HELEN BRANDOM – WRITING IN THE SAND

New York Times bestselling author Alex Kava returns in a blaze of glory with a gripping, action-packed thriller featuring special agent Maggie O’Dell,who is leading the search for a serial arsonist whose crimes threaten Maggie dangerously close to home. When a building bursts into flames on a cold winter night in D.C., investigators see a resemblance to a string of recent fires in the area. There is one difference, however: This one has a human casualty. The local team insists they’re looking for a young white male, suffering from an uncontrollable impulse to act out his anger or sexual aggression. But when special agent Maggie O’Dell is called in, everything she sees leads her to believe that this is the work of a calculating and controlled criminal.

Everybody knows that governments engage in activities that are top secret and not always carried out by-the-book. They are knows as 'black ops'. But perhaps less well known is that there is a level beyond this, when the very existence of the state is threatened and the situation needs fixing instantly and utterly secretly and probably violently. Sometimes, it's necessary to go 'full black'. And when the USA is in that position, the man most likely to lead the mission is former Navy SEAL Scot Harvath. FULL BLACK finds Harvath in Sweden, executing in an audacious plan to prevent a massive attack on the Unites States by leading a team to capture a suspected terrorist and infiltrate his cell with a double agent. At the same time, Larry Solomon, one of the most famous film producers in Hollywood, is attacked in his home by a special forces-style group of assassins and only escapes with the help of his friend and former Delta Force operative Luke Ralston. In making a documentary film, Solomon has unknowingly exposed one of the world's wealthiest and highly connected power-brokers as a man determined to plunge the West into deadly chaos. Now, both Solomon and Ralston are living on borrowed time. As the plots rocket to their pulse-pounding conclusions, Harvath will be left with only one means to save his country. Unable to trust anyone, he will be forced to go FULL BLACK.

A novel of dazzling wit and serious purpose. An extraordinary feat of storytelling and breathtaking invention on a grand scale, it is a tour de force from a writer who has turned science fiction on its head. "Unexpectedly savage, emotionally powerful, and impossible to forget." —The Times In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one — maybe two — people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever. Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has changed almost beyond recognition to become an agent of the Culture's Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilizations throughout the greater galaxy. Concealing her new identity — and her particular set of abilities — might be a dangerous strategy, however. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else's war is never a simple matter.

Opar, the lost colony of Atlantis, is hidden deep in the heart of Africa, awash with incredible riches. From this ancient city comes Hadon, an impoverished but ambitious young man who sets out to win the great games of Klakor, and thus become king of the Khokarsan Empire. As his quest for the throne leads him into the wild lands beyond the empire's edge, Hadon finds himself embroiled in a bloody civil war. Featuring a brand-new introduction and afterword by Christopher Paul Carey (Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa)