The Cuban Affair


Nelson DeMille - 2017
    At age thirty-five he’s living in Key West, owner of a forty-two-foot charter fishing boat, The Maine. Mac served five years in the Army as an infantry officer with two tours in Afghanistan. He returned with the Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, scars that don’t tan, and a boat with a big bank loan. Truth be told, Mac’s finances are more than a little shaky.One day, Mac is sitting in the famous Green Parrot Bar in Key West, contemplating his life, and waiting for Carlos, a hotshot Miami lawyer heavily involved with anti-Castro groups. Carlos wants to hire Mac and The Maine for a ten-day fishing tournament to Cuba at the standard rate, but Mac suspects there is more to this and turns it down. The price then goes up to two million dollars, and Mac agrees to hear the deal, and meet Carlos’s clients—a beautiful Cuban-American woman named Sara Ortega, and a mysterious older Cuban exile, Eduardo Valazquez.What Mac learns is that there is sixty million American dollars hidden in Cuba by Sara’s grandfather when he fled Castro’s revolution. With the “Cuban Thaw” underway between Havana and Washington, Carlos, Eduardo, and Sara know it’s only a matter of time before someone finds the stash—by accident or on purpose. And Mac knows if he accepts this job, he’ll walk away rich…or not at all.Brilliantly written, with his signature humor, fascinating authenticity from his research trip to Cuba, and heart-pounding pace, Nelson DeMille is a true master of the genre.

Shadow Kill


David Caris - 2021
    Betrayed by his employer and left for dead, Kovac decides to lie low in Tokyo.His plan? Revenge...But when a young woman asks him to protect her from the yakuza, Kovac feels duty-bound to help. She’s a victim of abuse, and long experience tells him if he doesn’t step in tonight she’ll be a corpse before dawn.As Kovac works to uncover the truth of his last job, he finds himself drawn into a conspiracy which goes well beyond the yakuza to a new and terrifying multinational cartel. One that will stop at nothing to control the global drug trade.The kingpins are certain they’ve covered all bases. They're well-funded and utterly ruthless. But they’ve failed to account for one man – John Kovac.SHADOW KILL is the first in a fast-paced, unflinching thriller series that won't in any way shortchange you on action. Perfect for fans of Lee Child, Mark Greaney and Mark Dawson.

Felony Murder


Joseph T. Klempner - 1995
    Klempner's fast-paced page-turner is more than entertainment . . . He writes with power, color, and compassion. . . . Felony Murder takes you through the tawdry, real-life criminal justice system where you cannot tell the cops from the crooks." - William Kunstler On the surface, the court-appointed case that lands on young Dean Abernathy's desk is a biggie; he is slated to defend a homeless man accused of the felony murder of the popular black New York City Police commissioner during an early-morning mugging attempt. But at second look, the case promises to be a routine conviction. The evidence is overwhelming. The police have come up with an eyewitness, they have physical evidence, and Joey Spadafino has given the arresting officers a signed confession. Dean's course seems obvious: Get Joe Spadafino, an ex-con, to plead guilty, bargain for the most lenient sentence possible, and figure you can't win ‘em all. Before he can talk to his client about a plea bargain, however, he finds that the prosecutor has already offered one - which Joey refuses. Dean, not only a conscientious defense attorney but a former investigator, starts looking harder at the seemingly incontrovertible evidence. What he turns up changes a foregone conclusion into something very different. The district attorney, although outwardly cooperative, seems to be trying to keep Dean from interviewing the eyewitness - and the reason becomes apparent when Dean, challenged, digs deeper into her background. Anomalies and discrepancies in the government's case crop up. Dean realizes that he is drawing closer to a particularly nasty truth, one that not only puts his life and those of others in immediate peril but confronts him with a moral dilemma that is even more difficult to face.

