WINNER Fiction: Thriller/Adventure 2023 Best Book Awards
Former CIA Russia expert Max Geller is recovering from a mission, lying low in Australia, and enjoying his sudden wealth in the company of his fiancée, Vanessa. Their beachy bliss is short-lived when Max is ambushed by the Russians and the CIA.
Max learns that his former CIA boss, Rodney, is using Vanessa to force him to return to Moscow. His mission? Smuggle out a defector with knowledge of a secret Kremlin war plan. Max is wanted by the Russians, and the defector could be bait to lure him into the hands of his old enemy, FSB Colonel Zabluda. To save Vanessa’s career, Max takes the bait and heads off to Russia.
When Max is spotted in Moscow, Zabluda launches a manhunt, pursuing Max and the defector across Europe and the Atlantic. Max may have a traitor among his crew, and the defector has an agenda that is unclear to the CIA or the Russians. It is clear that Max must stay alive and deliver the defector’s secret to the CIA in time to foil Russia's attack. Unfortunately, the defector’s secret could also imperil U.S. democracy. And what are those Russian assassins up to in Mexico?
WINNER Fiction: Thriller/Adventure 2023 International Book Awards
FROM WESTERN WORD-SLINGER AND ANTHROPOLOGIST W. MICHAEL GEAR, COMES THE SEQUEL TO THE BESTSELLING CONTEMPORARY APOCALYPTIC WESTERN, DISSOLUTION.
Lauren Davis is closing on her twenty-first birthday when a cyberattack leads to the collapse of the American banking system. On the advice of her boyfriend, a special forces lieutenant, she is told to flee Colorado Springs and make her way to Tappan Ranch in Wyoming. As the country continues to fall apart, Lauren and Randy Howman, a co-worker at her bank, make their way through the Colorado Rockies.
On the advice of Tiffany Bishop, an old friend in Laramie, Lauren goes to work with an old boyfriend, Mike Vinich, providing FEMA provisions to refugees housed on a ranch outside of Cheyenne. There, she runs supplies to the outposts being established along the Wyoming/ Colorado line—what Governor Agar calls The Fourth Quadrant. When a riot breaks out and Mike is shot, Lauren ends up being called a hero. But fame comes at a great personal cost, and Lauren’s demons are closing in.
Pulled from duty along the Fourth Quadrant, and with Mike in a coma, Lauren learns of a raid on Laramie. There, she is taken hostage along with a busload of school children. With nothing left to lose, and nothing to live for, Lauren is forced to make one last gamble…
WINNER Mystery/Suspense: Hard-Boiled/Crime Thriller: Crime 2023 American Fiction Awards
When a covert operation during the Vietnam War ends in tragedy, one of its members resolves to kill the man who betrayed it to the enemy. Now, fifteen years later, he'll finally get his chance.
Chicago, 1987. Home of mediocre baseball teams, gangs that rule the streets, and a Mexican drug cartel that supplies the city with heroin. Chicago Police Detective Marcelle DeSantis and her partner, Bernie Bernardelli, are working a series of heroin-related murders, and their job just got more complicated. The man who sabotaged the Vietnam operation, Robert Thornton, is now the chief enforcer for a Southeast Asian heroin cartel, and after fifteen years overseas he's arrived in Chicago to eliminate the reigning cartel and seize control of the city's heroin trade.
Racing to stop a drug war, Marcelle and Bernie don't realize they're about to be caught in a deadly crossfire: another man is circling in the wings, one of Thornton's soldiers from Vietnam, who's preparing to exact his long-sought revenge against his former mentor. He's the last person anyone would ever suspect, and when he finally makes his move, the paths of these four people will explosively converge.
WINNER Best Cover Design: Adult Fiction Best New Fiction 2023 American Fiction Awards
How far is someone willing to go to keep her at the top?
Nina Travers is a number one bestselling author of psychological thrillers. That is, she was, before a series of tragedies knocked her off her perch, and her once picture-perfect life now sits in the dark shadows of a fallen career and crumbling marriage.
Sadly, Nina’s former spot on the charts has been snatched up by her competitors. But her family and friends are desperate to get her back at the top, where she belongs.
Desperate enough to lie. Desperate enough to keep horrific secrets. Desperate enough to kill.
As the bodies stack up one by one, Nina is terrified she may be to blame for these untimely deaths. But she’s even more terrified she may be next.
WINNER Thriller: Medical 2023 American Fiction Awards
After being suspended from his job as a police detective, Dave Ostrinsky, needing a respite from his stress-filled life, rides his bike along a mountain trail and accidentally goes over a dangerous cliff. During emergency surgery, Dr. Ivy McDermott discovers a strange microdot in Ostrinsky's brain.
