Ku Klux Klan, a white girl is kidnapped in Baltimore. Little Alice Raleigh, eleven and blonde, heir to an immense fortune, is held for a ransom of one million dollars. Her captors conceive an ingenious way to make her invisible to police and federal agents by turning her skin brown, dying her hair and hiding her in a brothel run by an old black woman, somewhere near Norfolk. Slowly Alice adapts to her surprising new life. Then she finds out who was the instigator of her abduction. And real change begins...

    Reckless. Brilliant. Deadly. A young Jack Kennedy travels to Europe on a secret mission for Franklin Roosevelt as the world braces for war.It’s the spring of 1939, and the prospect of war in Europe looms large. The United States has no intelligence service. In Washington, D.C., President Franklin Roosevelt may run for an unprecedented third term and needs someone he can trust to find out what the Nazis are up to. His choice: John F. Kennedy.It’s a surprising selection. At twenty-two, Jack Kennedy is the attractive but unpromising second son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Roosevelt’s ambassador to Britain (and occasional political adversary). But when Jack decides to travel through Europe to gather research for his Harvard senior thesis, Roosevelt takes the opportunity to use him as his personal spy. The president’s goal: to stop the flow of German money that has been flooding the United States to buy the 1940 election—an election that Adolf Hitler intends Roosevelt lose.In a deft mosaic of fact and fiction, Francine Mathews has written a gripping espionage tale that explores what might have happened when a young Jack Kennedy is let loose in Europe as the world careens toward war. A potent combination of history and storytelling, Jack 1939 is a sexy, entertaining read.

    While pursuing a budding romance with the beautiful Kathleen Gray, Creed stumbles upon a plucky, but horribly burned, little girl named Addie Dawes. Creed's suspicion about the fire that killed Addie's family puts him on a collision course with crime boss Joe DeMeo, in what soon becomes an issue of kill or be killed. DeMeo, a relentless killer who will stop at nothing to protect his empire, targets Creed and his loved ones for death. But Creed has plans of his own. Employing a bizarre cast of characters including a giant, a rival crime lord, an angry midget bent on world conquest, and a team of circus clowns, Creed goes on the attack, with hilarious results.

    Brendan Buchanan is an undercover intelligence operative who has impersonated more than 200 people in the last eight years. But now his multi-personality occupation threatens to destroy him.