The Price of Time


Tim Tigner - 2019
    A discovery. An invention. One so startling and surprisingly sinister that it needs to be kept—at any price.Tim Tigner takes a step back from his bestselling Kyle Achilles series to introduce Zachary Chase and Skylar Fawkes in a fresh standalone novel that’s bound to keep you glued and guessing. With secluded meetings, sudden disappearances and strange murders; secret agents, skillful assassins and sexy locations; The Price of Time is packed with fast-paced action and first-class intellectual intrigue.Propelling the thrills and perched at the middle of the mystery is one of humanity’s great questions: Would finding the Fountain of Youth be a blessing?Prepare for sleep-deprived nights and skipped chores while repeating the phrase: "Just one more page."

The Girl Beneath the Sea


Andrew Mayne - 2020
    An auxiliary officer for Lauderdale Shores PD, she’s the go-to diver for evidence recovery. Then Sloan finds a fresh kill floating in a canal—a woman whose murky history collides with Sloan’s. Their troubling ties are making Sloan less a potential witness than a suspect. And her colleagues aren’t the only ones following every move she makes. So is the killer.Stalked by an assassin, pitted against a ruthless cartel searching for a lost fortune, and under watch within her ranks, Sloan has only one ally: the legendary DEA agent who put Sloan’s uncle behind bars. He knows just how deep corruption runs—and the kind of danger Sloan is in. To stay alive, Sloan must stay one step ahead of her enemies—both known and unknown—and a growing conspiracy designed to pull her under.

Dangerous Waters


Toni Anderson - 2012
    As she investigates the crime, Holly soon realizes the sleepy town is rife with secrets. But what unsettles her most is the residents’ insistence that she bears a striking resemblance to the victim of a murder from three decades earlier. She shrugs off the uncanny likeness as a coincidence. But her simmering attraction to Finn Carver, one of the divers who discovered the corpse, isn’t so easy to ignore.Finn, a former Special Forces soldier, knows it’s best to keep his distance from Holly. Yet it isn’t long before they both give in to the consuming desire they share. And as the danger escalates, Finn and Holly must rely on each other to thwart the plans of a cold-blooded killer who’s intent on keeping the past buried.

The Short Drop


Matthew FitzSimmons - 2015
    Still unsolved, the mystery remains a national obsession.For legendary hacker and marine Gibson Vaughn, the case is personal—Suzanne Lombard had been like a sister to him. On the tenth anniversary of her disappearance, the former head of Benjamin Lombard’s security asks for Gibson’s help in a covert investigation of the case, with new evidence in hand.Haunted by tragic memories, he jumps at the chance to uncover what happened all those years ago. Using his military and technical prowess, he soon discovers multiple conspiracies surrounding the Lombard family—and he encounters powerful, ruthless political players who will do anything to silence him and his team. With new information surfacing that could threaten Lombard’s bid for the presidency, Gibson must stay one step ahead as he navigates a dangerous web to get to the truth.

The Delphi Chronicle, Bundle Book 2 & 3 - The Tortoise and the Hare, and Phoenix Rising


