House of Cards


Michael Dobbs - 1989
    He has his hands on every secret in politics - and is willing to betray them all to become Prime Minister. Mattie Storin is a tenacious young political correspondent. She faces the biggest challenge of her life when she stumbles upon a scandalous web of intrigue and financial corruption at the very highest levels. She is determined to reveal the truth, but she must risk everything to do so . . .

Black Sunday


Thomas Harris - 1975
    . . 80,000 people had better get ready to die. — The Super Bowl--where thousands have gathered for an all-American tradition. Suddenly it's the most terrifying place on earth . . . — Michael Lander is the most dangerous man in America. He pilots a television blimp over packed football stadiums every weekend. He is fascinated with explosives. And he happens to be very, very crazy. That's why a beautiful PLO operative has seduced him. That's why--on Super Bowl Sunday--the world will witness the bloody assassination of the U. S. president and the worst mass murder in history. Unless someone discovers what Michael Lander plans . . . and can kill him first.

Saving Max


Antoinette van Heugten - 2010
    Until he's accused of murder.Attorney Danielle Parkman knows her teenage son Max's behavior has been getting worse—using drugs and lashing out. But she can't accept the diagnosis she receives at a top-notch adolescent psychiatric facility that her son is deeply disturbed. Dangerous.Until she finds Max, unconscious and bloodied, beside a patient who has been brutally stabbed to death.Trapped in a world of doubt and fear, barred from contacting Max, Danielle clings to the belief that her son is innocent. But has she, too, lost touch with reality? Is her son really a killer?With the justice system bearing down on them, Danielle steels herself to discover the truth, no matter what it is. She'll do whatever it takes to find the killer and to save her son from being destroyed by a system that's all too eager to convict him.

The Wrong Man


John Katzenbach - 2006
    But he becomes uneasy after finding an anonymous love letter hidden in his daughter's room: "No one could ever love you like I do. No one ever will. We will be together forever. One way or another." But the reality of Ashley's plight far exceeds Scott's worst suspicions. One drink too many had led Ashley, a beautiful, bright art student, into what she thought was just a fling with a blue-collar bad boy. But now, no amount of pleading or reasoning can discourage his phone calls, ardent e-mails, and constant, watchful gaze. Michael O'Connell is but a malignant shadow of a man. His brash, handsome features conceal a black and empty soul. Control is his religion. Cunning and criminal skill are his stock-in-trade. Rage is his language. The harder Ashley tries to break free, the deeper Michael burrows into every aspect of her life, so she turns in desperation to her divorced parents and her mother's new partner-three people still locked in a coldly civilized triangle of resentment. But their fierce devotion to Ashley is the common bond that will draw them together to face down a predator. For Ashley's family, it is a test of primal love that will drive them to the extreme edge-and beyond-in a battle of wills that escalates into a life-or-death war to protect their own. From the bestselling master of suspense, John Katzenbach, The "Wrong Man" is an elegantly crafted and breathtakingly intense read that asks the question, "How far would you go to save the child you love?"

Catch Me When I Fall


Nicci French - 2005
    But that's only one side of Holly: the other takes regular walks on the wild side. When the two sides of Holly's life collide, her world spirals out of control. Cover Artist: Tom Hallman

The Prometheus Deception


Robert Ludlum - 2000
    After fifteen years as a brilliant master spy, Nick Bryson has disappeared into anonymity as a professor at an exclusive college in western Pennsylvania-- until he's suddenly lured back into the game.The ultimate threat. Recruited by the CIA, he's been commissioned to track the moves of the Directorate. Once, the ultra-secret intelligence agency was Bryson's training ground. Now it's a multinational terrorist conspiracy bent on global domination.The ultimate deception. But to eliminate the core of corruption means plunging into his own past, investigating the motives of a beautiful stranger who may be his greatest downfall, and infiltrating a secret nexus of power called Prometheus that holds the terrifying clues to his past-- and the even more terrifying possibilities of the future...

Paper Money


Ken Follett - 1977
    Then three stories break: an attempted suicide, a hijack, and a takeover bid. They seem unrelated – until Evening Post reporters ask questions. Why is a Jamaican bank in trouble? Who drove the Rolls-Royce seen near the raid? Who was the man with gunshot wounds? As the day wears on, new questions arise – about paper money.

Apaches


Lorenzo Carcaterra - 1997
    Dead-Eye. Pins. Geronimo. Reverend Jim. Mrs. Columbo. They were great cops. The best cops. But they are cops no more.            Now they are apaches--a renegade unit working on their own.                     With this novel, the author of the stunning #1 bestseller Sleepers returns to the mean streets he knows so well. And in doing so, he has written his most explosive, electrifying, and startling book yet.                      It is the early 1980s. Crack cocaine has made its devastating appearance. Violence is escalating and so is an unnerving lack of morality. Things are happening that have never happened before. One of those things is the brutal kidnapping of an innocent 12-year-old girl. But the kidnapper has made a deadly mistake. He has brought Boomer Frontierie back to life, back to the streets. And back into action. A New York City detective forced to retire after being wounded in a drug bust, Boomer thirsts to return to the life he loved--the life of a cop. When an old friend turns to him for help, Boomer has the excuse he needs. And when the simple kidnapping turns into something more, something much more evil, even more horrifying, Boomer realizes that he can once again find a way to serve justice. There are others like Boomer. Cops who can no longer be cops. He brings them together, bringing them back to life as well. Even as they face almost certain death. Apaches is the story of an extraordinary band of cops. Some might call them criminals. Some might call them heroes. But theirs is a world where good is always shadowed by bad, where right is almost indecipherable from wrong, and where the living can, within mere moments, cross over to the world of the dead.        Lorenzo Carcaterra has written the most exciting novel of the year. Like Sleepers, it is a book that will never be forgotten.From the Hardcover edition.

