mystery

The Shack

Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant "The Shack" wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!

The Last Patriot: A Thriller

Brad Thor, master of suspense and New York Times bestselling author of The First Commandment, returns with his highest-voltage thriller to date. In a pulse-pounding, adrenaline-charged tour de force, Navy SEAL turned covert Homeland Security operative Scot Harvath must race to locate an ancient secret that has the power to stop militant Islam dead in its tracks.

June 632 A.D.: Deep within the Uranah Valley of Mount Arafat in Mecca, the Prophet Mohammed shares with his closest companions a final and startling revelation. Within days, he is assassinated.

September 1789: U.S. Minister to France Thomas Jefferson, who is charged with forging a truce with the violent Muslim pirates of the Barbary Coast, makes a shocking discovery - one that could forever impact the world's relationship with Islam.

Present day: When a car bomb explodes outside a Parisian café, Scot Harvath is thrust back into the life he has tried so desperately to leave behind.

Saving the intended victim of the attack, Harvath becomes party to an amazing and perilous race to uncover a secret so powerful that militant Islam could be defeated once and for all without firing another shot, dropping another bomb, or launching another covert action.

But as desperate as the American government is to have the information brought to light, there are powerful forces aligned against it - men who are just as determined that Mohammed's mysterious final revelation continue to remain hidden forever.

What Jason Bourne was to the Cold War, Scot Harvath is to the War on Terror. Brad Thor has created "the perfect all-American hero for the post September 11 world" (Nelson DeMille) and will keep readers glued to the pages as he once again takes them across the globe on a heart-pounding chase where the stakes are higher than they have ever been before.

Rules of Deception

Lee Child on Rules of Deception
Lee Child has crafted one of literature's most popular anti-heroes in the form of Jack Reacher, the iconic ex-military policeman of his bestselling novels. The author of Nothing to Lose talks about what makes a good thriller -- and why Christopher Reich is a novelist worthy of a gold medal.

I discovered Christopher Reich exactly ten years ago. His first book came out around the same time my second book was published. The modest prosperity that one's first book deal brings allowed me to pick up hardcovers that caught my eye. And Numbered Account caught my eye. And it lived up to its promise. It was fast, fresh, glossy, and very exciting. I thought: Reich is a keeper.

And then he got better. It was always clear that he had talent to burn, but he chose to accompany it with a real work ethic. His second, third and fourth books built and built until the release of the next one was an event to be anticipated. (And right there is my only complaint: Reich doesn't write fast enough.)

His fifth book - The Patriot's Club - was a real achievement. It was a slam-dunk winner of the International Thriller Writer's first annual Best Novel award. Awards are often awkward. There's usually a measure of grumbling, because often people don't agree with the choice of winner. But not a word was heard against "The Patriot's Club." In fact nothing was heard, because the applause was too loud.

So I was really looking forward to Rules of Deception. I got an advance copy. I cracked it open. I started reading. Mostly I read like any other reader, but a small part of me reads like a writer. I think all writers experience the same thing. We sense things between the lines, especially energy and inspiration.

And ambition.

Rules of Deception starts with a short prologue, and then the first chapter introduces Jonathan Ransom, the main character. Two pages, and then nine pages. The prologue is a teaser. It baits the hook. It's a two-page masterpiece. It's intriguing, and then it's really intriguing. It promises big things ahead. Then chapter one introduces the guy who's going to have to deal with them. And why, indirectly.

Eleven pages. The reader in me wanted to race ahead. But the writer in me had to pause a moment. Because between the lines I was sensing something. Maybe because it's an Olympic year I can only explain it like this: picture the high jump event. Six competitors are still in. Then five, then four. Then three. Then the gold, the silver, and the bronze are settled. But the rules of track and field allow the winner to go on. The bar is raised. A personal best. The Olympic record. The bar is raised again. World record height. The stadium goes quiet. The jumper stills himself on the runway. Intense concentration. The gold medal is already in the bag. Uncharted territory. The jumper rocks from foot to foot, his mind on nothing except jumping higher than he has ever jumped before.

That's exactly the between-the-lines feeling I was getting from Reich, eleven pages into Rules of Deception - a world-class writer preparing to accomplish something truly noteworthy.

There are a further 377 pages. They live up to the promise.

--Lee Child

Amazon Exclusive Essay: Christopher Reich on Thrillers
Name your five favorite books.

For me they're all thrillers. The Day of the Jackal, Eye of the Needle, The Bourne Identity , Noble House, and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. My life stopped when I picked up each of those books and it didn't start again until I finished the last page. I didn't actually read them so much as disappear between their covers. That was me trying to catch the Jackal before he assassinated Charles De Gaulle, and me again at the wheel of a Jaguar XKE convertible racing down the Peak in Hong Kong. The fact is that for me life is somehow better when I'm reading a great book. Richer, more exciting…heck, I don't know, just better.