Russell Blake - 2011
    This bundle of book 2 & 3 continues the saga of NY private eye Michael Derrigan, as he comes into possession of a manuscript that will change the world order if its secrets are aired. Clandestine factions of the U.S. government will do anything to keep the story buried, & a trail of butchery follows Derrigan as he races for his life in a chase that takes him from New York, to Mexico, to Havana. A roller-coaster ride of a thriller, The Delphi Chronicle's unflinching & often disturbing twists and turns question the nature of reality & of the integrity of our governments in a post-modern world of lies, deceit & betrayal.+++Questions & Answers with bestselling author Russell Blake.Question: The Delphi Chronicle posits a troubling & plausible conspiracy. Where did you get the idea?Russell Blake: The idea stemmed from the title. I was originally going to call the trilogy The Pegasus File, & I'd conceptualized a cool cover, so I Googled it to confirm there weren't any other books with that name. The original conspiracy was much tamer than what I wound up with. I had the idea of a literary agent getting a manuscript detailing a shocking scheme, but I hadn't defined what it was, exactly. From that search came this conspiracy, & I have to admit I considered toning it down a lot, because it scared even me. So readers? This is fiction, OK? And U.S. government? No need to send a wet team after me. We all understand it's fictional. As in, an invention, not real. That's my official position. Readers can decide how plausible theinvention is for themselves. Some will hate it, as it portrays the U.S. government in a negative light. Can't please everyone.Q: Why write it as a trilogy?RB: It would have been a long single volume if I'd tried to squeeze it all into one book. Given the success I saw with the Zero Sum trilogy, I wanted to do another one, & this was just naturally written in three volumes, although I think most will get the first one, & then buy the specially-priced bundle of Books 2 & 3 if they're interested in following the story to its thrilling conclusion (wink wink).Q: How do your novels compare to the work of your peers?RB: I think they're faster paced than most. I try to catapult readers through a series of twists & turns at such aggressive velocity they're left gasping by the end. And I dislike books where I can see the ending coming a third of the way through. Just hate that. I try to write racing, intelligent thrillers that don't pander & aren't formulaic. All have gotten raves, so I'm fooling at least some of the people most of the time...Q: Part of Delphi unfolds in Mexico. Any particular reason?RB: I live in Mexico. Have for almost a decade. Modern Mexico is very different than as portrayed by the U.S. media. Many parts are indistinguishable from medium sized cities in the U.S. Strip malls, high rises, melting-pot racial integration, etc. It's not cactus & sombreros. One of the things I find fascinating is how different it is than what my expectations were when I moved here, & I try to impart that. Most novels set in modern Mexico I've read are caricatures of the truth. Mission bells, white-garbed peasants, stereotypical characters. I try to imbue my fiction with reality, not a Hollywood portrayal based on a snapshot from the 1950s. I think readers will find that distinction interesting.

Sleeper agent


John Birmingham - 2021
    Since the car accident that wiped his memories, Cooper has been...a little foggy. Cooper doesn’t know how to do much, but one thing he instinctively seems to know about is strength training, and with his help, Gainesville High’s football team has just won the Mid-States final. With Cooper the hero of the hour, the whole town is getting ready to celebrate in style.When three strangers crash the party and decide to pick on the harmless-looking guy carrying a cooler full of sodas, they trigger something inside Cooper. Afterwards, the folks in Gainesville can never look at him in quite the same way. Is he really just a regular guy who suffered a brain injury in a car crash, or is he someone else? Or something else?As Cooper tries to come to terms with baffling new memories, he’s about to be plunged into a terrifying world of secret experiments and covert assassins that will test his new-found abilities to the limit.

The Chemist


Stephenie Meyer - 2016
    She used to work for the U.S. government, but very few people ever knew that. An expert in her field, she was one of the darkest secrets of an agency so clandestine it doesn't even have a name. And when they decided she was a liability, they came for her without warning. Now she rarely stays in the same place or uses the same name for long. They've killed the only other person she trusted, but something she knows still poses a threat. They want her dead, and soon. When her former handler offers her a way out, she realizes it's her only chance to erase the giant target on her back. But it means taking one last job for her ex-employers. To her horror, the information she acquires only makes her situation more dangerous. Resolving to meet the threat head-on, she prepares for the toughest fight of her life but finds herself falling for a man who can only complicate her likelihood of survival. As she sees her choices being rapidly whittled down, she must apply her unique talents in ways she never dreamed of. In this tautly plotted novel, Meyer creates a fierce and fascinating new heroine with a very specialized skill set. And she shows once again why she's one of the world's bestselling authors.