After Anna


Alex Lake - 2015
    A girl is missing. Five years old, taken from outside her school. She has vanished, traceless. The police are at a loss; her parents are beyond grief. Their daughter is lost forever, perhaps dead, perhaps enslaved. But the biggest mystery is yet to come: one week after she was abducted, their daughter is returned. She has no memory of where she has been. And this, for her mother, is just the beginning of the nightmare.

The Fourth Protocol


Frederick Forsyth - 1984
    Although one of the most notorious thieves in London, he is enough of a patriot to anonymously send the documents to MI5 so that they might locate the traitor. In Moscow, British defector Kim Philby drafts a memorandum for the Soviet General Secretary stating that, if the Labour Party wins the next general election in the United Kingdom (scheduled for sometime in the subsequent eighteen months), the "hard left" of the party will oust the moderate populist Neil Kinnock in favour of a radical new leader who will adopt a true Marxist-Leninist manifesto, including the expulsion of all American forces from the United Kingdom and the country's withdrawal from and repudiation of NATO. In conjunction with a GRU general, an academic named Krilov, and a master strategist, Philby devises "Plan Aurora" to ensure a Labour victory by exploiting the party's support for unilateral disarmament - although it is noted that the strategist, a nuclear physicist and chess Grand Master, has come up with most of the plan's strategy.

The Girl in Room 105


Chetan Bhagat - 2018
    I hate my job and my girlfriend left me. Ah, the beautiful Zara. Zara is from Kashmir. She is a Muslim. And did I tell you my family is a bit, well, traditional? Anyway, leave that.Zara and I broke up four years ago. She moved on in life. I didn’t. I drank every night to forget her. I called, messaged, and stalked her on social media. She just ignored me.However, that night, on the eve of her birthday, Zara messaged me. She called me over, like old times, to her hostel room 105. I shouldn’t have gone, but I did… and my life changed forever.This is not a love story. It is an unlove story.

Chill Factor


Sandra Brown - 2005
    Not so, lately. Four women have disappeared from Cleary over the past two years. And there’s always a blue ribbon left near the spot where each of the women was last seen. There are no bodies, no other clues, and no suspicion as to who their abductor might be. And now, another woman has disappeared without a trace. It is to this backdrop that Lilly Martin returns to close the sale of her mountain cabin, marking the end of her turbulent eight-year marriage to Dutch Burton, Cleary’s chief of police. Dutch’s reluctance to let her go isn’t Lilly’s only obstacle. As she’s trying to outrun a snowstorm, her car skids on the icy road and strikes a man who emerges from the woods on foot. She recognizes the injured man as Ben Tierney, whom she’d met the previous summer. They’re forced to wait out the storm in the cabin, but as the hours of their confinement mount, Lilly begins to wonder if the greatest danger to her safety isn’t the blizzard outside, but the mysterious man right beside her. Is Ben Tierney the feared abductor? Or is he who he claims to be...her rescuer from harm and from the tragedy that haunts her?

A Matter of Honor


Jeffrey Archer - 1986
    A disgraced British colonel bequeaths a mysterious letter to his only son. But the moment Adam Scott opens the yellowing envelope, he sets into motion a deadly chain of events that threatens to shake the very foundations of the free world.Within days, Adam's lover is brutally murdered and he's running for his life through the great cities of Europe, pursued not only by the KGB, but by the CIA and his own countrymen as well. Their common intent is to kill him before the truth comes out. While powerful men in smoke-filled rooms plot ever more ingenious means of destroying him, Adam finds himself betrayed and abandoned even by those he holds most dear.When at last he comes to understand what he is in possession of, he's even more determined to protect it, for it's more than a matter of life and death-it's a matter of honor.

The 500


Matthew Quirk - 2012
    Their specialty: pulling strings and peddling influence for the five hundred most powerful people inside the Beltway, the men and women who really run Washington -- and by extension the country, and the world. The namesake of the firm, Henry Davies, knows everyone who matters; more importantly, he knows their secrets. Davies' experience goes back 40 years -- he worked for Lyndon Johnson, jumped shipped to Nixon, then put out his own shingle as the Hill's most cut-throat and expensive fixer. Now he's looking for a protégé to tackle his most high-stakes deal yet, and Mike fits the bill. Quickly pulled into a seductive, dangerous web of power and corruption, Mike struggles to find his way out. But how do you save your soul when you've made a deal with the devil?

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three


John Godey - 1973
    Anyone who tries to get up, or even moves, will be shot. There will be no further warning. If you move you will be killed…” Four men, armed with submachine guns, have seized a New York City subway train, holding all seventeen passengers—and the entire city—hostage. The identities of the hijackers are unknown. Their demands seem impossible. Their threats are real. Their escape seems inconceivable.Only one thing is certain: they aren’t stopping for anything.