Two hundred and fifty oil workers mysteriously vanish from the offshore Aeschylus drilling platform without a trace. Production stops. Communications cease. The Valley Oil Corporation finds itself on the brink of disaster and prepares to send an investigative team deep into the south Atlantic.Kate McCreedy, daughter of the late U.S. Vice President, is whisked into a secret board meeting shortly after inheriting a windfall of Valley Oil stock. Her father not only left her his fortune, however, but an envelope containing covert satellite images of The Aeschylus. Believing the images are linked to the developing crisis, she volunteers to join the team.Upon arrival, they discover the platform is overgrown with a massive, tentacle-like fungus, and the missing workers are nowhere to be found. Kate delves deeper into the mystery, discovering a nearby island, an abandoned military base, and a secret dating back some eighty years. It's not long before she must make a choice: assist in a corporate cover-up, or destroy her family legacy with the truth.

Everything starts somewhere…For elite military cop Jack Reacher, that somewhere was Carter Crossing, Mississippi, way back in 1997. A lonely railroad track. A crime scene. A coverup.A young woman is dead, and solid evidence points to a soldier at a nearby military base. But that soldier has powerful friends in Washington.Reacher is ordered undercover – to find out everything he can, to control the local police, and then to vanish. Reacher is a good soldier. But when he gets to Carter Crossing, he finds layers no one saw coming, and the investigation spins out of control.Local sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux has a thirst for justice – and an appetite for secrets. Uncertain they can trust one another, Reacher and Deveraux reluctantly join forces. Reacher works to uncover the truth, while others try to bury it forever. The conspiracy threatens to shatter his faith in his mission, and turn him into a man to be feared.A novel of unrelenting suspense that could only come from the pen of #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child, The Affair is the start of the Reacher saga, a thriller that takes Reacher – and his readers – right to the edge… and beyond.

A chilling story of modern terrorism from the grandmaster of international intrigue.The Day of the Jackal, The Dogs of War, The Odessa File-the books of Frederick Forsyth have helped define the international thriller as we know it today. Combining meticulous research with crisp narratives and plots as current as the headlines, Forsyth shows us the world as it is in a way that few have ever been able to equal.And the world as it is today is a very scary place.When British and American intelligence catch wind of a major Al Qaeda operation in the works, they instantly galvanize- but to do what? They know nothing about it: the what, where, or when. They have no sources in Al Qaeda, and it's impossible to plant someone. Impossible, unless…The Afghan is Izmat Khan, a five-year prisoner of Guantánamo Bay and a former senior commander of the Taliban. The Afghan is also Colonel Mike Martin, a twenty-five-year veteran of war zones around the world-a dark, lean man born and raised in Iraq. In an attempt to stave off disaster, the intelligence agencies will try to do what no one has ever done before-pass off a Westerner as an Arab among Arabs-pass off Martin as the trusted Khan.It will require extraordinary preparation, and then extraordinary luck, for nothing can truly prepare Martin for the dark and shifting world into which he is about to enter. Or for the terrible things he will find there.Filled with remarkable detail and compulsive drama, The Afghan is further proof that Forsyth is truly master of suspense.

The explosive new thriller of a world that so nearly existedAfrica, 1952. More than a decade has passed since Britain’s humiliation at Dunkirk brought an end to the war and the beginning of an uneasy peace with Hitler.The swastika flies from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. Britain and a victorious Nazi Germany have divided the continent. The SS has crushed the native populations and forced them into labor. Gleaming autobahns bisect the jungle, jet fighters patrol the skies. For almost a decade an uneasy peace has ensued.Now, however, the plans of Walter Hochburg, messianic racist and architect of Nazi Africa, threaten Britain’s ailing colonies.Sent to curb his ambitions is Burton Cole: a one-time assassin torn between the woman he loves and settling an old score with Hochburg. If he fails unimaginable horrors will be unleashed on the continent. No one – black or white – will be spared.But when his mission turns to disaster, Burton must flee for his life.It is a flight that will take him from the unholy ground of Kongo to SS slave camps to war-torn Angola – and finally a conspiracy that leads to the dark heart of The Afrika Reich itself.http://afrikareich.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqFG2avL-G8

Ben Hope was an elite soldier before his troubles forced him to quit the army. Now he's using his skills to rescue kidnapped children. But when Ben is approached by a millionaire businessman to trace an ancient lost manuscript whose secret could save a dying girl, he finds himself embarking on the strangest mission of his life. With fiendish codes to crack and dangerous enemies in hot pursuit, Ben teams up with Roberta Ryder, a beautiful American scientist. The trail leads them from Paris to the ancient Cathar strongholds of the Languedoc. There lies an astonishing secret which has been hidden through the ages.

