Deadly Straits - (A Tom Dugan Novel)

DUGAN THOUGHT SOMALI PIRATES WERE BAD NEWS. THEN IT GOT WORSE.

In the wake of his best-selling thriller Deadly Straits, which drew comparisons to Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, and W.E.B. Griffin, newcomer R.E. McDermott is back with another action-packed Dugan adventure.

As Tom Dugan and Alex Kairouz, his partner and best friend, struggle to ransom their ship and crew from murderous Somali pirates, things take a turn for the worse. A US Navy contracted tanker with a full load of jet fuel is also hijacked, not by garden variety pirates, but by terrorists with links to Al Qaeda, changing the playing field completely.

With a possible link between piracy and terrorism now in play, the US and British goverments order the halt of all negotiations for captive ships, and enraged pirates ratchet up the mistreatment of the captive crews. When one of their crewman is murdered in front of him on a live video feed, a frustrated Dugan takes matters into his own hands and starts his own rescue operation, only to stumble across something far more sinister — a rogue salvage operation for a long lost weapon of mass destruction. Isolated at sea on an old tanker previously destined for the ship breakers, Dugan and his hastily assembled little force of Russian mercenaries find themselves the last line of defense between the world and a terrifying bio-weapon.

Weaving historical fact with speculative fiction, Deadly Coast takes the reader from London board rooms into the very real world of modern day pirates — and their victims.

Now that the Iron Curtain had come crushing down, and Soviet satellite countries switched allegiance to the United States, their communist spies are no longer needed. Hundreds of thousands are discharged, but not retired - they form The Fifth Internationale, building a global conspiracy that will allow them to manipulate world governments to their own end.

Only one man can stop them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

As a former top-secret government courier Jack King was privy to all the ins and outs of covert maneuvering on a global scale. He has turned his work experience into a series of novels that resonate with authenticity. The corridors of power, with their backstabbing, greed, and corruption, are the focus points of Jack's books.

Also available in print.

An action-packed short story featuring Dan “Spider” Shepherd during his days as an SAS trooper in Afghanistan. It’s November 2001 and Shepherd is sent on a dangerous mission to a Taliban stronghold on the trail of the most wanted man in the world – Osama Bin Laden.

Friendly Fire is just under 14,000 words long, about thirty pages, perfect if you have half an hour to spare.

Stephen Leather is one of the UK's most successful thriller writers. He was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Before that, he was employed as a biochemist for ICI, shovelled limestone in a quarry, worked as a baker, a petrol pump attendant, a barman, and worked for the Inland Revenue. He began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into more than ten languages. He has also written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock and the BBC's Murder in Mind series. Two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were made into movies. You can find out more from his website, www.stephenleather.com.

Ash Rashid is a former homicide detective who can't stand the thought of handling another death investigation. In another year, he'll be out of the department completely. That's the plan, at least, until his niece's body is found in the guest home of one of his city's most wealthy citizens. The coroner calls it an overdose, but the case doesn't add up. Against orders, Ash launches an investigation to find his niece's murderer, but the longer he searches, the more entangled he becomes in a case that hits increasingly close to home. If he doesn't solve it fast, his niece won't be the only family member he has to bury.

From New York Times bestselling author James Rollins comes a stirring story of a soldier and his military war dog who are drawn into a dark mystery tracing back to World War II and a lost treasure tied to the bones of the dead.

Off the blustery streets in the medieval heart of Budapest, Captain Tucker Wayne and his war dog, Kane, rescue a mysterious woman fleeing three armed men. The secret she holds will unlock a terrible treasure, one steeped in blood and treachery, tied to a crime going back to the fall of Nazi Germany and a heritage of suffering and pain that reaches out from the past to wreak havoc today. In a final showdown in the depths of a lost cemetery, truths will be unearthed, treasures exposed, and the fate of all will rest upon the shoulders of one man and a dog whose courage is beyond measure.

Included within this thrilling story is a sneak peek at the opening chapters of Bloodline, in which the further exploits of Tucker and Kane will be revealed.