Category Archives: Action

THE WHISPERING ROOM

Action, Book Reviews, Mystery

Title: The Whispering Room

Author: Dean Koontz

These are the words that ring in the mind of mild mannered, beloved schoolteacher Cora Gundersun–just before she takes her own life, and many others, in a shocking act of carnage. When the disturbing contents of her secret journal are discovered, it seems certain that she must have been insane. But Jane Hawk knows better.

In the words of her husband’s inexplicable suicide–and the equally mysterious deaths of scores of other exemplary individuals–Jane picks up the trail of a secret cabal of powerful players who think themselves above the law and beyond punishment. But the ruthless people bent on hijacking America’s future for their own monstrous ends never banked on a highly trained FBI agent willing to go rogue–and become the nation’s most wanted fugitive–in order to derail their insidious plans to gain absolute power with a terrifying technological breakthrough.

Driven by love for her lost husband and by fear for the five-year-old son she has sent into hiding, Jane Hawk has become an unstoppable predator. Those she is hunting will have n9owhee to run when her shadow falls across them.

SOME KIND OF HERO

Action, Book Reviews, Mystery

Title: Some kind of Hero

Author: Suzanne Rrockmann

Suzanne Brockmann’s signature mix of high-octane action and electrifying passion leaves readers breathless–and eager for more of her ultrasexy operatives. Now the author USA Today hails as “the reigning queen of military suspense” makes an explosive return to her best selling Troubleshooters series.

Navy men don’t come tougher than Lieutenant Peter Green. Every day he whips hotshot SEAL wannabes into elite fighters. So why can’t he handle one fifteen-year-old girl? His ex’s death left him a single dad overnight, and very unprepared. Though he can’t relate to an angsty teen, he can at least keep Maddie safe–until the day she disappears. Though Pete’s lacking in fatherly intuition, his instinct for detecting danger is razor sharp. Maddie’s in trouble. Now he needs the Troubleshooters team at his back, along with an unconventional ally.

Romance writer Shayla Whitman never expected to be drawn into a real-world thriller–or to meet a hero who makes her pulse pound. Action on the page is one thing. Actually living it is another story. Shay’s not as bold as her heroines, but she’s a mother. She sees the panic in her new neighbor’s usually fearless blue eyes–and knows there’s no greater terror for a parent than having a child at risk. It’s an ordeal Shay won’t let Pete face alone. She’s no highly trained operative, but she’s smart, resourceful, and knows what makes teenagers tick.

Still working alongside Pete has its own perils–like letting the heat between them rise out of control, intimate emotions could mean dangerous, even deadly, consequences for their mission. No matter what, they must be on top of their game, and playing for keeps….or else Pete’s daughter may be gone for good.

RED SWAN

Action, Book Reviews

Title: Red Swan

Author: P.T. Deutermann

Written with the authority of twenty-six years of military and government service at sea and in Washington, Red Swan is a brilliant, provocative thriller about the contemporary war that no one sees but will shape the future of America and China.

Set in contemporary Washington, D.C., Red Swan begins with an ominous phone call from Carson McGill, the deputy director of operations at the CIA, to retired CIA officer Preston Allender. Henry Wallace is dead. A behind-the-scenes operator at the CIA, Wallace was integral to the Agency’s secret war against China’s national intelligence service, which infiltrates government and military offices, major businesses, and systems crucial to our security. Wallace had severely damaged China’s Washington spy ring with a devastating ruse, a so-called black swan, in which a deep-undercover female agent targeted and destroyed a key Chinese official. Now Wallace’s mysterious death suggest that the CIA itself has been compromised and that China has someone inside the agency.

But as Allender quietly investigates, he makes a shocking discovery that will upend the entire American intelligence apparatus: Wallace’s black swan operation may have been turned against the CIA. A red swan is flying, and the question is: Who is she, what is her target, and where will she land.?

P.T. Deutermann is a master of both World War II naval historical fiction and the modern thriller set in the nexus of the CIA. Red Swan is Deutermann at his best.

ARMISTICE

Action, Book Reviews, Drama

Title: Armistice – The Hot War

Author: Harry Turtledove

Harry Turtledove is the master of vivid and visionary alternate history. In this, the final book of the blistering trilogy the Hot War, old hatreds and new chances for revenge are unleashed on an already devastated world-as the cold War becomes a roaring inferno.

