What if Americans were the terrorists, and a more civilized superpower found it necessary to put us down? What if contemporary Christian ministers preached salvation through murder of non-believing foreigners, and the US government recruited child suicide-assassins for this purpose? If you were an American living in such a crazed society, what would you do? If you were a civilized outsider, how would you deal with these insane savages? The Holy Land poses such predicaments, and more. In an attempt to save the Minervans from oppression in the central galaxy, the liberal Western Galactic Empire has relocated the sect to their ancient homeland of Kennewick, Washington. The fundamentalist fanatics ruling the USA find the presence of pagans in the holy city intolerable, however, and they launch an interstellar campaign of mass destruction in protest. Now, cast in a universe gone mad, the primitive Earthling POW Sergeant Hamilton and his case officer, the sophisticated Minervan priestess (3rd class) Aurora, must find the way out, or neither side will survive. In this madcap role-reversed science-fiction satire on the Mideast crisis and the War on Terrorism, the gloves come off. Written with wit and verve by Heinlein Award winner Robert Zubrin, the author of The Case for Mars, Entering Space, and First Landing, The Holy Land takes science fiction back to its Swiftian roots. Rarely since Czech humanist Karel Capek aimed his 1936 War with the Newts at fascism and appeasement has the medium been mobilized to such pointed effect. "A satiric tour de force" - School Library Journal "The duplicity, mendacity, and hypocrisy that characterize the present predicament in the Middle East are laid bare in Zubrin's engaing romp, with verve and biting wit." - National Review Online "Nothing is spared from Zubrin's satiric pen: religion, politics, economics, sex, war, psychology, philosophy - all are the objects of his barbs....The Holy Land is a surprisingly fine follow-up to Zubrin's other fictional and non-fiction works." - The Rocky Mountain News "It's a hoot." - The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Nathan Stein -- once an attractive, cultured lawyer -- has stipped into the dark world of his powerful father's corrupt practice. After one too many shady deals, he finds himself alone, sick in body and spirit. His career and life are careening out of control, and he's about to become the prime suspect in the murder of a young woman. As we follow him over a long day and night, Nathan encounters the friends, lovers, and family members he has betrayed. Lurching toward redemption, he must answer for his actions. Is he a murderer or the victim of an elaborate frame-up? Or do his sins go even deeper? A tale of chilling suspense that belies the elegance of its prose, Blood Acre is a compelling story of one man's harrowing search through the dark streets of the soul.

In 1941, after discovering tuberculosis, Liese, is taken to a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland by her aunt. The book traces Liese¿s incarceration in the sanatorium where she meets various characters, including her Greek-Jewish friend, Antigone. Upon Nazi orders in 1942 the sanatorium expels all the Jewish patients including Liese and Antigone under the pretext to have their papers checked. However, once they arrive at a small train station in Italy, they are surrounded by German SS troops with whips and vicious dogs. An old family friend from Vienna rescues Liese by pushing her under a train. He finds shelter for Liese in an Italian village church where she encounters a dangerous sexton. She is quickly transported to a forest underground bunker where she meets a number of compelling characters and remains there until liberation by a friendly U.S. Army.

Praise for Keith Thomas' work: "Keith Thomas has a handle on the mechanisms of fear and the tradition of the terror tale that makes him a salient voice in the genre today." - Guillermo del Toro, filmmaker "Taut, riveting... I wanted to read it all over again once I turned the last page." - James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of Kingdom of Bones "Truly unforgettable..." - Suspense Magazine "Thomas maintains the believability of his tightly coiled plot throughout." - Publishers Weekly _______________________________________ From the writer/director of the critically acclaimed film THE VIGIL and director of the "Pickman's Model" episode of Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (now on Netflix) comes a terrifying debut novella. _______________________________________ Over a long fall weekend, Asher, twelve, travels with his mother, Beth, to his beloved grandfather (Pa)'s house-a wild place stuffed with rare books, strange art, and collected curiosities. With Pa's dementia worsening, Beth and her sister, Zoe, plan to move him into a nursing home-this visit is to break the news and pack the house up. While Asher adores his doting grandfather, Beth recalls her dad as a very different person: a belittling man with a hair-trigger temper. Though Beth had been frightened of her father her whole childhood, he changed, seemingly overnight, ten years earlier into the affable man Asher now loves spending time with. But Pa's increasing forgetfulness masks a much more unsettling reality: his anger didn't just vanish; it was "excised" in an arcane ritual that birthed the horrifying creature he's locked away in the depths of his home- the Dunnie . And now, with Pa's memory failing, the Dunnie won't remain contained . . .

Once an accomplished plastic surgeon, Trevor Lucas started using his scalpel to do very bad things... Locked in a Boston psychiatric hospital, Lucas is holding the ward hostage-and performing grisly "operations" on his prisoners... Lucas, calling for forensic psychiatrist Frank Clevenger, is willing to strike a deal... What Lucas knows about Clevenger could ruin the psychiatrist. What Clevenger can find out about Lucas could save the hostages. And he's got 24 hours to do it... As Clevenger feverishly delves into Lucas' past, what he discovers is chilling, disturbing, and all too familiar. For Clevenger can't help but wonder if his proximity to killers and madmen in coincidence, or something much more complex: Projection.

