The Ugly Duckling


Iris Johansen - 1994
    She emerged a woman transformed, with an exquisite beauty found only in fairy tales. Nell Calder deserved a happy ending. Instead, her descent into terror has just begun.Her attacker is still on the hunt, determined to finish what he's started. And Nell, protected by a new face, is just as determined to fight back and take her revenge. But to catch her prey, she will have to expose herself—even if it makes her a killer's prime target.

The Brotherhood of the Rose


David Morrell - 1983
    He visited them and brought them sweets. He treated them like sons. He trained them to be assassins.Now he is trying to have them killed.

Sandstorm


James Rollins - 2004
    And now the search for answers is leading Lady Kara Kensington; her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery's brilliant and beautiful curator; and their guide, the international adventurer Omaha Dunn, into a world they never dreamed existed: a lost city buried beneath the Arabian desert. But others are being drawn there as well, some with dark and sinister purposes. And the many perils of a death-defying trek deep into the savage heart of the Arabian Peninsula pale before the nightmare waiting to be unearthed at journey's end: an ageless and awesome power that could create a utopia... or destroy everything humankind has built over countless millennia.

The President's Henchman


Joseph Flynn - 2009
    Which will make her husband--what?Well, if he's the ex-cop who solved the murder of the president's first husband and brought the killers to justice...and if he's not the kind of guy to stand on formality...and if he doesn't want to be the head of the FBI...and if he takes out a license and becomes the first private eye to live in the White House...That would make him The President's Henchman.Jim McGill's first case is to find out who is stalking a member of the White House press corps, before that stalker turns the tables on McGill and maybe even threatens the president herself. He also has to be a shadow adviser to a young Air Force investigator who is looking into a he-said-she-said charge of adultery leveled against a female colonel working at the Pentagon, a case with the potential to derail the new president's administration before it has a chance to begin.

The Devil's Alternative


Frederick Forsyth - 1979
    The Soviets are forced to pin their hopes for survival on the U.S. But as the KGB and the CIA watch in horror, the rescue of a Ukrainian freedom fighter from the Black Sea unleashes savagery that endangers peace--and plunges leaders from Washington to Moscow into a web of overwhelming intrigue, terror, and suspense. Only two lovers can save the world from nuclear  destruction. Yet every way out means certain death, and the countdown has already begun.

Monday's Lie


Jamie Mason - 2015
    But now, years later, her marriage is falling apart and she’s starting to believe that her husband has his eye on a new life... a life without her, one way or another.Haunted by memories of her late mother Annette, a former covert operations asset, Dee reaches back into her childhood to resurrect her mother’s lessons and the “spy games” they played together, in which Dee learned memory tricks and, most importantly, how and when to lie. But just as she begins determining the course of the future, she makes a discovery that will change her life: her mother left her a lot of money and her own husband seems to know more about it than Dee does. Now, before it’s too late, she must investigate her suspicions and untangle conspiracy from coincidence, using her mother’s advice to steer her through the blind spots. The trick, in the end, will be in deciding if a “normal life” is really what she wants at all.With pulse-pounding prose and atmospheric settings, Monday’s Lie is a thriller that delivers more of the “Hitchcockian menace” (Peter Straub) that made Three Graves Full a critical hit. For fans of the Coen brothers or Gillian Flynn, this is a book you won’t want to miss.

The Ipcress File


Len Deighton - 1962
    Len Deighton’s classic first novel, whose protagonist is a nameless spy – later christened Harry Palmer and made famous worldwide in the iconic 1960s film starring Michael Caine.The Ipcress File was not only Len Deighton’s first novel, it was his first bestseller and the book that broke the mould of thriller writing.For the working class narrator, an apparently straightforward mission to find a missing biochemist becomes a journey to the heart of a dark and deadly conspiracy.The film of The Ipcress File gave Michael Caine one of his first and still most celebrated starring roles, while the novel itself has become a classic.

What Remains of Me


Alison Gaylin - 2016
    Everybody’s got a drawer somewhere with something hidden in it.On June 28, 1980—the hottest night of the year—Kelly Michelle Lund shoots and kills Oscar-nominated director John McFadden at a party in his home. . . . And instantly becomes a media sensation, her chilling smile fodder for national nightmares. For years, speculation swirls over the enigmatic seventeen-year-old’s motives, information she’s refused to share. Convicted of the murder, she loses her youth and her freedom—but keeps her secrets to herself.Thirty years later—and five years after her release from prison—the past has come back to haunt Kelly. Her father-in-law, movie legend Sterling Marshall, is found in a pool of blood in his home in the Hollywood Hills—dead from a shot to the head, just like his old friend John McFadden.Once again, Kelly is suspected of the high profile murder. But this time, she’s got some unexpected allies who believe she’s innocent—of both killings—and want to help her clear her name. But is she?Written with masterful precision and control, What Remains of Me brilliantly moves forward and back in time, playing out the murders side by side—interweaving subtle connections and peeling away layers of events to reveal the shocking truth.