For those readers who enjoy the Dan Brown type of story such as The DaVinci Code, and, Angels and Demons, this is a book I'm sure you will enjoy. Indeed Steve Berry's style is very much like Brown's – short paragraphs, fast-paced, leaving no space in which to get bored. Also, he writes the type of mystery that I personally like. One that gives the reader a lot of real information even if the main subject matter seems a bit far-fetched. Wisely, I think, considering the furor that followed the publication of, The Da Vinci Code, Berry concludes with a writer's note detailing fact from fiction.The subject of this book is the lost great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, once the repository of nearly all of the collected knowledge and wisdom of the civilized world containing over a half million scrolls, maps, books and codices. Works by Euclid the mathematician, Herophiles on medicine, Manetho's writings on the historical Pharaohs and the poems of Callimachus to name a few. The library was sacked and burned about 1500 years ago by invading Muslim forces. Christians did similar things, of course. Look at the Crusaders for instance. The three major religions have all done it down through the ages. What irreplaceable knowledge, writings and art have been lost!According to this story, we find that much of the famous library had been spirited away before the sacking armies reached Alexandria. Stories such as this have been around for years. That, in itself, would be a staggering find but reportedly among the documents is one that would blow the lid off the situation in the Middle East, mainly the conflict between the Palestinians the Israelis. It refers to differing translations of the Jewish Old Testament and involves Saudi Arabia.Cotton Malone, a retired U.S. agent of a section of their Secret Service named The Magellan Billet, is the book's main character. He is separated from his wife, Pam, an agent of the U.S. Department of Justice and shares custody with her of their much loved teenage son, George. The stress of their lifestyles has pushed them apart and it was not an amicable separation especially on Pam's side. Cotton now lives in Copenhagen, Denmark and has established a fine bookshop over the course of a year.The action starts straight off with an enraged Pam turning up on his doorstep early one morning literally screaming that George was kidnapped two days earlier and that it was all Cotton's fault. The kidnappers said that if she contacted the police the boy would die and she was not to fly to Copenhagen for two days. She was then to give Cotton a particular cell phone and wait. A very angry and frightened Cotton awaits the call, while trying to calm down his hysterical wife. Apparently he has access to something called the Alexandra Link, the only one in the world supposedly that does.They want it and will do anything necessary to get it. To Pam the answer is simple. Give them what they want and get George back unharmed. But Cotton can't or won't do this. This Link and the knowledge it would reveal would affect the entire world. The world's three main religions would be shaken to their roots. I am not giving the plot away by saying that the information involves the covenant, between Abraham and the Jewish God, Genesis 13.verses 14-17.While Pam rages on, the call comes, and while Cotton desperately considers what to do, the bookshop beneath them is blown up by rocket fire. This is just to help him make up his mind. They escape over the rooftops and head for the home of their good friend, Henrick Thorveldson. From there the reader is carried along, first to the castle Kronborg Slot also known as Elsinore in Shakespeare's Hamlet, where they are fired on by an assassin and one becomes involved with the highest levels of the U.S. and Middle Eastern governments and the Israeli – Palestine years long conflict. We meet the mysterious Palestinian George Haddad who is a "guardian". But a guardian of what, precisely? It would seem that all was not burned in the destruction of Alexandria and some papers still exist somewhere concerning this conflict. Does he guard this?Eventually Cotton contacts his previous boss, Stephanie Nelle, the head of this Magellan Billet section who he trusts implicitly and informs her of what is happening. She appears to know something of this already but she in turn trusts no one around her even up to the Oval Office. She has discovered that some top files have been breached in Washington to which only very few have the access codes. There is Attorney General Brent Green; Securities Advisor Lawrence Daley; someone called Blue Chair and top agents of many countries including Mossad.And so we are led with Cotton and Pam to monasteries, deserts, mountain retreats, various quests, even Camp David and eventually back to Denmark. Danger is everywhere. How does a book like this end when you know the mystery must endure? Well, you will have to read it, as I cannot give it away. I'm sure you will enjoy it.

