Historical Political Mystery

The phone rings and the offer is made, leaving you only seconds to decide. Betray your country, or watch your family drop dead before your eyes. After the Iron Curtain's collapse, Russia appears to be finished as a superpower. But KGB general Vasily Karpov is secretly working to restore Russia's status by forcing Americans into traitorous acts of espionage and sabotage, with the aid of a new secret weapon.

On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, the first great revolution of the twentieth century began as working-class men and women occupied buildings throughout Dublin, Ireland, including the general post office on O’Connell Street. Among the commoners in the GPO was a young staff captain of the Irish Volunteers named Michael Collins. He was joined a day later by a fourteen-year-old messenger boy, Eoin Kavanagh.

Paris, November 1945: John Russell is walking home along the banks of the Seine on a cold and misty evening when Soviet agent Yevgeny Shchepkin falls into step alongside him. Shchepkin tells Russell that the American intelligence will soon be asking him to undertake some low grade espionage on their behalf - assessing the strains between different sections of the German Communist Party - and that Shchepkin's own bosses in Moscow want him to accept the task and pass his findings on to them.

By 1939, Anglo-American journalist John Russell has spent over a decade in Berlin, where his son lives with his mother. He writes human-interest pieces for British and American papers, avoiding the investigative journalism that could get him deported. But as World War II approaches, he faces having to leave his son as well as his girlfriend of several years, a beautiful German starlet. When an acquaintance from his old communist days approaches him to do some work for the Soviets, Russell is reluctant, but he is unable to resist the offer.

In 1983, the world stands at the brink of nuclear annihilation, and only a few people are aware of it. A riveting story of how two men’s lives intersect in the midst of an existential crisis, The Able Archers is told through the eyes of two key participants: a young American intelligence officer, Captain Kevin Cattani, and his more experienced Soviet counterpart, Colonel Ivan Levchenko. Only by working together will Cattani and Levchenko find a way to prevent a global nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Elegant and ambitious, Cornelia embodies the essence of the perfect Roman wife. She lives to one day see her loyal husband as Emperor. Her sister Marcella is more aloof, content to witness history rather than make it. But when a bloody coup turns their world upside-down, both women must maneuver carefully just to stay alive.

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol. Within minutes of his arrival, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object is discovered in the Capitol Building. The object is an ancient invitation, meant to usher its recipient into a long-lost world of hidden esoteric wisdom. And when Langdon's mentor is kidnapped, Langdon's only hope of saving him is to accept this invitation and follow wherever it leads him.

Powerful, prosperous, and expanding ever farther into the untamed world, the Roman Empire has reached its zenith under the rule of the beloved Emperor Trajan. But neither Trajan nor his reign can last forever...

Red Square, 1985. The naked body of a young man is left outside the walls of the Kremlin, frozen solid - like marble to the touch - missing the little finger from his right hand. A week later, Alex Marston, the headstrong 15-year-old daughter of the British ambassador, disappears. Army Intelligence Officer Tom Fox, posted to Moscow to keep him from telling the truth to a government committee, is asked to help find her. It's a shot at redemption.

WASHINGTON, DC IS AT A STANDSTILL It’s not political gridlock or division that has paralyzed the capital of the United States this time. A ruthless killer is assassinating members of Congress, leaving authorities with neither clues nor hope to stop the slaughter. Fear grips the city as the federal government grinds to a halt. So, where are former government agent Sean Wyatt and his sidekick, Tommy Schultz? They’re thousands of miles away in the middle of the Mexican rain forest, leading a private mission for one of the congresswomen targeted by the murderer. The congresswoman is ...

Jane Seymour of Wiltshire is not meant to go to Court. Not a child like her, with her lack of beauty and no title. But family connections are enough to have her named to the bridal retinue of Mary Tudor. At the French Court, the plain and docile Jane meets the girl who will grow into her rival in years to come: the already charismatic and conniving Anne Boleyn. Soon back home in the English countryside, Jane wants nothing more than peace and quiet—and the devotion of her childhood protector, William Dormer.

World War II is nearly over. For the Russians the enemy is no longer Nazi Germany but the American behemoth that threatens to topple the Communist revolution. Deep within the walls of the Kremlin, Stalin's top man hatches a brilliant plan that will alter the course of postwar history - and it's all based on a deception as simple as the shell game.

On the evening of March 9, 1566, David Rizzio, the private secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, was brutally murdered. Dragged from the chamber of the heavily pregnant Mary, Rizzio was stabbed 56 times by a party of assassins. This breathtakingly tense novella dramatizes the events that led up to that night, telling the infamous story as it has never been told before.

Joseph Sherman first visits Saigon, the capital of French colonial Cochin-China, in 1925 on a hunting expedition with his father, a US senator. He is lured back again and again as a traveler, a soldier, and then as a reporter by his fascination for the exotic land and for Lan, a mandarin's daughter he cannot forget. Over five decades, Joseph's life becomes enmeshed with the political intrigues of two of Saigon's most influential families, the French colonist Devrauxs, and the native Trans - and inevitably with Vietnam's turbulent, war torn fate.

The Knights of the Golden Circle was the largest and most dangerous clandestine organization in American history. It amassed billions in stolen gold and silver, all buried in hidden caches across the United States. Since 1865 treasure hunters have searched, but little of that immense wealth has ever been found. Now, 160 years later, two factions of what remains of the Knights of the Golden Circle want that lost treasure - one to spend it for their own ends, the other to preserve it.

Shot down over Siberia, ex-Justice Department agent Cotton Malone is forced into a fight for survival against Aleksandr Zorin, a man whose loyalty to the former Soviet Union has festered for decades into an intense hatred of the United States. Before escaping, Malone learns that Zorin and another ex-KGB officer, this one a sleeper still embedded in the West, are headed overseas to Washington D.C. Noon on January 20th—Inauguration Day—is only hours away.

On the eve of Marcus Cicero's inauguration as consul of Rome, the grisly death of a boy sends ripples of fear through a city already wracked by civil unrest, crime, and debauchery of every kind. Felled by a hammer, his throat slit and his organs removed, the young slave appears to have been offered as a human sacrifice, forbidden as an abomination in the Roman Republic. For Cicero, the ill forebodings of this hideous murder only increase his frustrations and the dangers he already faces as Rome's leader.

It is a society that is, officially, a paradise. Superior to the decadent West, Stalin's Soviet Union is a haven for its citizens, providing for all of their needs: education, health care, security. In exchange, all that is required is their hard work, and their loyalty and faith to the Soviet State. But now a murderer is on the loose.

THERE'S A TIME TO RUN, AND A TIME TO FIGHT. On the run after his brothers-in-arms betrayed him in the Middle East, the former Delta Force commando has hidden in plain sight in, of all places, the art world. Turns out Dak’s particularly lethal set of skills translates well to hunting down stolen relics across the globe. The money he earns from his eccentric young benefactor means he can afford to lay low and keep moving. Good thing, too, because his former commanding officer, Col. Cameron Tucker, still wants him dead. And has doubled his efforts to track Dak down. In a last, desperate ...

In six minutes, one of us would be dead. None of us knew it was coming. So says Wes Holloway, a once-cocky and ambitious presidential aide, about the day that changed his life forever. On that Fourth of July, Wes put Ron Boyle, the chief executive's oldest friend, into the presidential limousine. By the time the trip came to an end, Wes was permanently disfigured, and Boyle was dead, the victim of a crazed assassin.