Book picks similar to
Venom by Colin Falconer


thriller
adventure
fiction
colin-falconer

The Truth Commissioner


David Park - 2008
    In a community where truth is often tribal and partial, the secret they share threatens to destroy what they have each built in the present.

Ill Wind


Kevin J. Anderson - 1995
    Desperate to avert environmental damage—and a PR disaster—the multinational oil company releases an untested "designer microbe" to break up the spill.An "oil-eating" microbe, designed to consume anything made of petrocarbons: oil, gasoline, synthetic fabrics, and of course plastic.What the company doesn't realize is that their microbe propagates through the air. But when every car in the Bay Area turns up with an empty gas tank, they begin to suspect something is terribly wrong.And when, in just a few days, every piece of plastic in the world has dissolved, it's too late...

Cat's Cradle


Maurice Baring - 1925
    With subtle twists and turns in a fascinating portrait of society, Maurice Baring conveys the moral that love is too strong to be overcome by mere mortals.

Rosetta


Barbara Ewing - 2007
    She thinks she is named after the Princess Rosetta of the fairytales, who married the King of the Peacocks and lived happily ever after. But when she finds that it is a mysterious small port town in Egypt that gave her her name, her interest in hieroglyphics is born. Years later, when Rose is an older, wiser and sadder woman, it is her love of language that saves her life. The French Revolution; the rise of the power of the English church; the battles for Egypt between the British and the French; the discovery of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone in that same small port town - and above all the machinations of a rich, amoral, social-climbing member of the new' aristocracy and the extraordinary characters that surround him - all whirlpool together to carry Rose into France and a shared moment with Napoleon Bonaparte, and into the dark, unknown world of North Africa in her search to understand the meaning of words, and to find a child of her own.

The Grand Duchess of Nowhere


Laurie Graham - 2014
    For Ducky, Princess Victoria Melita, hers was a Romanov cousin, a member of the doomed Russian royal family. Her father is Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria's second son. Her mother is Grand Duchess Marie, the daughter of Tsar Alexander II. Ducky seems doomed to be a pawn on her grandmother's dynastic chessboard. But Ducky is not so easily controlled. In an era when death is considered preferable to divorce she fights for the freedom to be with the true love of her life. From disgraced exile in Paris to the glitter of St Petersburg and the mud and carnage of the Eastern Front, she forges her own path. As Russia descends into the chaos of 1917 and the Romanov dynasty falters, Ducky is right at the heart of events. Exiled once more, she tells us her story.

Avenger


Frederick Forsyth - 2003
    But Dexter is no ordinary man.The summer before he goes to college, Ricky Colenso travels to Bosnia to volunteer as an aid worker. A few weeks later, he disappears and is never heard from again. A family grieves and is offered little hope--in the fog of that horrible time and place, the killer, too, has vanished.Or so it would seem. For in a world that has forgotten right and wrong, there are few like Cal Dexter who can settle the score. And so, years later, a worldwide chase is on and Dexter begins to draw a net around the killer. But this time CIA agent Paul Devereux must find a way to stop Dexter before his quest for vengeance throws the world into chaos.A heart-stopping novel of murder and mystery, double-cross and triple-cross, old loyalties and new hatreds, Avenger has all of Frederick Forsyth's page-turning trademarks.

27


William Diehl - 1990
    Her murder forever changes her lover, Francis Scott Keegan, a relentless anti-Nazi mercenary, who becomes locked in a desperate cat-and-mouse game with the Third Reich's perfect spy, a man of a thousand faces. In an arena that encompasses presidents and gangsters, spies and sirens, the deadly present and the dark past, Keegan pursues his elusive quarry into the cutting edge of world events--and into the secret inner workings of a terrifying mission known only as "27.""The best book of its kind since THE DAY OF THE JACKAL...Edge-of-the-seat stuff."PEOPLE

Torrents


Marie-Anne Desmarest - 1938
    About the life they build together and then how his past irrevocably alters their future.

Forgotten


Heleyne Hammersley - 2016
    The doctor names her Kai, the Thai word for fever.Unable to recall what led her to end up at the bottom of a cliff, Kai’s only clue to her identity is a diary. Stuck in a foreign land with no memory, she begins to unpick the truth about her past. And she will discover who she and why she is in danger…This is Kai’s story.

Exocet


Jack Higgins - 1983
    The wild card is the Exocet -- the enemy, close to acquiring the deadly French missile, will soon be capable of smashing British defenses -- and throwing the global balance of power into chaos.

The Tournament


Matthew Reilly - 2013
    Under its charismatic Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, it is an empire on the rise. It has defeated Christian fleets. It has conquered Christian cities.Then the Sultan sends out an invitation to every king in Europe: send forth your champion to compete in a tournament unlike any other.We follow the English delegation, selected by King Henry VIII himself, to the glittering city of Constantinople, where the most amazing tournament ever staged will take place.But when the stakes are this high, not everyone plays fair, and for our team of plucky English heroes, winning may not be the primary goal. As a series of barbaric murders take place, a more immediate goal might simply be staying alive…

The Queen's Rivals


Brandy Purdy - 2013
    Tyrannized by Bloody Mary and the Virgin Queen, the sisters feared love was unthinkable —and the scaffold all but unavoidable...Raised to fear her royal blood and what it might lead men to do in her name, Mary Grey dreads what will become of herself and her elder sisters under the reigns of Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I. On their honor, they have no designs on the crown, yet are condemned to solitude, forbidden to wed. Though Mary, accustomed to dwelling in the shadows, the subject of whispers, may never catch the eye of a gentleman, her beautiful and brilliant sisters long for freedoms that would surely cost their lives. And so, wizened for her years, Mary can only hope for divine providence amid a bleak present and a future at the whim of the throne — unless destiny gains the upper hand.A gripping and bittersweet tale of broken families and broken hearts, courage and conviction, The Queen's Rivals recounts an astonishing chapter in the hard-won battle for the Tudor throne.

Artifact


Gregory Benford - 1985
    And the miracle it contains does not belong on this Earth.It is mystery and madness -- an enigma with no equal in recorded history. It is mankind's greatest discovery ... and worst nightmare.It may have already obliterated a world. Ours is next.

Ravenhill (Jackie Shaw, #1)


John Steele - 2017
    He treads a fine line keeping psychotic hard-man Rab Simpson in check while sleeping with gang leader Billy Tyrie’s beautiful wife on the side. When a bomb claims nine lives, he is given the role of the getaway driver in a planned reprisal killing, a key role in a major operation. But Jackie may not be who he seems... Twenty years later, Jackie returns to the city for his father’s funeral after disappearing in mysterious circumstances. He wants to mourn then leave, but when figures from his past emerge, he is left with no choice but to revisit his violent former life. The first in the Jackie Shaw series, RAVENHILL is a gripping début novel from a brilliant new voice in crime fiction. The second in the series, SEVEN SKINS, is coming soon. ‘Tense, unsparing, compassionate and exceptionally well-written, this brilliant thriller brings vividly to life East Belfast in war and peace, its self-appointed community defenders turned brutal predators, and the security forces who struggled to contain them.’ Ruth Dudley Edwards

Remains Silent


Michael Baden - 2005
    Together they stumble upon a decades-old mystery involving a long-shuttered mental institution, shocking medical experiments, and a troubled love affair.