Captain Poole and his passenger are shot down in non-secured insurgent country. They both know, if they are found, it will likely mean an end to their lives. Attempts to launch a rescue are being planned, however all mission capable units are obligated to other critical missions. An Aide to the Secretary is able to contact the Sierra Warriors team. Will they make the rescue on time?When Captain Poole’s C12V airplane is disabled by insurgent rocket fire, he and his passenger are forced to crash land in unsecured territory. They must avoid capture at all cost. They have drone aircraft watching them, but unable to render assistance. Just as the drone is about to remove the downed pilot and passenger threat, the monitor the operator is watching goes blank. During the blackout period, they are captured.Now a rescue mission must be mounted to save the one remaining captive's life. Making call after call to different organizations, it is discovered all units and teams capable of conducting a rescue of this sort in the proposed timeframe are unable to commit.An Aide to the Secretary is able to contact a friend, who has a friend that knows an individual that may be able to help. The name ‘Sierra Warriors’ enters the conversation, with knowledge that a team may be operating close to the rescue site.The Sierra Warriors are two man teams that operation on their own, using only radio communication with the higher headquarters personnel. Team members, Scorpion and Snake assess the situation and believe they have a workable plan. But, can it be put into operation in time? Views: 633
The only way to rescue the future is to alter the past.
When Abby stepped through the hourglass door, leaving her beloved Dante blind and bleeding on the other side, it was in full faith that she could find a way to repair the damage to the river of time and restore him—as well as her family. It was a desperate chance that seemed worth taking.
But Zo had other plans.
Now Abby is trapped in a full-fledged battle for her own mind and life and heart. Even worse, Zo's evil intent reaches beyond simple revenge against her and Dante. The whole world is in danger of collapsing unless Abby can summon her courage and undertake a journey that will lead her beyond the origins of the hourglass door. Views: 633
Be more effective with less effort by learning how to identify and leverage the 80/20 principle: that 80 percent of all our results in business and in life stem from a mere 20 percent of our efforts.The 80/20 principle is one of the great secrets of highly effective people and organizations.Did you know, for example, that 20 percent of customers account for 80 percent of revenues? That 20 percent of our time accounts for 80 percent of the work we accomplish? The 80/20 Principle shows how we can achieve much more with much less effort, time, and resources, simply by identifying and focusing our efforts on the 20 percent that really counts. Although the 80/20 principle has long influenced today's business world, author Richard Koch reveals how the principle works and shows how we can use it in a systematic and practical way to vastly increase our effectiveness, and improve our careers and our companies.The unspoken corollary to the 80/20 principle is that... Views: 633
Discover the origins of Durzo Blint in this original novella set in the world of Brent Weeks' New York Times bestselling Night Angel trilogy.
"I got a bit of prophecy," the old assassin said. "Not enough to be useful, you know. Just glimpses. My wife dead, things like that to keep me up late at night. I had this vision that I was going to be killed by forty men, all at once. But now that you're here, I see they're all you. Durzo Blint."
Durzo Blint? Gaelan had never even heard the name.
Gaelan Starfire is a farmer, happy to be a husband and a father; a careful, quiet, simple man. He's also an immortal, peerless in the arts of war. Over the centuries, he's worn many faces to hide his gift, but he is a man ill-fit for obscurity, and all too often he's become a hero, his very names passing into legend: Acaelus Thorne, Yric the Black, Hrothan Steelbender, Tal Drakkan, Rebus Nimble.
But when Gaelan must take a job hunting down the world's finest assassins for the beautiful courtesan-and-crimelord Gwinvere Kirena, what he finds may destroy everything he's ever believed in.
Word count: ~17,000 Views: 632
Andrew Klavan reinvents the classic ghost story with this literary X-Files, a breathtaking blend of Hollywood-style excitement and literary tour de force.
Richard Storm is a Hollywood producer who has reached the top of his profession making horror movies based on classic English ghost stories. Now, with his life beginning to unravel, he flees to England on a desperate quest: to find evidence that the great old stories bear an element of truth, that the human spirit lives on after death, that in this all-too-material world there still may be reason to have faith.
