Disclaimer

After four years, the tide of war is turning in North Africa and Europe. The conflict in Southeast Asia, however, has reached new heights of savagery, and Operation Monsun poses a sinister threat to the hope of allied victory. The Special Operations mission off the Burmese coast requires volunteers. Men with nothing to live for, or men with everything to lose. The two-man torpedo the chariot is the ultimate weapon in a high-risk war...<

Review

"Vivid naval action at its most authentic." -- Sunday Times of London

About the Author

Douglas Edward Reeman, who also writes under the name Alexander Kent, joined the British Navy at 16, serving on destroyers and small craft during World War II, eventually rising to the rank of lieutenant. He has taught navigation to yachtsmen and has served as a script adviser for television and films. As Alexander Kent, Reeman is the author of the best-selling Richard Bolitho Novels. His books have been translated into nearly two dozen languages.

From the Inside Flap

A is for author....  Dink writes to his favorite author, mystery writer Wallis Wallace, and invites him to visit Green Lawn. To Dink's amazement, Wallace says he'll come! But when the big day arrives, Wallace is nowhere to be found. The police think he just missed his plane, but Dink suspects foul play. It's up to Dink and his two best friends, Josh and Ruth Rose, to find the famous writer--before it's too late!  

They are ancient killing machines, designed to locate and destroy any life form reaching a certain level of intelligence. Now, stirred from eons of sleep, the Inhibitors have descended on their latest target: Humanity." "The first wave of Inhibitors has sent war veteran Clavain and a ragtag group of refugees into hiding. Their leadership is faltering, and their situation is growing more desperate. But their little colony has just received an unexpected visitor: an avenging angel with the power to lead mankind to safety - or draw down its darkest enemy." As she leads them to an apparently insignificant moon light-years away, it begins to dawn on Clavain and his companions that to beat one enemy, it may be necessary to forge an alliance with something much worse.

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Review

"... a suspense-filled, Christian-themed tale in which justice and mercy become something more than abstractions...." --Tim Davis, Bookloons.com

"The dialogue... is without a doubt the most clever I have ever read.... I would highly recommend this book...." --Susan Miura, FaithfulReader.com

From the Back Cover

A Deadly Game of Justice Versus Mercy Charles Beale lives outside the shadow of Washington, D.C. Politics and power matter only when a client crosses the Potomac to visit his Alexandria Rare Books shop. But that all changes when a former client--a man deeply connected in the Justice Department--is found murdered after a break-in gone bad. When Charles reclaims at auction the books he'd once sold, he quickly discovers he's bought more trouble than he could have ever imagined. Inside one volume are secrets. A collection of sins that, if revealed, could destroy reputations, careers--even lives. Charles soon learns he isn't the only who knows. Going to the police means ruining a multitude of lives. But staying silent puts a target on his shop, his wife--and himself. Charles must decide: Should one mistake really cost you everything?

Floreina is a cybernetically enhanced young woman with a vibrant future in the Amarrian Empire, a decorated turret commander and slave overseer aboard an Abaddon warship. But after a cruel “accident” and the repeated abuse of slaves, Floreina risks everything in a defiant act of mutiny. Along the way, she learns that commandeering a battleship takes more than just artificially focused cunning, automated adrenaline injections, and simple, old-fashioned brutality. For her plan to succeed, Floreina must befriend a Minmatar slave. But plans don’t always go as planned… And as the two fight for their lives, Floreina must find a way to reconcile their friendship with the racism that drives her career. --Visit www.AgainstARock.com for this book's official site, or www.KalinBooks.com for other works by Kalin Ringkvist<

About the Author

AMELIA ATWATER-RHODES wrote her first novel, In the Forests of the Night, when she was 13 years old. Other books in the Den of Shadows series are Demon in My View, Shattered Mirror, and Midnight Predator, all ALA Quick Picks for Young Adults. She has also published the five-volume series The Kiesha'ra: Hawksong, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and VOYA Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror List Selection;_ Snakecharm; Falcondance; Wolfcry,_ an IRA-CBC Young Adults' Choice; and Wyvernhail. She is also the author of Persistence of Memory. Visit her online at AmeliaAtwaterRhodes.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Saturday, 5:52 a.m.