In 1952 American cities lid in ruins. President Harry Truman, in office since 1945, presides over a makeshift government in Philadelphia, suffering his own personal loss and fearing for the future of democracy in the sake of Hitler’s reign, Germany and America have become allies, and Stalin’s vise hold on power in the USSR persists. Unwilling to trust the Soviet tyrant, Truman launches a long-planned nuclear strike on the city of Omsk–killing Stalin and plunging the Red Army into leaderless, destructive anarchy. Meanwhile, The Baltic states careen toward rebellion, and Poland is seized by rebels bred on war. In a world awash with victims turned victors, refuges, and killers, has Truman struck a blow for peace or fueled more chaos?

As these staggering events unfold, the lives of men and women across battle lines, ethnicities, and religions play out around the globe. In Los Angeles, an extended Jewish family builds a future, while the foul smell of a refugee camp in Santa Monica blows in on the ocean breeze. In Korea, a U.S. fighter struggles to bring his Korean interpreter stateside as a full American. In Siberia, two German women fight for their survival in a guiag–and begin a strange, harrowing journey home.

From the terrifying global chess match between superpowers to the strength of individual human conscience, Armistice captures a world that’s been split to its core by the violence only mankind can create. Through the thunder of battle, the clashes of armies, and the whispers of lovers, how humanity will be rebuilt, and who will do it, are the questions that resound in this marvelous work of imagination and history.

PRICE OF DUTY

Action, Book Reviews

Title: Price of Duty

Author: Dale Brown

In a top-0secret location deep in the Urala Mountains, Russian president Gennadiy Gryzlov has built the most dangerous weapon his nation has ever produced–a fearsome tool to gain superiority in Russia’s long-running battle with the West. From inside Perun’s Aeriean intricate network of underground tunnels and chambers that is the heart of the Russian cyber warfare program–Gryzlov is launching a carefully plotted series of attacks on an unsuspecting U.S. and its European allies.

The first strike is aimed at Warsaw, Poland, where Russian malware wipes out the records of nearly every Polish bank account, imploding the country’s financial system and panicking the rest of Europe. When the besieged U.S. president, Stacy Anne Barbeau, fails to effectively combat the Russian threat, Brad McLanahan, on some well-earned R&R with his new Polish girlfriend, Major Nadia Rozek, is called back to duty.

As the Russians” deadly tactics escalate–including full-scale assaults on Europe’s power grid and the remote hijacking of a commercial airliner that kills hundreds of civilians–Mclanahan and his Scion team kick into gear, arming themselves with the most advanced technological weaponry for the epic struggle ahead. A patriot in the mold of his father, the late general Patrick McLanahan, Brad knows fist-hand the price of freedom.

With the world’s fate hanging in the balance, will Scion succeed in turning back Gryzlov before he can realize his terrifying ambition to conquer the world? And what will the toll of victory be?

THE FROZEN HOURS

Action, Book Reviews, Historical

Title: The Frozen Hours

Author: Jeff Shaara

The master of military historical fiction turns his discerning eye to the Korean War in this riveting new novel, which tells the dramatic story of the Americans and the Chinese who squared off in one of the deadliest campaigns in the annals of combat: the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, also known as Frozen Chosin.

June 1950. The North Korean army invades South Korea, intent on uniting the country under Communist rule. In response, the United States mobilizes a force to defend the overmatched South Korean troops, and together they drive the North Koreans back to their border with China.

But several hundred thousand
Chinese troops have entered Korea, laying massive traps for the Allies. In November 1950, the Chinese spring those traps. Allied forces, already battling stunningly cold weather, find themselves caught completely off guard as the Chinese advance around the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea. A force that once stood on the precipice of victory now finds itself on the brink of annihilation. Assured by General Douglas MacArthur that they would be home by Christmas, the soldiers and Marines fight for their lives against the most brutal weather conditions imaginable–and an enemy that outnumbers them more than six to one.

The Frozen Hours tells the story of Frozen Chosin from multiple points of view: Oliver P Smith, the commanding general of the American 1st Marine Division, who famously redefined defeat as “advancing in a different direction”; Marine Private Pete Riley, a World War II veteran who now faces the greatest fight of his life; and the Chinese commander Sung Shi-Lun, charged with destroying the American he has so completely surrounded, ever aware that above him, Chairman Mao Tse-Tung watches his every move.

Written with the propulsive force Shaara brings to all his novels of combat and courage, The Frozen Hours transports us to the critical moment in the history of America’s “forgotten War,” when the fate of the Korean peninsula lay in the hinds of a brave band of brothers battling both the elements and a determined, implacable foe.