In researching the mysterious growth, Dave and Ivy are shocked to discover a conspiracy guided by criminals' intent to control a programmable public.
An Inch from Oblivion is the harrowing journey of one man's accidental encounter with a secret so disturbing you will be compelled to reexamine your every move.
In the year 2062, the United States Space Corps has one primary mission: oversee the mining operations of the invaluable Helium-3 isotope, which powers most of the world's energy needs. But when the base is suddenly attacked by an unknown, invisible force, the military leaders find themselves cut off from communication with Earth and left to fend for themselves.
With no way to know who or what is behind the attack, tensions rise and alliances fracture as the outpost struggles to defend its resources and personnel against the unrelenting enemy. As the situation grows more desperate, a small group of officers and scientists must work together to uncover the truth and find a way to stop the attackers before it's too late.
WINNER Thriller: General 2023 American Fiction Awards
Two dangerous weapons barrel toward each other: an anonymous revenge-fueled terrorist determined to destroy America and the only man who can stop him.
An attacker known as Terror’s Sword is heading for the U.S. with an undetermined bioweapon. When intelligence agencies fail to identify the terrorist or his bioagent, the president taps elite counterterrorism operative Kyle McEwan to hunt down the terrorist and eliminate the threat.
Tracking the terrorist across multiple continents, McEwan and U.S. special operations forces execute raids yielding crucial evidence that unmasks the terror mastermind and identifies his bioagent. Despite these discoveries, scientists conclude the genetically altered virus cannot be defeated. Embedded terror cells and obstructive deep state factions impede McEwan’s search, increasing the likelihood of an attack on America, leaving the world to face an unprecedented pandemic threatening untold millions.
Global survival rests on McEwan’s shoulders with the mastermind on the loose and his bioweapon strike imminent. Who prevails?
Following in the footsteps of iconic characters such as Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Child’s Jack Reacher, Ludlum’s Jason Bourne, and Thor’s Scot Harvath, Kyle McEwan confronts the evil forces threatening his nation and the world.
WINNER Thriller: Techno 2023 American Fiction Awards
Despite the angry scars she carries from her childhood training, Zoe Lorel has reached a good place in her life. She has her dream job as an elite operative in an international spy agency and she’s found her one true love. Her world is mostly perfect—until she is sent to abduct a nine-year-old girl.
The girl is the only one who knows the riddle that holds the code to unleash the most lethal weapon on earth—the first ever “invisibility” nanoweapon, a cloaking spider bot. But Zoe’s agency isn’t the only one after the child. And when enemies reveal the invisibility weapon’s existence to underground arms dealers, every government and terrorist organization in the world want to find that little girl.
Zoe races to save not only the child she has grown to care about, but also herself. The agency prescribed pills—the ones that transform her into the icy killer she must become to survive—are beginning to threaten her engagement to the one person who brings her happiness. Can she protect the young girl and still protect the one thing she cares more about than anything else?
WINNER Thriller: Psychological 2023 American Fiction Awards
How far would you go to keep what's yours?
Someone is hunting Cass.
Cass lives an enviable life: a successful career, two great kids, and a handsome husband. Then an email from her husband's mistress, Emma, brings the façade of perfection crumbling around her, setting off a chain of events where buried secrets come back to haunt her.
A taunting email turns into stalking and escalates into much worse. Ethan and Cass try to move on, then Emma disappears.
No longer considered a victim, Cass finds herself the prime suspect and center of the investigation. Her dark secrets—including ones she didn't know existed—threaten to destroy everything they've worked for.
A fast-paced psychological thriller with jaw-dropping twists, the novel examines buried family secrets and how desperation can lead to fatal mistakes when We're All Lying.
WINNER Fiction: Inspirational 2023 International Book Awards
WINNER Adventure: General Urban Fiction 2023 American Fiction Awards
Kathryn Bek gets the chance of a lifetime: a job offer right out of college, and in New York City, where adventure lies around every corner. Believing she is recruited for her marketing prowess, she is excited by the prospect of her new job in the intelligence sector; but all is not what it seems. Before long, Kathryn and her new team are thrown into a world of mystery, murder, and magic. As the team rushes around the world, untangling the web of lies, she finds that her past may be the key to protecting her, and the world's, future.
Will she be able to confront her fuzzy past to unlock the secrets within herself? Can her team rise to the challenge and stop the Paolucci Crime Family before they unleash havoc upon the globe?
Who will endure, the Kathryn of the past, or that of the future?