The ringing in her ears surely was the sound of the world shattering. It was louder than the November air whistling outside as it tore leaves the color of fire and blood from the trees, and louder than the hum of the Chevy's engine as Adianna Vida pressed the gas pedal down further, accelerating past sixty . . . seventy . . .

Pushing eighty miles per hour, she twisted the dial on her satellite radio, turning the music up in the hope that it would drown out every other sound and thought. She wasn't even sure what she was listening to. It didn't matter.

She wondered if this was why Sarah had always been drawn to fast, flashy cars. Adia went for vehicles that drew no particular attention, cars she could get on short lease terms and trade in frequently, and she had always thought it was a little silly when Sarah picked out something that turned heads whenever she drove up.

But that was the way Sarah was.

Adia glanced at her instrument panel and realized the needle had just passed ninety. Where were the cops who were supposed to be patrolling this highway, anyway? Wasn't there anyone out here still serving and protecting?

She flexed her left hand, clenching her jaw to control a wince as she did so. Two of the fingers were broken. They wouldn't wrap around the steering wheel. The arm was still sore from a minor fracture she had received half a week earlier. She would have double-checked that the hastily tied bandage on her arm was still in place, but she didn't think it was a good idea to take her one good hand off the wheel, even to make sure she wasn't bleeding again.

At least the other guy looked worse . . . though that would have been more comforting if the "other guy" hadn't been a large bay window and some kind of ugly garden statue she had hit on her way down.

But it wasn't a complete loss. She had learned what she had needed to learn.

She had learned the last thing she had wanted to learn.

Adianna Vida, now the only child of Dominique Vida, matriarch of the ancient line of witches, wished she were still ignorant. It had taken a hell of a fight, but she had finally, unfortunately, throttled the information out of someone.

"Looks like she's decided to live, witch," a bloodbond had told her, the last word like a curse. "She's staying with Nikolas and Kristopher. Not that you'll find them. They've been hunted for more than a century. They know how to take care of themselves."

Sarah was still alive.

No, not Sarah. The creature who existed now looked like Adia's little sister, but she wasn't a witch anymore; she was a vampire. She had woken at sundown and had hunted. No one had been able to tell Adia who the victim had been, but Sarah's change had been traumatic, which meant the first hunt would have been fierce. She had probably killed.

And then she had decided to live as a vampire.

To continue as a vampire, at least.

Which proved it really wasn't Sarah, right? A daughter of Vida waking to find herself a monster should have ended it at that moment. She should have known that stopping herself then, before the vampiric power twisted her too badly, was the only way she could protect the helpless victims she would inevitably end up hurting in the future. But she hadn't.

Before Adia could learn any more, another bloodbond had leapt forward and sent them both through the window. Adia had wanted to fight at that point but had already found the information she needed, and knew that Dominique would disapprove of her lingering.

Realizing she was approaching her exit, she slowed--probably more abruptly than she should have, but who cared? It was six in the morning on a Saturday, and she hadn't seen another car in nearly half an hour. She was almost home, and when she pulled into the driveway, she would have to be fully under control.

She turned the radio down to barely a whisper, until she could hear the mournful wind again. In front of her mother's house, the trees were already nearly bare, except for a few golden leaves they still managed to cling desperately to. She sympathized; some part of her had been ripped away, as well, when she had let her sister die.

It took her two tries to get the car door open with the damage to her arms. The frigid air that rushed in to replace the warmth in the car was bracing and helped her calm her thoughts. She managed not to limp as she approached the front door.

Her mother was waiting for her in the kitchen, at the antique oak table where Adia had spent countless hours as a child studying ancient Vida laws.

Forty years old, Dominique had been the only child of her father's second wife. She had survived the deaths of her parents, her sister, a niece and a nephew closer to her age than her sister had been, and Sarah and Adia's father, and all Adia had ever seen from her was stoicism and the grim acceptance that a hunter's life was dangerous. Her practical short blond hair had occasional bits of gray and her Vida-blue eyes were perhaps a little more tired, but she still stood as if carrying the weight of the world were simply a task she had to accept.

And at that moment, she wasn't alone.

SUMMARY: Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other--if only he can come out of the war alive."The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first trank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure."THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWFrom the Paperback edition.<