Book picks similar to
Hell Around the Horn by Rick Spilman


historical-fiction
thriller
fiction
adventure

Flash Bang


Kellen Burden - 2013
    Dishonorably discharged from the Army, he’s wracked with night terrors and an anger that he can't abate. Unemployable and uninterested in anything resembling a normal job, Parks makes his living in fugitive apprehension, finding wanted felons on Facebook and thumping them into custody with his ex-military buddies John Harkin and Eric "Etch" Echevarria. When the body of a teenage Muslim boy is found in front of a downtown Denver nightclub Parks, Harkin and Etch are called on to do what they do best: Find bad men and make them pay.First-time author Kellen Burden serves up edgy humor, brutal action and characters you can’t get enough of. Flash Bang will keep you turning pages until the end.

Ace Lone Wolf and the Lost Temple of Totec


Eric T. Knight - 2017
    Then Victoria, a beautiful English noblewoman, and her hulking manservant, Block, break him out of jail.Victoria’s father, a famed archaeologist from London, disappeared while searching for the lost temple of the bloodthirsty Aztec god Xipe Totec and she needs Ace's help to find him.Follow along as Ace and his new companions blaze a trail across the Old West. Along the way Ace tangles with everyone from Wyatt Earp to Geronimo and finally journeys into the depths of the mighty Sierra Madre Mountains to a temple wreathed in mystery.

Kidnapped


Robert Louis Stevenson - 1886
    Or at least that was the plan, until the ship runs into trouble and David is rescued by Alan Breck Stewart, fugitive Jacobite and, by his own admission, a ‘bonny fighter’. Balfour, a canny lowlander, finds an echo of some wilder and more romantic self in the wilful and courageous Highland spirit of Alan Breck. A strange and difficult friendship is born, as their adventures begin.Kidnapped has become a classic of historical romance the world over and is justly famous as a novel of travel and adventure in the Scottish landscape. Stevenson’s vivid descriptive powers were never better than in his account of remote places and dangerous action in the Highlands in the years after Culloden.‘A cracking tale of low skulduggery and high adventure, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped has enthralled generations of readers since its first publication in 1886. A book for thrill-seekers of all ages, this romp through Jacobite Scotland is a true classic.’ Sunday Herald‘A delicately balanced book, expertly controlled, sharply focused, and written with an affectionate irony. It is perhaps the finest of Stevenson’s novels.’ Jenni Calder

Mobley's Law


Gerald Lane Summers - 2011
    President Grant appoints Judge Mobley Meadows to the Texas Federal Circuit Court and charges him with preventing the situation from getting out of hand. Davis quickly realizes that Mobley is a threat when he overturns the Governor’s land reappraisal decree, a source of graft for Davis’s supporters, and sends his personal assassin to get rid of Mobley. Mobley and his two deputy marshals, Edson Rabb, a handsome Cherokee Indian, and Jack Anthony Lopes, the illegitimate son of General Santa Ana and the English Lady Madeleine Smythe, are repeatedly attacked on their journey from Waco to Austin. They know Davis is behind the attacks, but they cannot make a case against him. Davis loses the election by a majority of two to one, but arranges for his personally appointed state Supreme Court to overturn the election on a technicality involving a single misplaced semi-colon in the new Texas constitution. He then refuses to leave office or to participate in a trial in Mobley’s court. Davis’s opponent, Richard Coke, does not accept this decision and with his supporters storms the state administrative building in Austin. Davis’s forces counterattack and manage to take back the first floor of the building. A standoff then prevails that can only be resolved by the action of President Grant. Mobley suggests a course of action to the president, that in the end works, but not without Mobley having to compromise his beliefs, his sense of honor, and everything he thinks he stands for.

The Sisterhood


Helen Bryan - 2012
    Rescued after a hurricane in South America, doomed to a life of poverty with a swallow medal as her only legacy, the orphaned toddler was adopted by an American family and taken to a new life. As a beautiful, intelligent woman of nineteen, she is in love, engaged, and excited about the future — until another traumatic event shatters her dreams. Menina flees to Spain to bury her misery in research for her college thesis about a sixteenth-century artist who signed his works with the image of a swallow — the same image as the one on Menina’s medal. But a mugging strands Menina in a musty, isolated Spanish convent. Exploring her surroundings, she discovers the epic sagas of five orphan girls who were hidden from the Spanish Inquisition and received help escaping to the New World. Is Menina’s medal a link to them, or to her own past? Did coincidence lead her to the convent, or fate? Both love story and historical thriller, The Sisterhood is an emotionally charged ride across continents and centuries.

A Certain Threat


Roger Burnage - 2012
    Grahame in this work. Merriman is plunged headlong into the world of espionage and when Grahame is seriously wounded it falls to Merriman to carry on the investigation.Young James Merriman must keep all his wits about him to foil these plans especially when his adversary is revealed to be an exceptional French agent Henri Moreau who hopes that by helping the Irish to throw off the English yoke, France will be able to use Irish ports from which to attack England.

