Night of the Bear by Alan Cockrell and Richard Hess
Reverend Bobby Chatman is a successful television preacher and the United States president’s spiritual adviser-though he’s hiding a dark secret. Immigrating to the US from Russia, he and his two assistants are deep-cover Russian intelligence operatives who have devised a plan to bring the United States to its knees with just four cruise missiles launched from within its borders.
Captain Mark “Suds” Matthews is an F-15 Eagle pilot stationed in Massachusetts. Frustrated with bureaucracy within the US Air Force, he’s prepared to leave his job and fly his final Eagle ride. Meanwhile, the career of his girlfriend, FBI Agent Darryl McCormick, seems to only be at its outset.
The night of the Russian attack is a desperate race to deliver the weapons and exit American airspace before being discovered, performed by an aircrew forced to risk their lives for a mission they don’t believe in. Unbeknownst to him, Captain Matthews’s last ride as an F-15 pilot may just be his most important.
No Stones Left Unturned by Marie-Claude Gingras
Martha and Jeff are desperate. Stephan, their nine-year-old child, has vanished. In 2036, he is just one of the many children who have disappeared over the last decade from a peaceful region of Vermont. Jeff calls on his friend Ryan, a member of the FBI’s elite tactical rescue unit whose approach is based on tangible facts and ground research. Martha recruits Leila, a young woman with perceptive abilities and telepathic skills. Friction between Leila and Ryan runs high, but as the sinister nature of Stephan’s kidnapping is discovered, they finally make a truce.
Chasing a link they uncover to a massive corporate cover-up, their quest to rescue Stephan and the other kids takes them to remote locations in Alaska and Montana. They discover that these child abductions go far beyond what they could have imagined—and that finding Stephan is just the beginning.
Memory Weavers by Muffy Walker
From her office in Manhattan, Hadley is preparing for her twenty-second wedding anniversary. She surprises her husband, Bergen, with a gift to get their genomes sequenced to proactively counter any disease risks. In the East Village, twenty-seven-year-old Rachel reluctantly goes to therapy for her panic attacks and flashbacks from a college rape. Her mother is overprotective, and her father has left the family. When the genome results come back, Hadley learns her fate and spirals into depression. Her family struggles to help while grieving her mental decline.
Rachel and Hadley meet in the therapist’s waiting room. One woman is desperately holding onto her memories, while the other tries to banish them. They form a supportive friendship, each filling a void in the other’s life. As their bond strengthens, both struggle with suicidal ideations, threatening their progress.
The Bank by Brandon Currence
The Bank continues the saga of Daniel Furman, a brilliant and talented athlete whose tranquil life is shattered by forces beyond his control. After a harrowing face-off with a terrorist culminates in the savage attack of his fiancée, Sarah, Daniel waits in Maine while Sarah heals. He wonders if he will ever again find the peace he had ripped from him.
As Daniel considers his future, his mentor and uncle, Victor, offers a new course for him. He becomes embroiled in a world of technology that can provide for the welfare of the earth and redefine the center of world power. Will he ever find the quiet life with Sarah he desperately desires? Or will his intelligence drive him to a destiny shaped by unimaginable forces the world may not be ready to accept? Daniel must choose between challenging the most powerful institution in history and losing everything he has worked so hard to build.
Smoke on the Water by Jack Bartley
In 1971, the war in Vietnam still rages. Jason Conley, a recent college graduate, finds himself paying the price for the “free” university education a NROTC scholarship provided and now owes the Navy four years of service. Not wanting to go to war, he devises a scheme to serve on an oceanographic research support vessel in Hawaii, thousands of miles from the battle zone. A brilliant plan, if it works. And it does-at first.
Through a series of events and miscues, some of his own making, Jason is transferred to a new command, a destroyer escort that deploys on a WestPac tour to Vietnam the very day he sets foot aboard. How will he reconcile his feelings about the Vietnam War while at the same time directing a destroyer escort on the gunline supporting US and South Vietnamese troops? How will his personal life be affected by the dictates of the Navy? And more importantly, how does he come out of this alive?
“Smoke on the Water” is based on real life events. It is a coming-of-age tale that occurs in less than four years’ time, spanning events from the East Coast to Hawaii to Southeast Asia. It encompasses journeys and adventures in foreign lands, loves found and lost, humorous situations, and a maturation process within one man compressed in the pressure cooker of an unpopular war.
If you liked M*A*S*H you’ll love this book.
