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The Best of Our Spies


Alex Gerlis - 2012
    In the Pas de Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British Special Operations Executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London, her husband Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth about her role in the Allies' sophisticated deception at the heart of D-Day. Appalled but determined, Quinn sets off on a perilous hunt through France in search of his wife. With the help of the Resistance he finds Nathalie, but then the bitterness of war and its insatiable appetite for revenge, catch up with them in dramatic fashion. Based on real events of the Second World War The Best of Our Spies is a thrilling tale of international intrigue, love, deception and espionage.

Raising Atlantis


Thomas Greanias - 2004
    In Antarctica, a glacial earthquake swallows up a team of scientists...and exposes a mysterious monument older than the Earth itself. In Peru, archaeologist Dr. Conrad Yeats is apprehended by U.S. Special Forces...to unlock the final key to the origins of the human race. In Rome, the pope summons environmental activist Dr. Serena Serghetti to the Vatican...and reveals a terrifying vision of apocalyptic disaster. In space, a weather satellite reveals four massive storms forming around the South Pole...and three U.S. spy satellites disappear from orbit.These are the end times, when the legends of a lost civilization and the prophecies of the world's great religions lead a man and a woman to a shattering discovery that will change the fate of humankind. This is the ultimate voyage, a journey to the center of time, as awe-inspiring as the dawn of man--and as inevitable as doomsday. This is RAISING ATLANTIS....

The Things We Cannot Say


Kelly Rimmer - 2019
    Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century.Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents’ farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief. Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative that weaves together two women’s stories into a tapestry of perseverance, loyalty, love and honor. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced…and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it.

White Plague


James Abel - 2015
    The Pentagon staffers cleared for handling sensitive messages sat in horror for a moment and then tried other ways to reach the victims. Nothing worked so they called the Director, who phoned me.”In the remote, frozen waters of the Arctic Ocean, the high-powered and technically advanced submarine U.S.S. Montana is in peril. Adrift and in flames, the boat—and the entire crew—could be lost. The only team close enough to get to them in time is led by Marine doctor and bio-terror expert Joe Rush.With only thirty-six hours before the surviving crew perish, Joe and his team must race to rescue the Montana and ensure that the boat doesn’t fall into enemy hands. Because a fast-approaching foreign submarine is already en route, and tensions may explode.But that’s the least of their troubles. For the surviving sailors are not alone on the sub. Something is trapped with them. Something deadly lethal. Something that plagued mankind long ago, when it devastated the entire world. And the crew of the Montana has unknowingly set it free. Now, Joe and his team must not only find a way to save the Montana and her crew, but stop a lethal horror of apocalyptic consequence from being unleashed on all humanity.

Into Darkness


Anton Gill - 2014
    The Führer has just survived another assassination attempt. But Germany is losing the war. Stauffenberg's attempted assassination and coup originated from inside the government and military. Is the Nazi Party about to turn on itself? Order must be restored and the High Command is calling for blood. Max Hoffmann is enlisted, under Hitler’s instruction, to carry out an investigation. The disillusioned detective has a problem though; he knows that as soon as the investigation starts, his own treason against the Party might be uncovered. As it becomes clear that Hoffman has not been a "good Nazi" he decides to go on the run, mere hours ahead of the SS Agents who are sent to arrest him. As a fugitive, Hoffman only has one objective: to fight one last battle against the people that turned against him, his friends and his family - and against one man in particular. ‘Into Darkness’ is a superb historical thriller, which sheds light not only upon the end days of the Third Reich but also upon one man, trying to serve his country and conscience.

The Breach


Patrick Lee - 2009
    It is the world's best-kept secret-and its most terrifying. Trying to regain his life in the Alaskan wilds, ex-con/ex-cop Travis Chase stumbles upon an impossible scene: a crashed 747 passenger jet filled with the murdered dead, including the wife of the [resident of the United States.Though a nightmare of monumental proportions, it pales before the terror to come, as Chase is dragged into a battle for the future that revolves around an amazing artifact. Allied with a beautiful covert operative whose life he saved, Chase must now play the role he's been destined for-a pawn of incomprehensible forces or humankind's final hope-as the race toward Apocalypse begins in earnest. Because something is loose in the world. And doomsday is not only possible...it is inevitable.

The Illusion of Separateness


Simon Van Booy - 2013
    The same world moves beneath each of them, and one by one, through seemingly random acts of selflessness, they discover the vital parts they have played in each other's lives, a realization that shatters the illusion of their separateness. Moving back and forth in time and across continents, The Illusion of Separateness displays the breathtaking skill of, "a truly special writer who does things with abstract language that is so evocative and original your breath literally catches in your chest" (Andre Dubus III).

