Financial Fiction

It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.

Shane Black is trapped in New York, and vicious protesters are burning the city to the ground. He has no gun, no way out, and he’s 1,000 miles from home. America’s financial doomsday. A wayward son. The epic struggle to survive. Country music icon Shane Black is this year’s headliner for the New Year’s Eve bash in Times Square, but when violent riots break out, he’ll need more than a six string to escape the maelstrom. After decades of abuse as the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar’s day of reckoning is at hand.

Country music icon Shane Black is this year’s headliner for the New Year’s Eve bash in Times Square, but when violent riots break out, he’ll need more than a six string to escape New York City. After decades of abuse as the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar’s day of reckoning is at hand. Without a functioning monetary system to purchase basic goods, society rapidly descends into abject chaos. Protests, looting, and bloodletting take the place of civility in a country which becomes thoroughly unhinged.

Could you steal a priceless work of art to save your father's life? Adriana Villa is a master thief who specializes in recovering stolen art from World War II. When her father is abducted, Adriana is thrown into a deadly race against time to locate and steal three of the most valuable paintings of all time. If she succeeds, her father’s life will be spared. But if she fails.... Follow Adriana on her impossible mission as she unravels the clues, chases down leads, and fights off a slew of henchmen in this white-knuckle thrill ride! But another thief lurks in the shadows and Adriana must ...

When the rule of law fails, dishonest politicians get even dirtier. Shane and Julianna can’t compete with the debased dictators of Jackson County unless they are willing to bend a few rules of their own. Shane Black escaped the city by the skin of his teeth. But his well-stocked mountain retreat is now the target of a local despot who gained his power through bribes, payoffs, and shady politics. Mayor Hayes had few scruples before the collapse. Now that he’s the only law around, he’s down-right ornery. Road trips are always a bad idea in the apocalypse.

200 AMSTERDAM: The Vertical City Book One of ZYMATICA: A Trilogy The ground remembers. Do you? Every morning, the world wakes to another disaster. Polar ice disappearing into the oceans. Record-breaking heat. Solar storms tearing across the upper atmosphere. Wildfires turning the Manhattan sky orange. Earthquakes trembling beneath cities built on ancient bedrock. To billions of people rushing into subways, drinking twelve-dollar lattes, and hurrying to corporate meetings, they are separate headlines. No one realizes they are dominoes. What if they are connected? What if humanity has ...

A nuclear war has been averted. The danger has only just begun. Political turmoil rules in Russia and America after the revelations about the assassination of the Russian president and his mistress, twenty stolen Russian nukes, and the child trafficking network operated by Russia's FSB on American soil to collect kompromat. The Americans are on the warpath against Russia, the traitors in their midst, and the authorities who have turned a blind eye to child trafficking in their country for more than thirty-four years. And then, just a few days after the shocking news conference, shortly past...

A British special agent is murdered for an unusual artifact. On any given day, the experts at Atlanta’s International Archaeological Agency crisscross the globe to rescue ancient relics long feared lost to time, war, or thieves. IAA agents have recovered billions’ worth of missing antiquities, have wiped out entire networks of smugglers, and have even solved a murder at the Vatican. Their successes have made headlines from Tokyo to Turin to Tulsa. But some mysteries require deeper investigation—enigmas so puzzling that they’ve defied the explanations of history, science, and faith ...

Lauren Holmes has the ideal life, or so everyone thinks. At fifty-two, she lives in an elegant Connecticut home, organizes charity galas, and appears to have it all with her successful pharmaceutical executive husband. But behind the polished facade, Lauren feels invisible in her own marriage, suffocating under twenty-three years of emotional neglect disguised as domestic bliss. When a single text message shatters her world, Lauren discovers her husband's eighteen-month affair and something far worse. Hidden offshore accounts. Millions in concealed assets. A man who's been systematically ...

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One careless text. Twenty-five years of marriage. A revenge plot he never saw coming. Kelsey Adams has spent twenty-five years as the perfect, quiet wife, managing the household and balancing the books while her ambitious CPA husband, Dirk, climbs the corporate ladder. But when Dirk accidentally sends her a steamy text about peeling off a little red dress meant for his twenty-seven-year-old secretary, Kelsey’s entire world shatters. Instead of throwing a tantrum, Kelsey smiles, cooks his favorite rosemary roast, and goes to work. Dirk thinks he’s the smartest man in the room, hiding a ...

