Alpha (Jad Bell)

Description

For the visitors to Wilsonville, the largest theme park in the world, the day began with a smile. By the end, they wonder-will they be able to escape with their lives?

Retired Delta Force operator, Master Sergeant Jonathan "Jad" Bell, is Wilsonville's lead undercover security officer. The threat begins with the announcement of a hidden dirty bomb, but quickly becomes something far, far worse.

Trained since the age of seventeen to save innocent victims from impossible hostage situations, Jad scrambles to assess the threat and protect the visitors. He will come face to face with a villain whose training matches his in every way-and presents a threat Jad may not be able to stop.

---

Walking Dead (Atticus Kodiak, Book 7)

Product Details

• Notes: Variety NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
• Shape: New
• ISBN13: 9780553589009

Description

Atticus Kodiak knows where people go to hide. That’s why he and Alena Cizkova have come to a secluded Georgian town in the former U.S.S.R. What he doesn’t know is what his friend and neighbor Bakhar Lagidze was hiding from. Bakhar and his entire family have been viciously murdered—all except for Lagidze’s fourteen-year-old daughter, whose nightmare is just beginning. To rescue her, Atticus must enter a lethal web that stretches from Russia to Istanbul, from Dubai to Las Vegas, and into the very heart of evil. But what troubles Atticus the most is that Alena, once one of the world’s most fearless assassins, is clearly terrified of what Atticus will uncover—and what he’ll become when he does.

---

The Last Run: A Queen & Country Novel (Queen & Country Novels)

Description

In the Special Operations Section of the British Secret Intelligence Agency, there are only three ways you leave the job: You’re promoted out, you quit, or you die. Tara Chace has been waiting for the first while avoiding the third. After ten years, though, she’s getting old, and she’s getting slow, and the time has come for her to step aside.

But before she can leave the Section to younger hands, a mysterious message out of the past has Chace embarking on one final run, into the most dangerous field of operations in the world: Iran. Communication from a decades-silent agent brings with it the potential for a devastating blow against a repressive regime. Chace’s instructions are clear: Bring the agent out alive. But nothing in service of Queen and country is ever that simple. With allies and enemies alike all serving their own agendas, Chace finds herself alone, hunted—and racing the clock to complete what is destined to be her last run.

---

The Punisher, Vol. 1

Description

Time to get back to work. For Frank Castle death comes easy ... life is where things gets complicated. Fully loaded with the eisner winning writer Greg Rucka (Batwoman, Queen and Country, WOLVERINE) and neo-superstar artist Marco Checchetto (Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil), the BiGGEST GUN of all returns with blood on his hands and vengeance in his eyes. As New York City's body counts continue to rise, the city's streets are teeming with more methodical criminals than ever and a police force doing its best to keep its head above water. The Punisher has returned to serve his own brand of justice with everything he's got ... but can he survive the darkness stored in his own arsenal? Plus bonus pages exploring some of the new personalities in Frank's life ... and how closely intertwined living is with dying.

COLLECTING: THE PUNISHER 1-6, MATERIAL FROM SPIDER-ISLAND: I LOVE NEW YORK CITY

---

Critical Space

Description

The acclaimed author of Shooting at Midnight has penned a thriller like no other ... the no-holds-barred story of a bodyguard with the ultimate assignment: protecting a woman who also happens to be the most hunted killer in the world...

Code-named Drama, she is a lightning-fast death machine — a hitwoman sought by intelligence agencies around the world. Drama kills as easily as she breathes ... and the last time she and Atticus Kodiak met, they barely escaped each other alive.

Atticus Kodiak has a reputation as one of the toughest bodyguards in the business. He’s used to picking his assignments and calling the shots. But all that changes when he is forced to take on Drama as a client — the last person he ever imagined would need his protection.

This time, Drama is the one who is running from a killer. She needs Atticus’s help, and she won’t take no for an answer. To prove it, she abducts a high-profile member of the royal family whom Atticus has sworn to protect. He will do almost anything to get the woman back. But what Drama needs from him will destroy his reputation — and siding with her means he can never turn back.

From New York’s Russian enclaves to the Swiss Alps and the Caribbean, Atticus becomes Drama’s protector, and her only hope for survival as she tries to outlive and outrun her bloody past. But once immersed in Drama’s high-stakes, covert world, Atticus breaks a cardinal rule: He gets to know Drama as a woman rather than just a client — and it’s a bond that could cost them both their lives.

For the men hunting Drama are capable of unspeakable violence — of sins that make Drama’s own look like the acts of an amateur. And they will stop at nothing to see her dead....

A masterful work by one of the most unique voices in the field, Critical Space combines high-voltage, high-tech action with swift, terrifying brutality. The result is Greg Rucka’s most explosive thriller to date — a powerhouse of a novel destined to become a classic of modern suspense.


From the Hardcover edition.

---

Penzler Pick, September 2001: Greg Rucka has created a remarkable character named Atticus Kodiak, a bodyguard who, together with assorted friends and associates, has appeared in four previous books. Before reading Critical Space, it's not necessary to know the sometimes complicated history of Atticus and his professional and personal relationships, but it helps.

It helps, for instance, to know that Atticus has been romantically involved with Bridget and Natalie, both of whom have worked on cases with him. It helps to know that Bridget has a very complicated past, which Rucka chronicled in his fourth book, Shooting at Midnight. And it helps to know that he has already had a run-in with one of the most deadly international assassins working--a beautiful woman who goes by the name of Drama.

It is Drama who takes center stage in this latest tale. After quitting a high-profile case as bodyguard to spoiled movie star Skye Van Brandt, Kodiak is approached by an old friend from England who is bringing the famous abused children's advocate, Lady Antonia Ainsley-Hunter, to the States for some appearances. After one near-miss with Lady Antonia, another attempt to abduct her is successful. But it is not a ransom or publicity that the kidnapper wants--she is merely bait for the real target: Atticus. A game of cat and mouse leads through the subways of New York, out to Staten Island, and back over to New Jersey, where Atticus is once again in the presence of Drama, who now needs his help. She has become a target of an assassin named Oxford, who is every bit as good as she is. Drama, who has some idea who might have put the hit on her, needs backup to combat this elite killer.

What is remarkable about this book, and the series as a whole, is not only the writing, which is crisp and concise, but the inside information from Rucka about what it takes to be a bodyguard, what the training is like, and how certain situations are defused. Rucka knows his stuff and deserves a wider audience. --Otto Penzler

---

Private Wars (Queen and Country)

Description

Only Greg Rucka, the thriller genre’s most fearless writer, would dare create a spy so edgy, so explosive, so extreme, she should be rated X.

Tara Chace was once the most dangerous woman alive. And now that the international spy network thinks she’s as good as dead, she’s even more dangerous than ever.

Only one thing could coax Tara back into the game: a chance to vindicate herself. The torture and execution of Dina Malikov has set off a cutthroat grab for power in strategically crucial Uzbekistan. Tara’s job is to slip into the country and extract Dina’s pro-Western husband and their young son before they are murdered—by his ruthless sister.

But there are a couple of wild cards in the deck, including a missing mobile weapons system that can bring down a commercial airliner, not to mention powerful political careers. Now, as she vanishes into hostile territory with a man who may or may not be what he seems, Tara is going to find out that the war on terror is more terrifying than anyone knows. For in a battle where betrayal is a conventional weapon, loyalty is a weakness, and anyone—even a child—is a legitimate target: it’s every spy, every woman, for herself.

Combine a thriller that defies every expectation with a heroine for whom nothing is out of bounds, and the result is Private Wars, a suspense novel so explosively realistic, it should be classified.


From the Hardcover edition.

---