She was a vision. She was a siren. She was a nightmare. She was dead. Now he needed her to disappear. And he knew just how to make it happen. The Palm Beach elite go to great lengths to protect their own-and their own no longer includes Elena Estes. Once upon a time a child of wealth and privilege, Elena turned her back on that life. Betrayed and disillusioned by those closest to her, she chose the life of an undercover cop, the hunt for justice her own personal passion. Then a tragic, haunting mistake ended her career. Now Elena exists on the fringes of her old life, training horses for a living. But a shocking event is about to draw her back into the painful vortex she's fought so hard to leave behind.First she finds the body-a young woman used, murdered, and dumped in a canal. Not just a victim, but a friend. As Elena delves into her dead friend's secret life, she discovers ties not only to the Russian mob but also to a group of powerful and wealthy Palm Beach bad boys known for giving each other alibis to cover a multitude of sins. A group that includes a man Elena once knew very well-her former fiancé, Bennett Walker, a man she knows has already escaped justice at least once in his life.Finding her friend's killer will put Elena at odds with her old life, with her new lover, and with herself. But she is determined to reveal the truth-a truth that will shock Palm Beach society to its core, and could very well get her killed.

Marcus Sakey, 'the new reigning prince of crime fiction' (Chicago Tribune) is the most acclaimed new thriller writer in recent memory. In his next taut, propulsive novel, four friends from the old neighborhood have dreams of a better life. And they've worked hard for it. A bartender. A failing stock broker. A hotel doorman. A travel agent. In a world where CEOs steal millions while their employees worry about their next paycheck, where the few dollars any of them have saved are held hostage to the whims of billionaires a world away, the honest approach got these four nowhere.Now they've gone too far with a plan to change their situation and their world is falling apart. To save their own lives, they've had to take the lives of others. Tensions and rivalries they thought long buried are flaring to angry life. The clock is ticking on a situation they don't understand. As things unravel faster and faster, each of them will have to choose between saving everything they treasure and doing the right thing. And for four people pushed to the ragged edge, the only thing more dangerous than the men coming after them might be their best friends.

Sonea, former street urchin, now a Black Magician of Kyralia, is horrified when her son, Lorkin, volunteers to assist Dannyl in his new role as Guild Ambassador to Sachaka, a land still ruled by cruel black magicians. When word comes that Lorkin has gone missing Sonea is desperate to find him, but if she leaves the city she will be exiled forever, and her old friend Cery needs her help. Most of his family has been murdered. The Thieves have been waging a deadly underworld war for years, and now it appears they have been doing so with magical assistance…