About two years ago, I decided that it was my turn to write the thriller I'd always wanted to read. I knew exactly where to start. All I had to do was "write what I know." These days, I know a lot about the intelligence community. Not the stuff you read about in the papers -- the stuff you never read about. Over the years, I've made a lot of friends in Washington and overseas. Diplomats, spies, soldiers, politicians - men and women at the highest levels of government. And, I can assure you that what they've taught me about how the world really works is a lot more interesting and a lot more frightening than you'd ever imagine.

That's where my newest book, Rules of Deception, comes in. It's a story about an honest and courageous doctor named Jonathan Ransom. He's a surgeon who works for Doctors Without Borders in some of the toughest parts of the world. He's a happily married man with a big heart and a beautiful English wife he deeply loves named Emma who works with him. What Jonathan doesn't know is that nothing about his life is what it seems. In fact, it's all a web of lies and he's caught in the middle of something extraordinarily dangerous.

I can't say more than that, and I shouldn't have to, because if I've done my job right, when you get to page five you'll be hooked and you won't come up for air until it's all said and done.

--Christopher Reich

Dr. Jonathan Ransom, world-class mountaineer and surgeon for Doctors Without Borders, is climbing in the Swiss Alps with his beautiful wife, Emma, when a blizzard sets in. In their bid to escape the storm, Emma is killed when she falls into a hidden crevasse.

Twenty-four hours later, Jonathan receives an envelope addressed to his wife containing two baggage-claim tickets. Puzzled, he journeys to a remote railway station only to find himself in a life-and-death struggle for his wife’s possessions. In the aftermath of the assault, he discovers that his attackers—one dead, the other mortally wounded—were, in fact, Swiss police officers. More frightening still is evidence of an extraordinary act of betrayal that leaves Jonathan stunned.

Suddenly the subject of an international manhunt and the target of a master assassin, Jonathan is forced on the run. His only chance at survival lies in uncovering the devastating truth behind the secret his wife kept from him and in stopping the terrifying conspiracy that threatens to bring the world to the brink of annihilation. Step by step, he is drawn deeper into a world of spies, high-tech weaponry, and global terrorism—a world where no one is whom they appear to be and where the end always justifies the means.

Rules of Deception is a brilliantly conceived, twisting tale of intrigue and deceit written by the master of the espionage thriller for the twenty-first century.

Fearless Fourteen (Stephanie Plum, No. 14)

Sail

Since the death of her husband, Anne Dunne and her three children have struggled in every way. In a last ditch effort to save the family, Anne plans an elaborate sailing vacation to bring everyone together once again. But only an hour out of port, everything is going wrong. The teenage daughter, Carrie, is planning to drown herself. The teenage son, Mark, is high on drugs and ten-year-old Ernie is nearly catatonic. This is the worst vacation ever.
Anne manages to pull things together bit by bit, but just as they begin feeling like a family again, something catastrophic happens. Survival may be the least of their concerns.
Written with the blistering pace and shocking twists that only James Patterson can master, SAIL takes "Lost" and "Survivor" to a new level of terror.

The Broken Window: A Lincoln Rhyme Novel (Lincoln Rhyme)

Bestselling master of suspense Jeffery Deaver is back with a brand-new Lincoln Rhyme thriller.

Lincoln Rhyme and partner/paramour Amelia Sachs return to face a criminal whose ingenious staging of crimes is enabled by a terrifying access to information....

When Lincoln's estranged cousin Arthur Rhyme is arrested on murder charges, the case is perfect -- too perfect. Forensic evidence from Arthur's home is found all over the scene of the crime, and it looks like the fate of Lincoln's relative is sealed.

At the behest of Arthur's wife, Judy, Lincoln grudgingly agrees to investigate the case. Soon Lincoln and Amelia uncover a string of similar murders and rapes with perpetrators claiming innocence and ignorance -- despite ironclad evidence at the scenes of the crime. Rhyme's team realizes this "perfect" evidence may actually be the result of masterful identity theft and manipulation.

An information service company -- the huge data miner Strategic Systems Datacorp -- seems to have all the answers but is reluctant to help the police. Still, Rhyme and Sachs and their assembled team begin uncovering a chilling pattern of vicious crimes and coverups, and their investigation points to one master criminal, whom they dub "522."

When "522" learns the identities of the crime-fighting team, the hunters become the hunted. Full of Deaver's trademark plot twists, The Broken Window will put the partnership of Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs to the ultimate test.

The Spies of Warsaw: A Novel

An autumn evening in 1937. A German engineer arrives at the Warsaw railway station. Tonight, he will be with his Polish mistress; tomorrow, at a workers’ bar in the city’s factory district, he will meet with the military attaché from the French embassy. Information will be exchanged for money. So begins The Spies of Warsaw, the brilliant new novel by Alan Furst, lauded by The New York Times as “America’s preeminent spy novelist.”