Killing Chase


Ben Muse - 2013
    No matter what.Born into a wealthy but flawed North Carolina shipbuilding family, Chase was somehow immune to the dysfunction. The sky was the limit for the 18-year old football prodigy, until one terrible event changed the course of his life and prison became his new home. Through the highs and lows of his incarceration, there was one person he couldn’t forget, no matter how hard he’d tried: childhood best friend Bailey Masters. For reasons unknown to him, she'd shunned him ever since her mysterious return to Foggy Harbor at the beginning of their sophomore year.Now, seven years into a twelve-year manslaughter sentence, Chase is given an unusual second chance, one that comes with its own set of rules. Suddenly, he's thrust into a position he's not ready for: the tip of the spear in a quiet war against an American enemy. A war that could cost him his family . . . and his life.

The Second Lady


Irving Wallace - 1970
    After years of plastic surgery and special training, the KGB substitutes a Russian actress for the American First Lady and only journalist Guy Parker notices a few tiny, but telltale, inconsistencies

The Force


Don Winslow - 2017
    . .All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop.He is "the King of Manhattan North," a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of "Da Force." Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest, an elite special unit given carte blanche to fight gangs, drugs, and guns. Every day and every night for the eighteen years he’s spent on the Job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps. He’s done whatever it takes to serve and protect in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean—including Malone himself.What only a few know is that Denny Malone is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash in the wake of the biggest heroin bust in the city’s history. Now Malone is caught in a trap and being squeezed by the Feds, and he must walk the thin line between betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family, and the woman he loves, trying to survive, body and soul, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all.This is the great cop novel of our time and a book only Don Winslow could write: a haunting story of greed and violence, inequality and race, crime and injustice, retribution and redemption that reveals the seemingly insurmountable tensions between the police and the diverse citizens they serve. A searing portrait of a city on the edge and of a courageous, heroic, and deeply flawed man who stands at the edge of its abyss, The Force is a masterpiece of urban realism full of shocking and surprising twists, leavened by flashes of dark humor, a morally complex and utterly riveting dissection of modern American society and the controversial issues confronting us today.

The Last Testament


Sam Bourne - 2007
    Now in Jerusalem, she mediates peace talks between Israel and Palestine, which have broken down after two high-profile deaths. Right-wing Zionist Shimon Guttman was gunned down during a supposed attempt to assassinate the Israeli prime minister. "This will change everything," Guttman had cryptically warned the prime minister before he was killed. Palestinian Ahmed Nour, a respected archaeologist, has also been killed on suspicions of being a collaborator. When Maggie discovers that the two men were colleagues, she is plunged into a mystery rooted in an unsolved riddle of the Bible. It all leads back to an ancient clay tablet looted from Baghdad's Museum of Antiquities and a secret that could end a war-or spark a new one.

Tier One


Brian Andrews - 2016
    Meet the next generation of covert ops.John Dempsey’s life—as an elite Tier One Navy SEAL named Jack Kemper—is over. A devastating terrorist action catapults him from a world of moral certainty and decisive orders into the shadowy realm of espionage, where ambiguity is the only rule. His new mission: hunt down those responsible for the greatest tragedy in the history of the US Special Ops and bring them to justice.But how does a man torn between duty and revenge walk the line and preserve his soul?As Dempsey struggles with the games of spies, the case propels him across the globe in a desperate effort to prevent a new, horrifying attack on American soil.Once, John Dempsey followed orders blindly. Now he sees behind the curtain, and the security of the civilized world rests on one question: Can a Tier One Navy SEAL adapt and become the world’s most lethal spy?

The Intercept


Dick Wolf - 2012
    So when a passenger from the same plane disappears into the crowds of Manhattan, it’s up to Fisk and his partner Krina Gersten to find him before the celebrations begin... And time is running out.

Slow Horses


Mick HerronMick Herron - 2010
    London, England: Slough House is where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what's left of their failed careers. The "slow horses," as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. Maybe they messed up an op badly and can't be trusted anymore. Maybe they got in the way of an ambitious colleague and had the rug yanked out from under them. Maybe they just got too dependent on the bottle—not unusual in this line of work. One thing they all have in common, though, is they all want to be back in the action. And most of them would do anything to get there─even if it means having to collaborate with one another.River Cartwright, one such “slow horse,” is bitter about his failure and about his tedious assignment transcribing cell phone conversations. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself. But is the victim who he first appears to be? And what’s the kidnappers’ connection with a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River finds that everyone has his own agenda.