But his search uncovers more than he bargained for: Sophia Endering, a mysterious damsel in distress who may just be the last love of Storm's life; Harper Albright, an eccentric pipe-smoking old woman whose researches into the paranormal mask an obsessive hunt for a malevolent killer; and the man known as Saint Iago, a seemingly immortal villain who makes a night with a vampire look like a walk in the park.
Richard Storm's nightmares are about to step down off the screen into real life. And Storm is about to begin a journey through his deepest passions and his darkest fears, to a romance that could last forever, and a secret a thousand years old-down a trail formed by the classic ghost stories themselves-into the very heart of the uncanny.
Reviews
Amazon.com Review
"Trolls, he thought. That's what it was. Religious people believed God ran the world. Atheists figured it was indifferent nature. But it was trolls. Sadistic little homunculi in leather jackets with lots of zippers. Hiding behind the scrim of being. Working the machinery to maximize human suffering for their own amusement."
A wealthy Hollywood cowboy-cum-movie-producer travels to England in the hope of seeing a ghost, or a voice from beyond: "Something uncanny, you know. Anything. One lousy uncanny thing." He hangs out with a marvelous old woman--a professional skeptic armed with a sword cane and an ever-puffing pipe with a skull-shaped bowl--and the other staff of a semi-tabloid rag called Bizarre! He meets the woman of his dreams, who is billed as being utterly inaccessible and frigid to boot. Then before you can say "conspiracy theory," Andrew Klavan has whipped all of them into a humorous confection with elements of German romantic art, English Gothic architecture, 19th-century ghost stories, Norse mythology, South American cult leaders, Nazi witchcraft, and the Holy Grail. Even the ghost of M.R. James has a key role in the plot.
It's not a deep novel--you get the sense that Klavan doesn't take one iota of it seriously--but it is good supernatural fun. --Fiona Webster
From Library Journal
Few people can resist a ghost story, and this one by two-time Edgar Award winner Klavan (True Crime, LJ 4/15/95) is bewitching. Set in England, with the requisite crumbling abbey haunted by a nun, it concerns a man's demonic quest for eternal life. Klavan updates the old-fashioned ghost story to include a Hollywood producer protagonist, the Nazi theft of some of Europe's best art, and a religious cult. The plot moves forward smoothly, the characters are plausible, and the literary quotes are enriching. Most noteworthy, though, is the structure: The story line is interrupted several times by ancient ghost stories. Intriguing in their own right, they also hold important clues to the current mystery's solution. Recommended for most collections.
From Kirkus Reviews
In an effort to mix literary stylishness with gothic convention, Klavan (True Crime, 1995, etc.) stuffs an American film director into a badly padded English ghost story. When told that he has a brain tumor, Richard Storm, 40, who has directed more than 20 successful Hollywood horror films, abandons his work, moves to London, and joins the two-man staff of Bizarre!, a magazine about the paranormal that he respects and that may actually lead him to a few hard facts in proof of an afterlife. The staff: middle-aged Harper Albright, who smokes a death's-head meerschaum pipe and carries a sword cane, and her seemingly gay son Bernard, a computer whiz. Then Storm finds himself falling for Sophia Endering, a young woman almost half his age, who helps her wealthy father, Sir Michael, run an art gallery. Sophia is confronted by a Resurrectionist, who tells her that he will be murdered that night and that whoever buys a panel from the famous Rhinehart triptych of the Holy Family (soon going up for auction at Sotheby's) will be his killer. The triptych, an art treasure looted by German occultists who were helping to guide Hitler, has just surfaced. When Sir Michael sends Sophia to Sotheby's with instructions to buy the panel at any price, Sophia thinks her father a murderer, goes batty, and tries to hang herself. Storm arrives at just that moment, though, to save her. The two fall in love but soon find themselves fending off Saint Iago, a devil incarnate and the father of Bernard, who once murdered his entire band of followers (and who must sacrifice his own children to maintain eternal youth). What's he after? A formula for longevity that's encoded in the Rhinehart triptych. A cocktail of the feisty and the fusty, flavored with bitters by Bernard but with too much sweet vermouth and too watery by half.
