A prophetic thriller from the author of Cuba Strait, Cobraville follows a covert CIA mission deep in the jungles of the Philippines during a savage civil war. Cole Langan's five-man unit -- in country to repair what they have been led to believe is a vital NSA surveillance monitor -- instead finds itself caught up in a spiraling vortex of lies, spies, and traitors. When the unit collides -- disastrously -- with UN peacekeepers, the surviving CIA agents may face war-crimes trial at the International Criminal Court. On the other side of the Earth, Cole's father, Senator Drew Langan, tries desperately to identify a shadowy group behind the betrayal of his son's CIA unit. An elusive German businessman leads Drew and his femme fatale bodyguard down a rabbit hole of intrigue and corruption that leads all the way to the highest levels of the United Nations. Shot through with Stroud's grimly mordant sense of humor and painstakingly researched, Cobraville cuts deep into the harrowing reality of America's secret wars, in a cautionary book that ought to be read by every spymaster in D.C. and every apparatchik at the UN.

Something is wrong in Niceville. . . A boy literally disappears from Main Street. A security camera captures the moment of his instant, inexplicable vanishing. An audacious bank robbery goes seriously wrong: four cops are gunned down; a TV news helicopter is shot and spins crazily out of the sky, triggering a disastrous cascade of events that ricochet across twenty different lives over the course of just thirty-six hours. Nick Kavanaugh, a cop with a dark side, investigates. Soon he and his wife, Kate, a distinguished lawyer from an old Niceville family, find themselves struggling to make sense not only of the disappearance and the robbery but also of a shadow world, where time has a different rhythm and where justice is elusive. . . .Something is wrong in Niceville, where evil lives far longer than men do. Compulsively readable, and populated with characters who leap off the page, Niceville will draw you in, excite you, amaze you, horrify you, and, when it finally lets you go, make you sorry you have to leave. Read the first thirty-five pages. Find out why Harlan Coben calls Carsten Stroud the master of “the nerve-jangling thrill ride.” Now with an excerpt from Carsten Stroud’s next book, The Homecoming.

By identifying similarities in various books, this annual selection guide helps readers to independently choose titles of interest published in the last year.Each entry describes a separate book, listing everything readers need to know to make selections. Arranged by author within six genre sections, detailed entries provide: Title Publisher and publication dateSeriesNames and descriptions of charactersTime period and geographical settingReview citationsStory typesBrief plot summarySelected other books by the authorSimilar books by different authorsAuthor, title, series, character name, character description, time period, geographic setting and genre/sub-genre indexes are included to facilitate research.

The astonishing final installment in the page-turning trilogy that Stephen King calls “an authentic work of American genius.” Niceville has an almost unearthly beauty when the sun tops the ancient nearby mountain called Tallulah’s Wall and bathes it in soft Southern light. But there’s a reason Native American tribes avoided the place: An absence that inhabits the air and the depthless “sink” atop Tallulah’s Wall. This “Nothing” has long bent time and the desires of a chosen few to her shadowy ends. As THE RECKONING begins, Detective Nick Kavanaugh and his wife, family lawyer Kate, have accepted that reality in Niceville is not normal. Seemingly, they’ve fought Nothing to a draw. But now a buzzing emerges in the heads of some perfectly normal folks. Nothing isn’t finished. Come to Niceville and sink into Carsten Stroud’s inimitable blend of crime and supernatural thriller, as characters you’ll love throw in with bad guys you’ll like way more than you should as they battle evil.

Short novels may well be the perfect length for science fiction. They are movie length tales that resonate with moxie while exploring characters, new worlds, and ideas. The stories in this unabridged collection are the best-of-the best short science fiction novels published in 2010 by current and emerging masters of this form. “Return to Titan,” by Stephen Baxter, is set in his Xeelee sequence. Michael Poole and his father search one of Saturn’s moons for sentient life that would interfere with their plans to build a gateway to the stars. In this year’s Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner for best short fiction, “The Sultan of the Clouds,” by Geoffrey A. Landis, a terraforming expert is inexplicably invited to Venus by the child who owns most of the planet’s habitable floating cities. “Seven Cities of Gold,” by David Moles, tells the story of a Japanese relief worker charged with tracking down the renegade Christian leader responsible for detonating a nuclear device in an Islam-occupied North American city. In “Jackie’s-Boy,” by Steven Popkes, an orphaned child befriends an uplifted elephant from the abandoned St. Louis Zoo as they trek south across a sparsely populated North America to find sanctuary. “A History of Terraforming,” by Robert Reed, involves a young boy’s ambition to take up his father’s work of terraforming Mars and then much of the solar system and discovers that much more than planets have been altered. In “Troika,” by Alastair Reynolds, the lone survivor of a mission that explored a massive alien object attempts to reveal what he discovered despite the wishes of the Second Soviet Union. Set in the author’s S’hdonni universe, “Several Items of Interest,” by Rick Wilber, the Earth ruling aliens ask a human collaborator to help quell a human insurrection led by the collaborator’s brother.

In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow, blurring the line between life and art. Now, in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world. This venerable collection of short stories brings together award winning authors and masters of the field such as Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Damien Broderick, Carrie Vaughn, Ian R. MacLeod and Cory Doctorow. And with an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.

Revealing a terrorist plot during a NATO conference in Rome, former SEAL commander Demo Dick is directed to investigate an attempted theft of nuclear bombs from a U.S. base, a situation that is complicated by a trap set for him in the Thailand jungle.

Bill Reed had it all ­– brains, looks, athleticism, courage and a talent for leadership. After a challenging childhood in Depression-era Iowa, Reed joined the US Army Air Corps, but the outbreak of World War II saw him give up his commission. Instead, he travelled to China to fly for the American Volunteer Group – the legendary Flying Tigers. After a brief return to America, he resumed the fight as a senior pilot and later squadron commander in the Chinese-American Composite Wing. Soon afterwards, Reed tragically lost his life in a desperate parachute jump late in the war, by which point he was a fighter ace with nine confirmed aerial victories. His obituary was front-page news throughout the state of Iowa. This book is a biography of his extraordinary life, focusing on his time spent flying with some of the famous aerial groups of World War II. It draws heavily on Reed's own words, along with the author's deep knowledge of the China air war and years of research into Reed's life, to tell his compelling story.

The job of a high-risk courier is very simple. You pick something up. You drop something off. The hard part is not getting killed. When Kyra, the daughter of Big Jake Rynerson -- one of the world's wealthiest men -- is kidnapped in the Galápagos Islands, professional courier Simon Leonidovich is hired to deliver the ransom. But playing bagman for a billionaire is not so simple -- not when so many people stand to gain by Kyra's disappearance, and not when someone close to Big Jake is playing for the wrong team. To complicate matters, Simon finds himself falling for Big Jake's enticing and clever assistant, Caitlin Wells, though she may be the very one scheming to control the Rynerson empire. But when the money drop gets botched, the stakes turn deadly for both Simon and Kyra. From the dark jungles of Colombia to the flashy lights of Las Vegas, Simon matches wits against a cold-blooded adversary who seems to know his every move. Now he must somehow finish the job, save the girl, and figure out who's been pulling the strings before his pursuers deliver him into an unmarked grave. With rapid-fire action and devious plot twists, Bagman is a lightning-paced thriller that will keep you breathless until the final drop is made.