For the Love of Russian Gold by Ludmila Melnikoff
The Berlin Wall has come down, and East meets West. Yeltsin becomes president of a bankrupt state. Desperate for cash, Russia opens its doors to foreign companies, and Australian-born Ludmila is lured to the home of her ancestors to mine Russia’s secret jewel in her crown, Sukhoi Log, the world’s largest gold reserve. To do this, she seeks the aid of charismatic Australian mining magnate Ian MacNee and Australia’s future prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull. The two men share a passion for gold and for Ludmila—but one man is not what he seems.
Supported by diary and business meeting records and company reports, For the Love of Russian Gold is a sweeping exposé of corruption and deceit at the highest echelons of the Russian government in the 1990s, and of tax havens, the mafia, and synthetic drugs. It is also a personal, heart-wrenching story of abuse in the form of coercive control.
Millions of dollars raised by merchant bankers in London, New York, and Australia flow into Siberia as the mining world eagerly watches. The stakes are high, but the question remains: Is the reserve really worth $30 billion? Or is Sukhoi Log Russia’s greatest grift?
Death in the Land of Enchantment by Holly Harrison
Patrol Officer Louise Sanchez knows the northern New Mexico roads well. But when she’s asked to fill in for Detective Pascal Ruiz, who’s awaiting trial, she finds herself in unfamiliar territory. During her first week on the job, high-powered and handsome attorney Webster Madison is found with a butcher knife in his heart. At the scene, Louise only discovers two pieces of evidence: twenty-one dollars in board game money and the photo of a woman from an online dating site. His autopsy detects a date-rape drug in his bloodwork. Against her better judgment, Sanchez seeks help from Ruiz, gathering information on his father’s missing lady friend in return.
As Louise pursues three different women connected to Madison, she uncovers various secrets about his life along with a Native American pottery scandal-but the clues just don’t add up. While following her intuition and blazing her own investigative trail, it soon becomes clear that she’s way out of her league.
Prince of Wales Fort, 1770 by Katie Churchill-King
In 1770, Prince of Wales Fort and the hinterlands of Canada are kingdoms within themselves. From well-established trading ceremonies to clandestine relationships with Native women to age-old smuggling operations, the fort is a microcosm of the chaotic New World, hosting dreary days and bacchanal nights.
Shenandoah, descendant of the famous Montour family, is sold to a Chipewyan chief and accompanies the Chipewyan people to the shores of Hudson Bay to trade furs for guns, blankets, and wares. Apprentice Jeremiah has arrived on the latest supply ship with dreams of advancement and riches. Instead, the young man finds himself unable to escape the intrigues that pervade this isolated post.
In a land where wet powder or an exploded gun means certain starvation and everything worth knowing is hidden from the “directors” across the pond, the stage is set for the development of a shaky and uncertain existence that clings to decorum while ever threatening to unravel.
Miss Manhattan by Stephen Wolf
Audrey Munson’s radiant rise begins with New York’s great self-glorification at the 1909 Hudson-Fulton Celebration. Centerpiece for its grand banquet: a marble sculpture of the three graces. Eighteen-year-old Audrey modeled for all three.
Soon she is posing for statues before the Plaza Hotel and atop the Municipal Building, among others, and she is the first woman to appear naked in a movie. But times and tastes change-and then come the horrors of the Great War, when artists no longer sculpt lofty themes such as “virtue” and “beauty.” Her luminescent career eventually darkens into a trail of loss and despair.
Then, in 1990, a young artist gradually recognizes the same face on statues throughout the city, inspiring an intricate and often frustrating search that will lead two remarkable women to touch hands across generations.
Kelsey’s Crossing by David Randal
The homeless men of the Kelsey Rescue Mission think of Greg Smith as the nice fellow serving meals on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They don’t know that Greg was once one of Washington’s most powerful political operatives. Recently released from prison for committing election fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering, he only wants to live a quiet life away from the limelight.
But when political corruption in the city of Kelsey threatens the good work of the Mission, Greg reluctantly agrees to direct the Mission’s voter referendum campaign to oppose the city’s self-serving leaders. The campaign soon results in unrest, including a tragic shooting. Greg and his army of homeless men work to restore calm to prevent further chaos. Their success leads them to second-chance opportunities none of them imagined. Kelsey’s Crossing reminds us that the past need not define the future, especially when we dare to accept the gift of a second chance and seek redemption.