The Viking


Marti Talbott - 2010
    Yet, the battle was not at all what he expected and he soon found himself alone and stranded in Scotland. Thirteen-year-old Kannak’s problem was just as grave. Her father deserted them and the only way to survive, she decided, was to take a husband over her mother‘s objections. Suddenly she was helping a hated Viking escape. Could Kannak successfully hide a Viking in the middle of a Scottish Clan? And why was someone plotting to kill the clan's beloved laird?

Pied Piper


Nevil Shute - 1942
    John Howard, a 70-year-old Englishman vacationing in France, cuts shorts his tour and heads for home. He agrees to take two children with him.But war closes in. Trains fail, roads clog with refugees. And if things were not difficult enough, other children join in Howard's little band. At last they reach the coast and find not deliverance but desperation. The old Englishman's greatest test lies ahead of him.

Secret of the Scroll


Chester D. Campbell - 2002
    Then he brings a "souvenir" Dead Sea Scroll home from the Holy Land and things go from bad to worse. A Palestinian terrorist group invades his home, fails to find the scroll, and takes his wife, Jill, hostage. Greg finds himself with an ancient Hebrew scroll worth millions, wanted by both the Palestinians and a radical far-right Israeli organization. When he tries to exchange it for Jill's freedom, everything goes wrong. Then the police target him as a suspect in his wife's disappearance, and he sets out alone on a perilous chase to save her life.

Rubbing Stones


Nancy Burkey - 2016
    Jane O'Neil, an American psychiatry professor, books her family on a rafting trip down the Zambezi River, seeking redirection and reconnection with her troubled son.Katura Masaku, a smart but impulsive teenager in Botswana, sneaks across the border to Victoria Falls, naively confident she can rescue her wrongfully-arrested older brother.Her optimism is crushed by a corrupt police department that's willing to punish the innocent. And Jane's river trip ends violently with a hijacking that turns into an extended hostage situation. Zimbabwe's political chaos, not to mention the jungle itself, puts both Jane and Katura in danger.Will they succumb to their desperation, or find the courage to make it home?Rubbing Stones is an emotionally-charged debut novel about two families from opposite corners of the world, thrown together in a place where political and personal currents are more dangerous than the Zambezi that threatens to drown them.How far will they go to save the ones they love?

Beneath a Glass Bridge


Tali Asnin-Barel - 2013
    Naomi, a young Jewish woman, gives birth to a baby girl in a remote rural farm. The Nazi foe is everywhere, and Naomi realizes she must do everything in her power in order to save her daughter’s life, even at the expense of her own.United States, 1990. Helena tells her daughter, Blair, for the first time, the truth about her past, and presents her with a mysterious box that sheds light on her personal story. Blair, stunned and sore by the shattering discovery, storms out of the house and disappears to the other side of the world.Her family situation unsettled as ever, Helena leaves next. Shadows from her past and the need to cope with them have gradually revealed painfully tangible memories, imploring to be exposed. She travels far, determined to try and build bridges—to her past, to her husband and children, and to her loved ones that are long gone.Distant and removed from everyone in her life, at a furious pace, she writes down all her secrets, as well as the life story of her extensive family, which was torn to shreds by the Second World War.When she’s closer than ever to exposing her account, devastating news from home force Helena to expedite her return.Is her world about to change forever?Beneath a Glass Bridge raises profound questions about loss, motherhood in times of crisis, hiding and exposure of the truth. Are the decisions we make in our lives reversible? Can we make up for missed opportunities?

English Passengers


Matthew Kneale - 2000
    The only takers are two eccentric Englishmen who want to embark for the other side of the globe. The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson believes the Garden of Eden was on the island of Tasmania. His traveling partner, Dr. Thomas Potter, unbeknownst to Wilson, is developing a sinister thesis about the races of men. Meanwhile, an aboriginal in Tasmania named Peevay recounts his people’s struggles against the invading British, a story that begins in 1824, moves into the present with approach of the English passengers in 1857, and extends into the future in 1870. These characters and many others come together in a storm of voices that vividly bring a past age to life.

Operator


David Vinjamuri - 2012
    Michael hasn't stepped foot in his Catskills hometown for more than a dozen years since he left it and a college football scholarship behind to join the Army. Michael quickly learns that his hometown has changed as he is pulled into the web of mystery and corruption surrounding Melissa's death. He will soon confront the abusive ex-boyfriend, a town sheriff with mixed motives and the ruthless Russian gang at the heart of it all.Michael will be forced to choose between two paths - that of the desk-working, college-educated intelligence analyst he has become or the Tier I Army Operator he once was. Only one of these identities will survive as Michael is relentlessly hunted by a series of ruthless men.This meticulously researched, seamlessly plotted thriller is the first in a new series by David Vinjamuri.