The Ark


Boyd Morrison - 2009
    Before he dies in her arms, he gasps a few cryptic words about a vast conspiracy to hide an awesome historical artifact and tells Dilara that the only person who can help her is a decorated former Army combat engineer named Tyler Locke.Two days later, Locke is consulting on a North Atlantic oil platform when a ferry helicopter carrying Dilara suffers a mechanical failure and goes down next to the rig. With only minutes before the survivors freeze to death in the frigid waters, the quick-thinking Locke manages to rescue everyone on board, including Dilara. She tells him that the helicopter crash was no accident. Someone wants to stop her from finding Noah’s Ark.A second attempt on Dilara’s life convinces a skeptical Locke that there is truth to her story. When a movie star’s private jet crashes into the Mojave desert, it proves to be another link to the conspiracy. Locke and Dilara head to Arizona, and their investigation reveals a chilling discovery. A group of religious fanatics has recovered a weapon from the Ark that will let them recreate the effects of the biblical flood and mold the remnants of humanity according to their leader’s twisted vision.Now Locke and Dilara have just seven days to find the Ark and the secret hidden inside before it is used to wipe out civilization again…

Good Behavior


Blake Crouch - 2013
    While on the job, she overhears a man hiring a hit man to kill his wife. Letty may not be winning any morality awards, but even she has limits. Unable to go to the police, Letty sets out to derail the job, putting herself on a collision course with the killer that entangles the two of them in a dangerous, seductive relationship.Good Behavior comprises three interlinked novellas (The Pain of Others, Sunset Key, and Grab), which together form a novel-length portrait of Blake Crouch’s all-time favorite character creation, Letty Dobesh. This edition is the complete Letty Dobesh collection.

What You Did


Claire McGowan - 2019
    A devastating accusation. Who should she trust, her husband or her best friend?It was supposed to be the perfect reunion: six university friends together again after twenty years. Host Ali finally has the life she always wanted, a career she can be proud of and a wonderful family with her college boyfriend, now husband. But that night her best friend makes an accusation so shocking that nothing will ever be the same again.When Karen staggers in from the garden, bleeding and traumatised, she claims that she has been assaulted—by Ali’s husband, Mike. Ali must make a split-second decision: who should she believe? Her horrified husband, or her best friend? With Mike offering a very different version of events, Ali knows one of them is lying—but which? And why?When the ensuing chaos forces her to re-examine the golden era the group shared at university, Ali realises there are darker memories too. Memories that have lain dormant for decades. Memories someone would kill to protect.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1894
    Volume 2. Introduction / by Loren D. Estleman --The hound of the Baskervilles --The valley of fear --His last bow : The adventure of Wisteria Lodge : The singular experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles ; The tiger of San Pedro ; The adventure of the cardboard box ; The adventure of the red circle ; The adventure of the Bruce-Partington plans ; The adventure of the dying detective ; The disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax ; The adventure of the devil's foot ; His last bow --The case-book of Sherlock Holmes : The adventure of the illustrious client ; The adventure of the blanched soldier ; The adventure of the Mazarin stone ; The adventure of the three gables ; The adventure of the Sussex vampire ; The adventure of the three Garridebs ; The problem of Thor Bridge ; The adventure of the creeping man ; The adventure of the lion's mane ; The adventure of the veiled lodger ; The adventure of Shoscombe old place ; The adventure of the retired colourman.

The Columbus Affair


Steve Berry - 2012
    But when one of his stories from the Middle East is exposed as a fraud, his professional reputation crashes and burns. Now he lives in virtual exile—haunted by bad decisions and a shocking truth he can never prove:  that his downfall was a deliberate act of sabotage by an unknown enemy. But before Sagan can end his torment with the squeeze of a trigger, fate intervenes in the form of an enigmatic stranger.  This stranger forces Sagan to act—and his actions attract the attention of the Magellan Billet, a top-secret corps of the United States Justice Department that deals with America’s most sensitive investigations. Sagan suddenly finds himself caught in an international incident, the repercussions of which will shudder not only Washington, D.C., but also Jerusalem. Coaxed into a deadly cat-and-mouse game, unsure who’s friend and who’s foe, Sagan is forced to Vienna, Prague, then finally into the Blue Mountains of Jamaica—where his survival hinges on his rewriting everything we know about Christopher Columbus.