Private Politics

This novel by Carl Hiaasen, author of Tourist Season and Native Tongue, begins as most thrillers do, with a killing. But this is no everyday, hum-drum, garden variety killing. Our hero, Nick Stranahan, a 42-year-old private investigator who has killed five men and been married five times, skewers his attacker's aorta with the razor-sharp bill of a stuffed marlin.

In this sharp and controversial international best seller, an award-winning economist debunks the pervasive myth that the government is sluggish and inept, and at odds with a dynamic private sector. She reveals in detailed case studies that the opposite is true: The state is, and has been, our boldest and most valuable innovator. Denying this history is leading us down the wrong path. A select few get credit for what is an intensely collective effort, and the US government has started disinvesting from innovation.

Far beneath the sands of Alexandria, an archaeological team digs deeper than anyone has before, seeking an ancient power older than the pyramids. What they unearth is an evil that threatens the whole world. First it targets the worst of humanity: Ex-Nazis, Central American warlords, and the pushers who peddle drugs to children are found massacred, ripped limb from limb without having fired a shot in their own defense. But the next to die will be ordinary people.

London. A snowy December, 1888. Sherlock Holmes, 34, is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither comfort nor rouse his friend - until a strangely encoded letter arrives from Paris. Mlle La Victoire, a beautiful French cabaret star, writes that her illegitimate son by an English lord has disappeared, and she has been attacked in the streets of Montmartre.

Dually armed with military and strategic prowess, the Wagner Group created a new market in a vast geopolitical landscape increasingly receptive to the promises of private actors. In this trailblazing account of the Group’s origins and operations, John Lechner—the only journalist to report across its many warzones—brings us on the ground to witness Wagner partner with fragile nation states, score access to natural resources, oust peacekeeping missions, and cash in on conflicts reframed as Kremlin interests.

December 1889. Fresh from debunking a 'ghostly' hound in Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, only to find himself the target of a deadly vendetta. A beautiful client arrives with a tale of ghosts, kidnapping and dynamite on a whisky estate in Scotland, but brother Mycroft trumps all with an urgent assignment in the South of France. On the fabled Riviera, Holmes and Watson encounter treachery, explosions, rival French detective Jean Vidocq...and a terrible discovery.

In Grace and Power, New York Times best-selling author Sally Bedell Smith takes us inside the Kennedy White House with unparalleled access and insight. Having interviewed scores of Kennedy intimates, including many who have never spoken before, and drawing on letters and personal papers made available for the first time, Smith paints a richly detailed picture of the personal relationships behind the high purpose and poiltical drama of the 20th century's most storied presidency.

Since he first went behind enemy lines in Vietnam, Blaine McCracken has faced death on every continent. In the line of fire he is an iron man, but now he faces a different challenge: fatherhood. His son, Matt, is 13 - the unknown product of a long ago tryst. When the boy’s mother dies, McCracken goes to England to meet him. He finds a son cut in his father’s mold: a young athlete determined to put his body at risk to serve his country.

In 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer, the beautiful, rebellious, and intelligent ex-wife of a top CIA official, was killed on a quiet Georgetown towpath near her home. Mary Meyer was a secret mistress of President John F. Kennedy, whom she had known since private school days, and after her death, reports that she had kept a diary set off a tense search by her brother-in-law, newsman Ben Bradlee, and CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton. But the only suspect in her murder was acquitted, and today her life and death are still a source of intense speculation.

Born an Outcast, Talyn Batur has spent the whole of his life fighting against the prejudice of his people. An Andarion without a father is not something anyone wants to be. But when his companion's brother draws him into a plot against the Andarion crown, he finds himself torn between the...

This is the memoir of James C. Hormel - a man who grew up feeling different not only because his family owned the Hormel “empire” and lived in a 26 bedroom house in a small Midwest town, but because he was gay at a time when homosexuality was not discussed or accepted. Outwardly he tried to live up to the life his father wanted for him - he was a successful professional, had married a lovely woman, and had children - but as volatile changes in the late 1960s impeded on the American psyche, Hormel realized that he could not hide his true self forever.

To his many thousands of fans, ex-SAS officer Ben Hope stands tall as a hero, a warrior, a protector of the innocent, a defender of those in need, relentless in his pursuit of those who exploit or do evil to others. But Ben Hope is also a man with flaws and weaknesses that we can all recognise all too well. That’s what makes Ben Hope not only one of the best-liked thriller heroes of modern fiction, but the one that readers say they feel they know as though he were a real, living person and more than a character on a page.

Someone is killing off the members of a splinter group known as the Sons of Erin, normally not a cause for much concern, but the consequences are much greater than anyone realizes. For in these actions lie the seeds of disaster: the fall of two governments, the derailing of the Irish peace process. Dillon and Johnson must stop this unknown assassin, the heads of state agree, quickly, quietly, before all hell breaks loose.

When someone close to him is shot dead in a roadside motel in a small town in Wyoming, DeMarco shirks his responsibilities as the speaker of the house’s fixer to make sure the authorities are doing everything that can be done to catch the killer. He soon realizes that the rural area is dominated by Hiram Bunt, a wealthy rancher with an obstructionist streak who is willing to take on the federal government at gunpoint and seems to have a number of politicians under his thumb.

In the Ichidian Universe where The League is law, most live in fear. We fight back. Welcome to a world where corrupt assassination politics dominate everyone. It's kill or be killed. Welcome back to the future…and meet hell's new breed of heroes. Devyn Kell spent his life in service to the...

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

Wherever Sean Drummond goes, it seems that the JAG officer leaves a trail of political fallout in his wake. So when his superiors get an opportunity to loan him to a prestigious law firm, they jump on it, hoping he'll soak up the nuances of civilian lawyering. But almost immediately, dark clouds appear when Sean's predecessor in the loan-out program is murdered. Then Sean begins to sense something amiss with the firm's biggest client, a telecom behemoth with large defense contracts.

Years ago, family loyalty caused Fain Hauk to give up everything he loved: His military career. His planet. His fiancée. Even his name. Now decades later, everything has changed. He's built a new life out of the ashes of his old, and he's vowed to never let anything threaten his loved ones...

This is the story of an ex-Royal Military Policeman, martial arts champion, and expert in close protection who found his way to the top of his profession, protecting the most famous woman in the world, Princess Diana. Through his assignment as protection for Mohamed and Dodi al-Fayed, he became guard and confidante to the Princess of Wales and the young princes, particularly Harry, and in Protecting Diana he details the weeks leading up to her tragic death.

Since the start of World War II, Cary Grant has been working undercover in Hollywood as a spy for the British crown. When a ring of Nazi sympathizers gets wise, they start blackmailing the debonair leading man. Now Grant has hired Toby Peters to handle the payoff. But when the blackmailer is killed, the rumpled detective and the suave movie star are thrust into a complex plot of murder, money, and Nazi spies, leading to a literal cliff-hanger....