"Andrew Klavan is the most original American novelist of crime and suspense since Cornell Woolrich. I've pretty much quit blurbing books, but I've got to make an exception for True Crime. It's a package of big, scary fun. Fill up the coffee pot and lock the doors before beginning." --Stephen King
"Mr Klavan, who has a perfect sense of timing, delivers all the cliffhangers and hairpin turns that you want from a beat-the-clock suspense thriller. But his characters are so deeply human that there is nothing cheap or manipulative about their desperate maneuvers to escape the relentless second hand of fate." --New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Andrew Klavan is the author of such bestselling novels as True Crime, adapted into a film by Clint Eastwood, and Don’t Say a Word, adapted into a film starring Michael Douglas. His novels have been nominated for the Edgar Award four times and have won twice. He lives in Southern California. Visit the author's website at www.AndrewKlavan.com. Views: 632
Molecular biologist Dr. Carl Peters is under pressure on two fronts: his research grants are disappearing and his marriage is falling apart. But when medical researchers announce that genetically modified animal feed has tainted the food chain, he finally gets the funding he always dreamed of.Dr. Peters discovers the reason behind the cancer link with GM food, but it's so crazy, he barely believes it himself.Transfection is a 5,700 word, 23-page old-school science fiction story, starring a molecular biologist who makes a discovery that shocks the world, only to find his life under threat. It takes in militant vegans, corruption, homelessness, university politics, radiation, the celebrity-obsessed media, and a shadowy conspiracy.Praise for Transfection:"An old-school science fiction story that reminds me of the Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits." - Shane Ede, Novelnaut."I laughed out loud at some of the antics as I was reading. Transfection is well worth the price-tag...yet another well written and, dare I say again, thought provoking, tale from David Gaughran." -- Heather L. Faville, Doubleshot Reviews"Very strong images...a haunting quality...I totally did not expect that ending. I really didn't see it coming...I recommend this to people who enjoy well written sci-fi.." -- LE Olteano, Butterfly Books"Transfection is terrific and well worth the 99 cents." -- JA Konrath, bestselling author of The List. Views: 632
Shep the German shepherd doesn't know why his family has left him alone, nor does he understand the terrible, shrieking storm that has torn apart his city. He just knows that the new dogs he's met are his best chance at survival -- especially now that they've made enemies of the wild dogs in the city. Can Shep keep his new friends safe until his family -- maybe -- returns? Views: 632
A comedian, singer, composer, musician, linguist, actor, author and a favourite of Sean Connery and Billy Connolly's, Norman MacLean is a living legend in the Gaelic world. Tricksters takes the reader on a rambunctious journey around Scotland with endearing but oddly-matched couple, Murdo and Rachel. Murdo is a semi-pro thespian struggling with an alcohol problem; Rachel is constantly on the brink of ending their relationship. And there's the truly appalling television director, Sam, whose Machiavellian schemes are aided by a heavy-drinking Presbyterian heretic from Lewis. When all converge in the Tartan Pagoda Hotel, Uist, what could possibly go right? A hilarious page-turner, Tricksters blends the high style of John Lanchester and the low-life snappy dialogue of George V. Higgins—and it's beautifully translated for the Teuchters by the author. Views: 632
A top-secret NASA space telescope designed to detect alien life is in trouble, at risk of entering Earth’s upper atmosphere and vaporizing. Only one man could prevent the accident. An ex-NASA scientist reluctantly joins the crew of re-commissioned space shuttle Discovery on a daring rescue mission to recover the satellite. Orbiting Earth, they are about to experience something out of this world.For nearly two decades, a top-secret NASA space telescope kept watch on the Solar System’s closest neighbor, star system Alpha Centauri, in the hopes of detecting life-sustaining planets. Inexplicably, the satellite’s orbit was beginning to decay, its mission about to come to an abrupt end as it would soon enter Earth’s upper atmosphere and vaporize. There was one man alive who could prevent the accident. Forced by his former boss into a daring rescue mission, ex-NASA scientist Dr. Frank Carver reluctantly joins the crew of re-commissioned space shuttle Discovery, with one simple objective: recover the satellite’s secret data. He would soon discover that mission was anything but simple. Views: 632
