Lee Child Collection 2: Running Blind / Echo Burning / Without Fail (Jack Reacher, #4-6)
Lee Child - 2004
Women who have nothing in common except the fact that they once worked for the military. And they knew Jack Reacher. How and why these women are in danger completely baffles the elite FBI team working the case. There is only one certainty: there is a new kind of killer out there, one so calm, cautious, and careful that even the brilliant Reacher is left running blind. Echo Burning (Engineer: Mike Council): Jack Reacher is hitching through the heat of West Texas and getting desperate for a ride. The last thing he's worried about is exactly who picks him up. She's called Carmen. She's a good-looking young woman, she has a beautiful little girl . . .and she has married into the wrong family. Worse, her monster of a husband is soon due out of prison. So she needs protection, and she needs it now. Reacher goes home with her to the lonely ranch where nothing is as it seems, and where evil swirls around them like dust in a storm. Without Fail (Engineer: Melissa Coates): Jack Reacher is approached by a Secret Service agent who needs a favor. "I want to hire you to assassinate the Vice President of the United States," she asks. She is the newly appointed head of the VP's security detail and wants Reacher to try to penetrate her team's shield. What she doesn't tell Reacher - but what he soon discovers - is that a very real and deadly team of assassins has just put the VP in their sights and will stop at nothing to realize their objective.
Pinhole
Matthew Kagle - 2013
An Amazon best seller for over a year. Humanity began as primitive lungfishes, crawling out from the depths of the sea to escape predators. Humanity will end as sparkles of light, streaming across the empty voids of the universe searching for meaning. Pinhole is about the time travelers who live between what we once were and might someday become. Cassandra knows the future brings her doom but is helpless to stop it. Lionel executes murderers before they can kill but wonders who the real victims are. Dolores is ensnared in a cult that uses a machine to link their minds and bodies. Joseph strives to escape an eight-year loop he's been trapped in his whole life. Daphne searches for a murderer who kills by giving his victims cancer, but she may be the next target. Moving through time and space, their lives are intertwined, unwittingly tethered together by the same technology they use to change the world.
Portland, Oregon
T.W. Brown - 2015
TW Brown's best-selling series is now unfolding around the world in cities and one-stoplight towns alike. The first stop is his very own Portland, Oregon. Meet Ken Simpson, a retired police officer, Rose Tinnes, a newly divorced woman trying to get her life back in order, and Jason Edwards, a man recently paroled and looking forward to his freedom. These three people form the nucleus of an unlikely group who will struggle to survive as their city falls to the undead. As the city of Portland, Oregon spirals into hellish chaos, it is not just the walking dead that prove to be a problem. In a world suddenly stripped of any order, it might be the living that pose the greatest threat. DEAD: Snapshot—Portland, Oregon
Backgammon
Paul Magriel - 1976
Written between 1973 and 1976 by Paul Magriel and Renée Magriel, Backgammon was the first book to lucidly explain the inner workings and advanced positional play of the game. The most important aspects are broken down into their component parts and then explained with a unique, easy-to-understand, step-by-step building-block approach. The book is enhanced by 600 clear and precise diagrams, a glossary and tables, including the betting odds. For any player who means to take the game seriously and wants to play well, Backgammon is an indispensable guide. This new 2004 edition of also includes a lively behind-the-scenes foreword by Renée Magriel Roberts that illuminates the man behind the name "X-22" and describes the creation of the book. Having stood the test of time for over a quarter-century, Backgammon is still the best and most widely recommended and quoted standard instructional manual and reference work on the game for novice and expert alike.