WITHOUT WARNING

Action, Book Reviews, Drama

Title: Without Warning

Author: Joel C. Rosenberg

After ISIS terrorists attack the U.S. Capitol building during the president’s State of the Union address the entire world waits to se how the most powerful nation on earth will respond. But the Taylor administration is more committed to political correctness than to justice and it falls to other nations to lead the way in hunting down Abu Khalif, the criminal and religious mastermind who heads the Islamic State.

When New York Times journalist J. B. Collins reeling from a tragedy closer to home suddenly finds himself in possession of vital information that could help in the search he is once again thrust into the crosshairs of global politics. But this time it’s personal.

As he joins the hunt for the world’s most wanted and dangerous man, his quest takes him from Bar Harbor, Maine, to Tel Aviv to Cairo to Istanbul and beyond. Through it all he has one goal” find Abu Khalif and hold him accountable for the terrible actions. But the clock is ticking and more attacks are coming. Will Collins locate the ISIS emir before it’s too late? He will stop at nothing to do so. But at what cost?

A Land Remembered

Action, Book Reviews, Historical

Title: A Land Remembered

Author: Patrick D. Smith

In 1858 Tobias Maclvey abandoned his Georgia farm, loaded his meager possessions and his wife and infant son in a wagon, and headed south into the Florida wilderness to search for a new life. What follows in A Land Remembered is a big, rougy-to7ugh, folksy Florida saga — three generations of the MacIvey family (1858-s1968) from a dirt poor cattle-droving cracker (cattle rancher who cracks a whip) to a Miami real estate tycoon.

But it is also an epic portrayal of the American pioneer will to survive against all odds. And finally it is the story of the land, how at first bare survival is scratched from it and then how it is exploited far beyond human need.

The sweeping story that emerges is a rich, rugged Florida history featuring a memorable cast to crusty, indomitable crackers battling wild animals, rustlers, Confederate deserters, mosquitoes, starvation and hurricanes and freezes to carve a kingdom out of the swamp. But their most formidable adversary turns out to be greed, including finally their own.

Love and tenderness are here too: the hopes and passions of each new generation, friendships with the persecuted blacks and Indians, respect for the land and its wildlife.

Liar’s Key

Action, Book Reviews

Title: Liar’s Key

Author: Carla Neggers

Emma Sharpe is suspicious when retired Special Agent Gordon Wheelock, a legend in FBI art crimes, drops y her Boston office for a visit. Gordy says he’s heard rumors about stolen ancient mosaics, Emma, an art crimes specialist herself, won’t discuss the rumors. Especially since they involve Oliver York, an unrepentant English art thief. Gordy and Emma’s grandfather, a renowned private art detective, chased Oliver for a decade. Gordy knows Wendell Sharpe didn’t give him everything he had on the thief. even now, Oliver will never be prosecuted.

When a shocking death occurs, Emma is drawn into the investigation. The evidence points to a deadly conspiracy between Wendell and Oliver, and Emma’s finace, deep cover agent Colin Donovan, knows he can’t stay out of this one. He also knows there will be questions about Emma’s role and where her loyalties lie.

From Boston to Maine to Ireland, Emma and Colin track a dangerous killer as the lives of their family and friends are at stake. With the help of their friend, Irish priest Finian Bracken, and Emma’s brother, Lucas, the Sharpes and Donovans must band together to stop a killer.

Treachery At Lancaster Gate

Action, Book Reviews

Title:  Treachery At Lancaster Gate

Author:  Anne Perry

Gripping and provocative, the latest Thomas and Charlotte Pitt mystery by New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry peers unflinchingly into the corrupt affairs of Victorian society on the brink of the century’s turn.  The world is poised for social and political change, but England holds tight to its traditions, classes, and prejudices.

When an explosion in London kills two policemen and seriously injures three more, many believe that anarchists are the culprits.  But Thomas Pitt, commander of Special Branch, knows the city’s radical groups well enough to suspect that someone with decidedly more personal motives lit the deadly fuse.  As he investigates the source of the fatal blast, Pitt is stunned to discover that the bombing was a calculated strike against the ranks of law enforcement.

But still more shocking revelations await, as Pitt’s inquiries lead him to a member of Parliament hoping for a lucrative business deal, a high-ranking police with secrets to keep, and an aristocratic opium addict seeking murderous revenge.  As he pursues each increasingly threating lead, Pitt fines himself impeded at every turn by the barriers put in place to protect the rich and powerful–barriers that, as they start to crumble, threaten to bury him alive.