Eighteen years of marriage, one $91,000 betrayal, and a six-thousand-two-hundred-pound evidence locker. Marley Ayers just wanted a comfortable ride after eleven years of grueling consulting flights. What she gets instead is a front-row seat to her husband Jaron’s infidelity when she catches him rocking the suspension of her brand-new, pearl white luxury SUV in a commuter parking lot with a blonde mistress. Instead of screaming or smashing a window, the brilliant supply chain consultant realizes her vehicle's integrated telematics suite has recorded everything. By accessing the SUV's trip ...

He stole her name. She's stealing his freedom. Rowan Delafield spent fifteen years as a forensic accountant hunting down fraud. She thought she left that life behind to raise a family. She was wrong. It starts with a single envelope: a bank statement for an account Rowan didn't open, holding six million dollars she didn't earn, authorized by a signature that looks exactly like hers. Then comes the knock at the door. Arrested at dawn and charged with federal embezzlement, Rowan realizes the terrifying truth: This wasn't a mistake. It was a frame job. Her husband, Cameron—a wealthy hedge ...

He never raised his voice. He never stayed out late. He never gave her a reason to check. But Claire checked. $3,200 a month. Every month. For years. Sent to a woman she has never heard of. Every time he said we can't afford that — every sacrifice she made, every vacation they skipped, every couch she sat on because replacing it wasn't in the budget — all of it was built on a number he controlled and a truth he kept locked away. She doesn't scream. She doesn't cry. She stops. She stops managing his calendar. Stops packing lunches. Stops smoothing the silence between him and their ...

She built her empire on the backs of the dead. He has come to make her carry them. What happens when grief turns to steel? How do you break a corporate titan who bought the system built to stop her? Madam Arinola Odewale is Nigeria’s famed "Green CEO." She left the Bonny River creeks to build a multi-billion naira empire. She does not clean up oil spills. She buries them under gag orders, micro-settlements, and an offshore payment chain running through Mauritius. She controls the regulators. She owns the process. She believes she is untouchable. She is wrong. K.C. Adewale operates from a ...

JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN'T SEE SOMETHING, DOESN'T MEAN IT ISN'T THERE.Throughout history, kings, presidents, prime ministers, and treasure hunters have sought the fabled lost city of Shangri La. For centuries, this utopia has been relegated to fiction and lore, believed to be nothing more than a legend in the eyes of every historical expert in the world. Until an archaeologist discovers an ancient map carved into a sacred mountain in China, and is murdered because of it. Now, Sean Wyatt and his team from the International Archaeological Agency must trace his work and solve a series of clues ...

A former soldier settles into post-combat life, happy to train others rather than fight. Then a visitor from his past seeks him out for help and protection. Combat tracker Mitch Kearns is well past his glory days and spends his time teaching the feds how to pursue fugitives on the run. Fresh out of teaching a class for his fellow FBI agents, he runs into his mentor’s daughter, who’s in possession of a terrorist group's plans to obliterate the U.S. Mitch then faces an impossible task: get her to the authorities before hardened mercenaries can kill them. Cornered and desperate, they’re ...

When financial ruin threatens Longbourn, Elizabeth Bennet must play a dangerous game. Will a proud gentleman’s secret generosity save her family—or cost Elizabeth her heart? An unexpected offer of rescue arises, but it comes from the most unlikely source. As Elizabeth navigates the treacherous waters of social expectation and family loyalty, she is forced to reconsider everything she thought she knew about independence. She soon realizes that the greatest risk isn’t losing her status—it’s losing her heart to a man she once vowed to despise. Fitzwilliam Darcy is a man bound by duty...

Twenty-six days. One impossible deadline. A novel written in the grip of the addiction it portrays. Alexei Ivanovich is a young Russian tutor at a European gambling resort, hopelessly in love with Polina, his employer's stepdaughter. She treats him with calculated cruelty, alternating between encouragement and contempt, demanding he prove his devotion through increasingly degrading acts. When she asks him to win money for her at roulette, he discovers something more intoxicating than love: the heightened intensity of everything at stake, the suspension of rational thought, the conviction he...

Except for well-known individuals, including Dr. Martin Stopford, Ga-Hyun Chung, Gianluigi Aponte, John Fredriksen, and Evangelos Marinakis, all names, characters, places, organizations, vessels, events, and incidents portrayed in this story are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, transactions, French villages, yachts, shipbrokers, or any other persons, places, or entities is purely coincidental.