Kill Decision


Daniel Suarez - 2012
    Unmanned weaponized drones already exist—they’re widely used by America in our war efforts in the Middle East. In Kill Decision, bestselling author Daniel Suarez takes that fact and the real science behind it one step further, with frightening results. Linda McKinney is a myrmecologist, a scientist who studies the social structure of ants. Her academic career has left her entirely unprepared for the day her sophisticated research is conscripted by unknown forces to help run an unmanned—and thanks to her research, automated—drone army. Odin is the secretive Special Ops soldier with a unique insight into the faceless enemy who has begun to attack the American homeland with drones programmed to seek, identify, and execute targets without human intervention. Together, McKinney and Odin must slow this advance long enough for the world to recognize its destructive power, because for thousands of years the “kill decision” during battle has remained in the hands of humans—and off-loading that responsibility to machines will bring unintended, possibly irreversible, consequences. But as forces even McKinney and Odin don’t understand begin to gather, and death rains down from above, it may already be too late to save humankind from destruction at the hands of our own technology.

Op-Center


Jeff Rovin - 1995
    It is run by a crack team of operatives both within its own walls and out in the field. When a job is too dirty--or too dangerous--it's the only place our government can turn.But nothing can prepare Director Paul Hood and his Op-Center crisis management team for what they're about to uncover--a very real, very frightening power play that could unleash new players in a new world order...

Area 51


Robert Doherty - 1997
    The President doesn't know about it. The press doesn't know about it. Just a few scientists and military personnel do, and they are about to make a very big mistake...Nashville, Tennessee...An unemployed freelance journalist receives an audio tape that nearly scares her to death - then send her racing to New Mexico.Outside Nellis Air Force Base, New Mexico...An investigative reporter and a UFO watcher sneak into a restricted zone called Area 51.Inside the Great Pyramid, Egypt...An archaeologist makes a startling discovery deep within the Lower Chamber - a discovery that could change the world.Inside Nellis Air Force Base, New Mexico...Mike Turcotte, formerly of Special Forces, joins Nightscape, the elite security force guarding Area 51, and sees something that makes his blood run cold.The White House, Washington, D.C....Dr. Lisa Duncan, the President's scientific adviser, leaves to join Majic-12, the top secret project at Nellis Air Force Base... to try to stop it before doomsday begins...

Point of Impact


Stephen Hunter - 1993
    Today, twenty years later, disgruntled hero of an unheroic war, all Bob Lee Swagger wants to be left alone and to leave the killing behind.But with consummate psychological skill, a shadowy military organization seduces Bob into leaving his beloved Arkansas hills for one last mission for his country, unaware until too late that the game is rigged.The assassination plot is executed to perfection—until Bob Lee Swagger, alleged lone gunman, comes out of the operation alive, the target of a nationwide manhunt, his only allies a woman he just met and a discredited FBI agent.Now Bob Lee Swagger is on the run, using his lethal skills once more—but this time to track down the men who set him up and to break a dark conspiracy aimed at the very heart of America.

One Rough Man


Brad Taylor - 2011
    Their existence is as essential as it is illegal. Commissioned at the highest level of the U.S. government. Protected from the prying eyes of Congress and the media. Built around the top operators from across the clandestine, intelligence, and special forces landscape. Designed to operate outside the bounds of U.S. law. Trained to exist on the ragged edge of human capability.Pike Logan was the most successful operator on the Taskforce, his instincts and talents unrivaled-until personal tragedy permanently altered his outlook on the world. Pike knows what the rest of the country might not want to admit: The real threat isn't from any nation, any government, any terrorist group. The real threat is one or two men, controlled by ideology, operating independently, in possession of a powerful weapon. Buried in a stack of intercepted chatter is evidence of two such men. The transcripts are scheduled for analysis in three months. The attack is mere days away. It is their bad luck that they're about to cross paths with Pike Logan. And Pike Logan has nothing left to lose.

Two Trains Running


Andrew Vachss - 2005
    Royal Beaumont is the "hillbilly boss" who turned Locke City from a dying town into a thriving vice capital. But organized crime outsiders are moving in on Beaumont's turf, so he reaches out for Dett in a high-risk move to maintain his power at all costs. Add a rival Irish political machine, a deeply entrenched neo-Nazi "party", the nascent black power movement, turf-disputing juvenile gangs, a muck-raking journalist who doubles as a blackmailer, the FBI--a covert observer and occasional participant which may itself be under surveillance-- and Locke City is about as stable as a nitroglycerin truck stalled on the railroad tracks.

Without Prejudice


Andrew Rosenheim - 2008
    Without Prejudice is a compulsive story of race and the dangers that can lie in the past.