Winner of the CWA Historical Dagger for FictionThe Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year (nominee)***'An enticing work of fiction… Taylor takes account of both a Georgian formality and a pre-Victorian laxity in social and sexual matters; he is adept at historical recreation, and allows a heady decor to work in his favour by having his mysteries come wrapped around by a creepy London fog or embedded picturesquely in a Gloucestershire snowdrift' -Patricia Craig, TLS'Without question, the best book of 2003, and possibly the best book of the decade, is Andrew Taylor's historical masterpiece, The American Boy. A truly captivating novel, rich with the sounds, smells, and cadences of nineteenth-century England' -Manda Scott, Glasgow Herald'Long, sumptuous, near-edible account of Regency rogues – wicked bankers, City swindlers, crooked pedagogues and ladies on the make – all joined in the pursuit of the rich, full, sometimes shady life. A plot stuffed with incident and character, with period details impeccably rendered' -Literary Review'Taylor spins a magnificent tangential web… The book is full of sharply etched details evoking Dickensian London and is also a love story, shot through with the pain of a penniless and despised lover. This novel has the literary values which should take it to the top of the lists' -Scotland on Sunday'It is as if Taylor has used the great master of the bizarre as both starting-and finishing-point, but in between created a period piece with its own unique voice. The result should satisfy those drawn to the fictions of the nineteenth century, or Poe, or indeed to crime writing at its most creative'-Spectator'Andrew Taylor has flawlessly created the atmosphere of late-Regency London in The American Boy, with a cast of sharply observed characters in this dark tale of murder and embezzlement' -Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph'Madness, murder, misapplied money and macabre marriages are interspersed with coffins, corpses and cancelled codicils… an enjoyable and well-constructed puzzle' -Tom Deveson, Sunday Times***Interweaving real and fictional elements, The American Boy is a major new literary historical crime novel in the tradition of An Instance of the Fingerpost and Possession. Edgar Allan Poe is the American boy, a child standing on the edge of mysteries. In 1819 two Americans arrive in London, and soon afterwards a bank collapses. A man is found dead and horribly mutilated on a building site. A heiress flirts with her inferiors. A poor schoolmaster struggles to understand what is happening before it destroys him and those he loves. But the truth, like the youthful Poe himself, has its origins in the new world as well as the old. The American Boy is a 21st-century novel with a 19th-century voice. It is both a multi-layered literary murder mystery and a love story, its setting ranging from the coal-scented urban jungle of late Regency London to the stark winter landscapes of rural Gloucestershire. And at its centre is the boy who does not really belong anywhere, an actor who never learns the significance of his part.

Happy fifty third birthday, Doctor. Welcome to the first day of your death. Dr. Frederick Starks, a New York psychoanalyst, has just received a mysterious, threatening letter. Now he finds himself in the middle of a horrific game designed by a man who calls himself Rumplestiltskin. The rules: in two weeks, Starks must guess his tormentor's identity. If Starks succeeds, he goes free. If he fails, Rumplestiltskin will destroy, one by one, fifty-two of Dr. Starks' loved ones-unless the good doctor agrees to kill himself. In a blistering race against time, Starks' is at the mercy of a psychopath's devious game of vengeance. He must find a way to stop the madman-before he himself is driven mad…

In the middle of the night at the Museum of Volterra, young archeologist Fabrizio Castellani is immersed in his work – research into the famous Etruscan statue known as 'The Night Shadow'. Completely engrossed, he is startled by the phone ringing. An icy female voice warns him to abandon his work at once. A series of gruesome killings shortly follow, throwing the people of Volterra into a panic. The victims – all involved in the desecration of an unexplored tomb – have been torn to pieces by a beast of unimaginable size. Fabrizio is in charge of excavating this Etruscan tomb. Fabrizio is joined in his fearless investigation of the past by Francesca Dionisi, a vivacious young researcher, and foremost by Lieutenant Reggiani, a brilliant carabinieri officer assigned to the case. Fabrizio is convinced that a single event has set off the entire chain of events. What is hiding inside the enigmatic statue? What lies behind the bloodthirsty rage that has lain in wait for all these centuries? What tragedy is hidden behind the inscription? Will Fabrizio manage to unravel these secrets without being sucked into the spiral of violence himself?

**Fifty years after The Andromeda Strain made Michael Crichton a household name --and spawned a new genre, the technothriller--the threat returns, in a gripping sequel that is terrifyingly realistic and resonant.**

“The Andromeda Strain,” as millions of fans know, described the panicked efforts to stop the spread of an alien microparticle that first turned human blood to sawdust and then dissolved plastics. (Spoiler alert: Humanity survived.) For half a century, a mutated strain has floated harmlessly in Earth’s atmosphere while a special team of watchers maintained Project Eternal Vigilance.When “The Andromeda Evolution” opens, a drone spots a metallic-looking shape growing up out of the Amazon jungle, “the whole of it gleaming like a beetle’s waxy shell in the rising midday sun.” Situated along the equator, this giant structure is located far from any development, deep in an area inhabited only by tribes who have never made contact with modern civilization. Mass spectrometry data taken by military satellites indicates that the quickly swelling mutation is “an almost exact match to the Andromeda strain.”(HarperCollins)