A Gathering of Saints


Christopher Hyde - 1996
    At summer's end in 1940, London skies turn war-black as Hitler's airborne hordes begin the Blitz. From the bustling working-class East End to the Underground Stations at Charing Cross and Leicester Square, lethal Nazi Flammenbomben transform the city into a cauldron of human suffering. Against this terrifying scene, a lone psychopath plays his own ghastly game, stalking individual victims and killing them with methodical precision. Probing the murders is Detective Inspector Morris Black of Scotland Yard, a middle-aged Jewish widower gifted with an uncanny ability to divine the truth of a crime from the most meager evidence. As Black tracks his man - whom he dubs Queer Jack - from corpse to corpse, he discovers that each victim was killed at the site of a devastating Luftwaffe raid, only hours before the raid occurred! Black soon learns how explosive his discovery is when he is summoned into Churchill's Magic Circle - the supersecret group of officers, politicians, and spies desperate to draw the United States into war despite rumors that American ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy and his British allies want a separate peace with Hitler. Churchill's men tell Black that British intelligence has cracked "Ultra, " the Nazi military code. The secret must be kept from the Nazis - even if it means allowing thousands to be killed in cities the Magic Circle knows are about to be bombed. An even worse truth is revealed to Black - a Nazi spy in Britain, known toIntelligence as The Doctor, is probably on the trail of Queer Jack too. Somehow, the murderer knows the Ultra secret. If The Doctor finds him first, the Nazis will know that their code has been broken, and Britain could lose the war.

The Girl in Green


Derek B. Miller - 2017
    Near Checkpoint Zulu, one hundred miles from the Kuwaiti border, Thomas Benton meets Arwood Hobbes. Benton is a British journalist who reports from war zones in part to avoid his lackluster marriage and a daughter he loves but cannot connect with; Arwood is a mid-western American private who might be an insufferable ignoramus, or might be a genuine lunatic with a death wish--it's hard to tell. Desert Storm is over, peace has been declared, but as they argue about whether it makes sense to cross the nearest border in search of an ice cream, they become embroiled in a horrific attack in which a young local girl in a green dress is killed as they are trying to protect her. The two men walk away into their respective lives. But something has cracked for them both. Twenty-two years later, in another place, in another war, they meet again and are offered an unlikely opportunity to redeem themselves when that same girl in green is found alive and in need of salvation. Or is she?

The Lines We Leave Behind


Eliza Graham - 2018
    As she tries to make sense of her recent past, she recalls very little.But she still remembers wartime in Yugoslavia. There she and her lover risked everything to carry out dangerous work resisting the Germans—a heroic campaign in which many brave comrades were lost. After that, the trail disappears into confusion. How did she come to be trapped in a living nightmare?As she struggles to piece together the missing years of her life, she will have to confront the harrowing experiences of her special-operations work and peacetime marriage. Only then can she hope to regain the vital memories that will uncover the truth: is she really a violent criminal…or was she betrayed?

The Terminal List


Jack Carr - 2018
    But when those dearest to him are murdered on the day of his homecoming, Reece discovers that this was not an act of war by a foreign enemy but a conspiracy that runs to the highest levels of government.Now, with no family and free from the military’s command structure, Reece applies the lessons that he’s learned in over a decade of constant warfare toward avenging the deaths of his family and teammates. With breathless pacing and relentless suspense, Reece ruthlessly targets his enemies in the upper echelons of power without regard for the laws of combat or the rule of law.An intoxicating thriller that cautions against the seduction of absolute power and those who would do anything to achieve it, The Terminal List is perfect for fans of Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, Stephen Hunter, and Nelson DeMille.

National Security


Marc Cameron - 2011
    A public landmark. A suburban shopping mall. And now, the human body itself. Three Middle Eastern terrorists have been injected with a biological weapon, human time bombs unleashed on American soil. They are prepared to die. To spread their disease. To annihilate millions. If America hopes to fight this enemy from within, we need a new kind of weapon. Meet Special Agent Jericho Quinn. Air Force veteran. Champion boxer. Trained assassin. Hand-picked for a new global task force that, officially, does not exist, Quinn answers only to the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. President himself.His methods are as simple, and as brutal, as his codename.

Last Man Standing


David Baldacci - 2001
    As the FBI investigates, suspicion surrounding Web deepens. Now, he needs help from an unlikely ally in his desperate search for the killer of his friends, and finds himself up against a force intent on finishing the job that began in the alley.