War is coming to Europe. French and German intelligence operatives are locked in a life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French embassy, the new military attaché, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn into a world of abduction, betrayal, and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. At the same time, the handsome aristocrat finds himself in a passionate love affair with a Parisian woman of Polish heritage, a lawyer for the League of Nations.

Colonel Mercier must work in the shadows, amid an extraordinary cast of venal and dangerous characters–Colonel Anton Vyborg of Polish military intelligence; the mysterious and sophisticated Dr. Lapp, senior German Abwehr officer in Warsaw; Malka and Viktor Rozen, at work for the Russian secret service; and Mercier’s brutal and vindictive opponent, Major August Voss of SS counterintelligence. And there are many more, some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed.

The Houston Chronicle has described Furst as “the greatest living writer of espionage fiction.” The Spies of Warsaw is his finest novel to date–the history precise, the writing evocative and powerful, more a novel about spies than a spy novel, exciting, atmospheric, erotic, and impossible to put down.

“As close to heaven as popular fiction can get.”
–Los Angeles Times, about The Foreign Correspondent

“What gleams on the surface in Furst’s books is his vivid, precise evocation of mood, time, place, a letter-perfect re-creation of the quotidian details of World War II Europe that wraps around us like the rich fug of a wartime railway station.”
–Time

“A rich, deeply moving novel of suspense that is equal parts espionage thriller, European history and love story.”
–Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times, about Dark Star

“Some books you read. Others you live. They seep into your dreams and haunt your waking hours until eventually they seem the stuff of memory and experience. Such are the novels of Alan Furst, who uses the shadowy world of espionage to illuminate history and politics with immediacy.”
–Nancy Pate, Orlando Sentinel

True to the Game III

The third and most explosive installment of the groundbreaking True to the Game trilogy will take you on a marathon race through the mean streets of Philly. Starting off where the second installment's dramatic cliffhanger left us, True III will finally reveal Gena's mysterious stalker and savior, as well as introduce a new killer so vicious, so cunning, so ruthless, he'll have you looking over your shoulder with each turn of the page.


The crooked cops are searching for the money, Gena's family members are now the target for Gena who's hiding from everything and everyone, as the race is on for Gena's survival. Will she manage to keep the money, can she get out of town and make a new life for herself, and will her family survive the maniacal killer that is hell bent on tracking her down? Will Gena stay, True to the Game?

Death Angel: A Novel

In Linda Howard’s gifted hands, second chances, unexpected romance, and unrelenting action combine into a riveting new novel of suspense. In Death Angel, bad girls can wake up and trust their hearts, bad guys can fight for what’s right . . . and dying just might be the only way to change one’s life.

A striking beauty with a taste for diamonds and dangerous men, Drea Rousseau is more than content to be arm candy for Rafael Salinas, a notorious crime lord who deals with betrayal through quick and treacherous means: a bullet to the back of the head, a blade across the neck, an incendiary device beneath a car. Eager to break with Rafael, Drea makes a fateful decision and a desperate move, stealing a mountain of cash from the malicious killer. After all, an escape needs to be financed.

Though Drea runs, Salinas knows she can’t hide–and he dispatches a cold-blooded assassin in hot pursuit, resulting in a tragic turn of events. Or does it?

Left for dead, Drea miraculously returns to the realm of the living a changed woman. She’s no longer shallow and selfish, no longer steals or cheats or sells herself short. Both humbled and thrilled with this unexpected second chance, Drea embraces her new life. But in order to feel safe and sound–and stop nervously looking over her shoulder–she will need to take down those who marked her for death.

Joining forces with the FBI, supplying vital inside information that only she can provide, Drea finds herself working with the most dangerous man she’s ever known. Yet the closer they get to danger, the more intense their feelings for each other become, and the more Drea realizes that the cost of her new life may be her life itself–as well as her heart.

The Whole Truth

"Dick, I need a war."
Nicolas Creel is a man on a mission. He heads up the world's largest defense contractor, The Ares Corporation. Dick Pender is the man Creel retains to "perception manage" his company to even more riches by manipulating international conflicts. But Creel may have an even grander plan in mind.
Shaw, a man with no first name and a truly unique past, has a different agenda. Reluctantly doing the bidding of a secret multi-national intelligence agency, he travels the globe to keep it safe and at peace.
Willing to do anything to get back to the top of her profession, Katie James is a journalist who has just gotten the break of a lifetime: the chance to interview the sole survivor of a massacre that has left every nation stunned.
In this terrifying, global thriller, these characters' lives will collide head-on as a series of events is set in motion that could change the world as we know it. An utterly spellbinding story that feels all too real, THE WHOLE TRUTH delivers all the twists and turns, emotional drama, unforgettable characters, and can't-put-it-down pacing that readers expect from David Baldacci-and still goes beyond anything he's written before.