A scientist announces, “There is an alien intelligence behind this,” which I have often thought when I clean out the refrigerator. “We are facing an unknown enemy who is staging an attack over the gulf of a hundred-thousand years and across our solar system and likely the cosmos. This is war.” The ability to fathom this threat is not as crucial as the ability to deliver such lines with a straight face.Wilson suggests that a nuclear strike is problematic because the anomaly is on foreign soil, though such diplomatic awkwardness probably wouldn’t matter if we’re all dead. But the bigger problem is that the anomaly feeds off energy, which a nuclear explosion would provide in abundance. Given that predicament, humanity has just one hope to avoid what the military calls “the ‘gray goo’ scenario” that would kill everyone on Earth: Project Wildfire.The elite Wildfire crew will trudge into the jungle and try to keep the planet from being infected. In accordance with the requirements of the inevitable movie version, the Wildfire team consists of a small group of contentious scientists who are dangerously ill-equipped to trudge into the jungle. Their leader is an interesting character: a woman who rose from the slums of Mumbai to become a world-renowned expert in nanotechnology. But alas, the rest of her crew are drawn from a fetid petri dish of stereotypes: a handsome white man with a tragic connection to the first Andromeda crisis; an Asian woman with a “keen intellect and piercing black eyes” who should not be trusted; and an older black man who offers our hero sage counsel before, sadly, perishing. Naturally, there’s also a villain with special needs motivated by deep-seated rage at her crippled body.Predictable as this group is, their adventure is at least as exciting as Crichton’s original story — and considerably more active. The jungle provides an ominous setting for some spooky scenes. And the episodes set in outer space are particularly thrilling. (Rereading “The Andromeda Strain” last week, I realized that I had forgotten how cramped the story is.)

But “The Andromeda Evolution” genuflects appropriately to the 1969 novel that instantly infected pop culture. With little genetic decay, Wilson replicates Crichton’s tone and tics, particularly his wide-stance mansplaining. Each chapter begins with a quotation by Crichton selected, apparently, for its L. Ron Hubbard-like profundity, e.g. “There is a category of event that, once it occurs, cannot be satisfactorily resolved.” And the pages — sanitized of wit — are larded with lots of Crichtonian technical explanations, weapons porn, top-secret documents and so many acronyms that I began to worry Wilson had accidentally left the caps lock on.As you might expect from a guy with a PhD in robotics, Wilson throws in lots of cool gizmos, too. A slavish flock of miniature drones plays a crucial role in the plot, and a massive technological breakthrough eventually takes center stage. But at other times, Wilson plays too fast and loose with the biological laws of his own pathologic crisis. For instance, as the science team prepares to move deep into the infected jungle, their leader says, “Tuck your pants into your boots and wear gloves” — the same precautions I would take to build a snowman.But who cares? These various lapses may be irritating, but ultimately they don’t derail what is a fairly ingenious adventure. As the story swings from military jargon to corny implausibility, the fate of the Earth hangs from a thread of rapidly mutating cells. Finally, our hero says the words we never tire of hearing: “Technically, it’s doable. It’s insane. But it’s doable.” That portentous claim launches one last spectacular scene that would make Crichton proud.

Homeland Security operative Scot Harvath must find the kidnapped daughter of a politically connected family in the terrorist frontier of Afghanistan.

Politics has always been a dirty game.Now justice is, too.In a crowded courtroom in Mississippi, a jury returns a shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste into a small town's water supply, causing the worst “cancer cluster in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it.Who are the nine? How will they vote? Can one be replaced before the case is ultimately decided?The chemical company is owned by a Wall Street predator named Carl Trudeau, and Mr. Trudeau is convinced the Court is not friendly enough. With judicial elections looming, he decides to try to purchase himself a seat on the Court. The cost is a few million dollars, a drop in the bucket for a billionaire like Mr. Trudeau. Through an intricate web of conspiracy and deceit, his political operatives recruit a young, unsuspecting candidate. They finance him, manipulate him, market him, and mold him into a potential Supreme Court justice. Their Supreme Court justice.The Appeal is a powerful, timely, and shocking story of political and legal intrigue, a story that will leave readers unable to think about our electoral process or judicial system in quite the same way ever again.