The Sign


Raymond Khoury - 2009
    Like the first two, this new thriller combines gripping contemporary suspense with a high-concept mystery rooted in history, philosophy, religion, and science. And like those novels, it is bound for bestseller lists nationwide. In Antarctica, a scientific expedition drops anchor for a live news feed. As the CNN journalist begins her report, a massive, shimmering sphere of light suddenly appears in the sky, enveloping the ship in luminous white light before disappearing as mysteriously as it arrived, the entire event witnessed by an incredulous world audience.Meanwhile in a dusty bar in Egypt, a dozen men are lazily discussing the state of the world when the brilliant, glowing symbol on the television stops them cold. One man breaks out in a sweat, crosses himself repeatedly, and rushes out of the bar muttering the same phrase over and over again: It can't be.Across the Internet and around the globe, a stunning controversy threatens to consume the world: Has God finally decided to reveal himself? Or is something more sinister at hand? Raymond Khoury/Steve Berry interview STEVE BERRY: Your new thriller, THE SIGN. I'm gonna come right out and say it: I think it's your best one yet. What do you think?RAMOND KHOURY: Tough call. It's my new baby, and much as I adore its elder siblings, it does have that newborn magic to it.STEVE: Trust me, it is. It's also a bit of a departure from your first two books, in that it doesn't have the past-and-present storylines. Knowing how stories kind of take on a life of their own, that wasn't a conscious decision from the get-go, was it?RAYMOND KHOURY: No, it wasn't premeditated. It's just the way the story came out. The whole story happens in the present. It takes place over a few manic days, I think you're familiar with that pacing, right? And it deals with the present, it's about a what if situation that's very today and now, there's a mystery, something to figure out, but there's no throwback to the past, no long lost secret to uncover.STEVE BERRY: It's also very topical. Your editors must be pleased.RAYMOND: I guess it happened that way because the story came out of some very strong feelings I had, feelings about what was going on around the world, in the US and abroad.STEVE: Tell me about that process. Where the story came from.RAYMOND: It's where they all come from, isn't it? That kernel, that one thought or one observation you have that just sticks and triggers a book, the one that bugs you late at night and that you can't shake. This one came to me while watching the news one day, and every item, one after another, it was all bad news. Not just bad, but it was like a lot of people were behaving so insanely in so many places around the world, and, sadly, a lot of it was fuelled by the manipulation or distortion of religious faith.STEVE: By intolerance?RAYMOND: Exactly. Intolerance and closed minds. And it got me thinking. About how divided we are, about how so many people all over the world believe in the absolute infallibility of their faith and how it rules every aspect of their lives, you know what I mean, we're right, everyone else is wrong, that medieval mindset and wondering if anything could ever unite the planet under a single faith.STEVE: One global religion. RAYMOND: Well, imagine if something did happen that convinced everyone that what we had until now, all these different religions that have grown over the last few thousand years, what if something new came along that was so overwhelming that it was impossible to ignore? Would we listen? Would we drop our previous faiths and embrace it?STEVE: But your book's about much more than that. Without wanting to give too much away, it's really a political thriller, isn't it?RAYMOND: It's always so hard to talk about a book without giving too much away.STEVE: It's the fine line we walk.RAYMOND: True. But yes, you're right, it's really about the absolute power something like that would bring, and how it could be abused. Cause above all else, it's a thriller. There's got to be a brilliantly dastardly scheme, right?STEVE: Always. And this one certainly is dastardly. One thing I've noticed, though, in all three of your books so far, they're all, essentially, about the big questions that face us: why we believe, whether or not we have to die. Religion, longevity, life and death, science vs. faith ... Big questions. And in this one, you revisit, though in a completely different way, the power of religion, the good it can bring as well as the bad, something that was also central to The Last Templar. Will this always be your signature genre, books that have a big, central theme at their core?RAYMOND: You asked me earlier about where the story came from. For me, in order to get excited about a book, it has to have a big central theme about how we live at its heart, something I'm interested in exploring. It's got to be about something I care about deeply. That's what drives the story and the characters forward for me. That's what I hope makes the books stand out. That they're not just page-turners, which ain't easy in itself, but that they're also about something. I see it in your books too. A point of view about things, a passion for laying out interesting information about a topic that interests you. Michael Crichton used to do that very successfully. Dan Brown, of course, does it brilliantly. That's what makes the books worth writing, I think.STEVE: And in reading the book, it's clear you still had tons of research to do, even though there isn't a historic mystery to unravel?RAYMOND: Absolutely. Some of it was about history, the monasteries in Egypt, for one. Again, part of the story, organically. Had to be done, and we do love our history, don't we?STEVE: Guilty as charged.RAYMOND: But for this book, I didn't need to do that much of it's nothing like what you did for THE CHARLEMAGNE PURSUIT, for instance. Which I loved, by the way. Particularly since you beat me to using the Voynich Manuscript in a story!STEVE: We do seem to be spookily in sync with our writing as further evidenced by THE SIGN's opening in Antarctica?RAYMOND: I know!STEVE: So tell me, Matt and Gracie. Are we going to see them again?RAYMOND: I don't know. On the one hand, I envy your situation with Cotton Malone, you've got a solid anchor for your books, you're building this great world around him, his son and Stephanie and Henrik and Cassiopeia, who I hope we see again real soon, and it's meaty and it's epic and like the rest of your readers, I'm hooked and I want to know what they do next. You've got that, Lee Child has had it since day one with Reacher, Harlan Coben with Myron Bolitar, the list goes on. Great characters. I'd love to do that one day, but it has to feel right. I wasn't in that frame of mind in my first two books, certainly the world after the end of THE SANCTUARY would be a very different place from the world Mia started out in at the beginning of that book. Tess and Reilly, I could maybe bring back. A lot of fans have asked for that. But with THE SIGN, Iinitely think Matt and Gracie are characters that I could bring back. I'd like to put them through another wringer, and it feels like it would come naturally. But before I do that, I'm writing the next book which introduces a new lead character, so they'll be getting a bit of a breather.STEVE: They sure can use it. Good luck with the book.RAYMOND: Thank you.

City of Thieves


David Benioff - 2008
    Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible.By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.