Read all ten Lost Tales compiled in one edition. Ten short stories explore Anglo-Saxon England through the eyes of ten intertwined lives: from a blushing maid to a bold mother, from a daring soldier to an unready king, and many others. The tales introduce the people who will fight, love, and betray each other until the rightful king claims the throne in the novel, "Eadric the Grasper."In the years near 1000 A.D., the Vikings and their king, Sweyn Forkbeard, constantly attack Engla-lond. A weak king, Ethelred II, rules the Anglo-Saxons. He tries to pay off each Viking attack with a steep tax called the “Danegald,” but again and again the pagans return. A masked vigilante called the Golden Cross tries to aid the people of Engla-lond and rally them to warfare, but this rebel is constantly way-laid by the king’s most trusted advisor, Eadric Streona. Eadric Streona, Ealdorman of Mercia, is a charming master of the king’s court who always manages to get what he wants; but what he wants remains a mystery to all.Ten short stories explore this setting through the eyes of ten different characters: from a blushing maid and bold mother to a daring soldier, an unready king, and many others. Some characters are fictional, but most are real figures of history. Altogether, the Lost Tales introduce the people who will fight, love, and betray each other until the rightful king claims the throne of Engla-lond in the complementary novel, "Eadric the Grasper."While interconnected by the novel and each other, each story stands independently as a snapshot into this ancient world. This is a collection of all ten tales, previously released as individual ebooks. Views: 631
In the fantasy world of Silvery Earth, a young queen has to learn the hard way how to live and reign. This is the story of Queen Jessamine, from her Rite night at fourteen to war and exile, prisoner of a foreign king, to her comeback to her home country some thirteen years later. Not much magic, but not our planet anyway.Adult readers for mild sex and violence.Having endured years of an abusive marriage, Grace Evans finally walks out on her loveless marriage and boards a train for York. Within hours of arriving in the ancient city, her destiny is changed forever by a portrait in her hotel room. Haunted by the ghost of Robert Hamilton and confronted with a portrait of herself painted four hundred years ago, Grace has every reason to doubt her sanity. Then Grace finds herself four hundred years in the past, in the bed of the man who has haunted her. A man she barely knows but who, with just one kiss, filled the empty space that had been her shattered heart.How are Grace and Robert connected to Simon and Corran of ‘When Fate Dictates’?I’d love to tell you, but that would ruin the surprise, so I’m sorry folks, you are just going to have to wait for ‘Entwined’, book three of the Highland Secret Series. Views: 631
Williot senior who managed to succeed in life without help from anyone and this has constituted, as always, his pride. Everything flows peacefully until Williot does not feel able to help but also its reflection in the mirror that sucks in the mirror at home and then on Iianng finds himself living an amazing journey through the prison system of the planets rich in many situations.Part 1 of All the Days of John Mann.Long years after the virus made the leap, the people of England live in scattered communities, the threat of slow starvation and swift outbreaks of the choke darken their days. What is left of society teeters always on the brink of collapse and a rag-tag military barely keeps order.John Mann, preacher and healer, travels the byways plying his trade amongst the old and the sick, keeping to the shadows, always watching the road at his back.John Mann is haunted, the only known survivor of exposure to the virus and perhaps the sole source of a vaccine. But he is hunted by many who would use him, not to save lives but to bring a choking end to those who would oppose them.John Mann now finds himself bound by a promise to track a taken boy, a promise that will force him back out of the shadows, onto the grid, and into a fugitive life once more.John Mann is an outlaw, to be feared and betrayed, and when cornered he will visit a terrible justice on anyone who threatens what he holds dear. Views: 631
Megan spends her summers traveling around the Irish countryside with her family. They move from place to place, hauling their camper heind their old car. But they aren't on vacation. This is their way of life. Megan and her family are Travelers. Views: 631
It was a slender length of rusted steel, tapered to a point at one end and jagged at the other, as if it had broken. A thousand people would step over it and think it trash, but not her.
This was the tip of a rapier.
Sixteen-year-old Jill has fought in dozens of fencing tournaments, but she has never held a sharpened blade. When she finds a corroded sword piece on a Caribbean beach, she is instantly intrigued and pockets it as her own personal treasure.
The broken tip holds secrets, though, and it transports Jill through time to the deck of a pirate ship. Stranded in the past and surrounded by strangers, she is forced to sign on as crew. But a pirate's life is bloody and brief, and as Jill learns about the dark magic that brought her there, she forms a desperate scheme to get home—one that risks everything in a duel to the death with a villainous pirate captain.
Time travel, swordplay, and romance combine in an original high-seas adventure from New York Times bestseller Carrie Vaughn. Views: 631