The Athena Project


Brad Thor - 2010
    And not a moment too soon . . .From behind the rows of razor wire, a new breed of counterterrorism operator has emerged.Just as skilled, just as fearsome, and just as deadly as their colleagues, Delta Force’s newest members have only one thing setting them apart—their gender. Part of a top-secret, all-female program codenamed The Athena Project, four of Delta’s best and brightest women are about to undertake one of the nation’s deadliest assignments.When a terrorist attack in Rome kills more than twenty Americans, Athena Team members Gretchen Casey, Julie Ericsson, Megan Rhodes, and Alex Cooper are tasked with hunting down the Venetian arms dealer responsible for providing the explosives. But there is more to the story than anyone knows.In the jungles of South America, a young U.S. intelligence officer has made a grisly discovery. Surrounded by monoliths covered with Runic symbols, one of America’s greatest fears appears to have come true. Simultaneously in Colorado, a foreign spy is close to penetrating the mysterious secret the U.S. government has hidden beneath Denver International Airport.As the women close in on their target, they will soon learn that another attack—one of unimaginable proportions—has already been set in motion, and the greatest threat they face may be the secrets kept by their own government.

San Andreas


Alistair MacLean - 1984
    The San Andreas is a hospital ship, but the members of her crew do not believe that the red crosses on her sides will keep her safe. The author also wrote "Where Eagles Dare".

Those in Peril


Wilbur Smith - 2011
    While cruising the Indian Ocean, her yacht is hijacked by Somalian pirates and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Cayla, kidnapped. The pirates demand a crippling twenty-billion-dollar ransom for her release, and complicated political and diplomatic sensitivities render the major powers incapable of intervening.With growing evidence of the horrific torture to which Cayla is being subjected, Hazel calls on Hector Cross to help her rescue her daughter. Hector is the man behind Cross Bow Security, the company contracted to Bannock Oil Corporation to provide all their protection. He is a formidable fighting man. Between them, Hazel and Hector are determined to take the law into their own hands.

2 in the Hat


Raffi Yessayan - 2010
    Even the mayor’s Street Saviors taskforce of ex-cons, devoted to steering kids out of the thug life, are working overtime to stop the bloodshed. But who will stop the even greater threat that’s about to descend when a murderous psychopath steps out of the past?Memories of the infamous Blood Bath Killer still loom large, especially for homicide detective Angel Alves, who helped bring down the multiple-murderer whose rampage shocked the city. So when a pair of students turn up bizarrely slain, Alves fears that another serial killer is stalking Boston. A fear that becomes fact when his ex-partner, Wayne Mooney, recognizes the murders as the work of the Prom Night Killer—whose unsolved crimes have haunted Mooney for a decade. Now, with hands-on assistant DA Conrad Darget backing them, Alves and Mooney set out to stop grim history from repeating itself. But matching wits with a twisted mind is a dangerous game. Especially when there are no rules—and your allies really may be your enemies. Mixing edgy psychological suspense, hard-boiled realism, and staccato bursts of pulse-quickening action, 2 in the Hat makes another slam-dunk winning case for Raffi Yessayan, hailed by Robin Moore, author of The French Connection, as “the best prosecutor-turned-crime-writer to hit the streets since George V. Higgins and Scott Turow.”

Hell Island


Matthew Reilly - 2005
    But when all contact is lost with this mystery island, four crack special force units are brought in - can anything prepare them for the horror of what they will find there?

The Law of Nines


Terry Goodkind - 2009
    Inheriting a huge expanse of land should have made him a rich and happy man; but something about this birthday, his name, and the beautiful woman whose life he just saved, has suddenly made him-and everyone he loves-into a target. A target for extreme and uncompromising violence . . . In Alex, Terry Goodkind brings to life a modern hero in a whole new kind of high-octane thriller.

Not a Drill


Lee Child - 2014
    But even a pleasant hike on a beautiful summer day turns into a walk on the wild side . . . and perhaps something far more sinister.Jack Reacher is on the road, hitching a ride with some earnest young Canadians who are planning a hike through some of the last unspoiled wilderness in North America in the dense forests of Maine. They part ways after sharing a hot meal, and Reacher checks out a quiet town surrounded by countryside serene enough to cool even his raging wanderlust. But not for long. First the trail is suddenly and inexplicably closed. Then the military police show up in force. Maybe it's a drill. Or maybe it's trouble—the kind of trouble that always finds Reacher, no matter how far he travels off the beaten path.

Breathless


Dean Koontz - 2009
    That night, through the trees, under the moon, a pair of singular animals will watch Grady's isolated home, waiting to make their approach.  A few miles away, Camillia Rivers, a local veterinarian, begins to unravel the threads of a puzzle that will bring all the forces of a government in peril to her door. At a nearby farm, long-estranged identical twins come together to begin a descent into darkness…In Las Vegas, a specialist in chaos theory probes the boundaries of the unknowable…On a Seattle golf course, two men make matter-of-fact arrangements for murder…Along a highway by the sea, a vagrant scarred by the past begins a trek toward his destiny… In a novel that is at once wholly of our time and timeless, fearless and funny, Dean Koontz takes readers into the moment between one turn of the world and the next, across the border between knowing and mystery. It is a journey that will leave all who take it Breathless.