A decent, ordinary life jeopardized by a catastrophically extraordinary event: this is the story, mythic in its outline and substance, that Judy Troy--author of two New York Times Notable Books and Whiting award winner--tells in From the Black Hills. In Wheatley, South Dakota, during the summer before Mike Newlin is to begin college, his father, an insurance salesman, shoots and kills the young woman who works for him as his receptionist. He disappears, and Mike is left behind in shock and grief. With his future suddenly obscured, Mike finds himself nearly overwhelmed by his present circumstances--not only the emotional damage inflicted by his father's awful crime but also his mother's dismay, the insinuating methods of a criminal investigator named Tom DeWitt, his girlfriend's anxieties, and his longing for an older woman who lives nearby--and the question of whether he will ever see his father again and what will happen if he does. As imposing as the landscape that forms its setting, From the Black Hills conveys with compassionate power the drama of a young man who must try to overcome his father's dark legacy. "From the Hardcover edition.

What if Kissinger's and Nixon's opening of relations between China and the U.S. was the result of a plot by the Red Chinese? That's the premise of The China Card, which takes a young lawyer, a spy for Chou En-lai, through Nixon's inner circle to guide him toward rapprochement.

"The Honorable Paul E. Devine is a Federal Districk Court judge in Chicago. His best friend is a fire department paramedic who augments his income by committing insurance-fraud arson. The two plaintiffs in Devine's latest case are in a unique position to help him settle anold score. If everything goes just right, the four of them will knock over the Federal Reserve vault for $100 million that will never be missed."--Jacket.

Brillian Suspense Novel--About a few Men who Wanted the World for Themselves! Kersh's classic about unlikely investigators into the diabolical schemes of men beyond the law. First published 1953.

"An extravaganza . . . fertile invention and forceful style . . . Mr. Kersh's many admirers will undoubtedly devour this highly flavoured hotch-potch with avidity." - Julian Maclaren-Ross, Sunday Times "[F]irst-rate Kersh, richly peopled with the odd bit roles he sketches so well and written with style and individuality." - Anthony Boucher, New York Herald Tribune "Sometimes funny, sometimes nightmarish, always first-class entertainment." - Basil Davenport, New York Times Journalist George Oaks and his friend Albert Kemp, a mystery novelist, are on their way to meet their friend, the celebrated philosopher Dr. Monacelli. But when a clerical mix-up leads to their meeting the American gangster Monty Cello instead, Oaks and Kemp quickly find themselves caught up in a bizarre and dangerous plot involving a murdered reporter, a missing scientist, and a group of powerful madmen with a plan to destroy the world as we know it. It's a race against time as Oaks and Kemp must infiltrate the villains' stronghold and save humanity before it's too late! Equal parts hard-boiled crime novel and apocalyptic science fiction tale, The Great Wash (1953) is one of the most exciting novels by Gerald Kersh (1911-1968), who is best known for his classics Night and the City (1938) and Fowlers End (1957). Fowlers End and four volumes of Kersh's strange and brilliant short fiction are also available from Valancourt.

On a night out in London, teenager Tony Neuman is stabbed in what appears to be a mugging. On a luxurious country estate, a lawyer is asked to use his criminal contacts to make some discreet inquiries into the disappearance of billionaire Fabian Digby. But when Digby's body turns up floating on the Grand union canal and police frogmen find Tony's watch in the canal, Tony's brother Phil comes under suspicion and the lawyer teams up with with a maverick police woman to find the link between the two deaths. The link is Gold a perfume made by the company that Digby acquired just before his death. But Gold is no ordinary perfume... it seems to have addictive properties... "The pace is fast, characters convince and the plot is well thought out. Kessler writes well." SUNDAY EXPRESS "Kessler merges tense courtroom scenes with an intriguing storyline to produce a very satisfying read." YORKSHIRE EVENING PRESS "Courtroom battles share the limelight with high-energy action as the story builds to a stunning climax." NORTH EASTERN GAZETTE

When TV talkshow host Elias Claymore is accused of raping a 19-year-old girl he turns to his friend Alex Sadaka to defend him. But Alex has a fight on his hands, for Claymore - a former Black Power activist - is anything but squeaky clean and this time even the DNA evidence is stacked against him. Forced to share the defence with a lawyer from Claymore's insurance firm, Alex must battle his way through jury tampering, conflicts of interest and vicious hate mail to uncover the truth. With Claymore a vulnerable target in prison and the prosecution scenting blood, Alex knows that time is running out. Could it be that this time there is No Way Out?

As Senator Nick Schlafer fishes alone in a stream that runs through his private country compound in northern Virginia, he reels in a ventriloquist's dummy that looks very much like a little boy. He knows immediately that this is neither accident nor coincidence. For the senator, who lost his daughter only a year before, an apparent victim of a drug overdose, the veiled threat that something might happen to his son is more than he can bear. It is also bewildering. He has no enemies, at least none he knows of. True, the legislation he plans to introduce, laws that would decriminalize many of the common street drugs, will doubtless infuriate many and touch off a contentious debate. But could someone feel so personally threatened as to bring harm to a young child? Moving from Washington's corridors of power - the Senate and the White House itself - to the small town in Pennsylvania where Schlafer grew up and where his teenage daughter died under what Nick feels were mysterious circumstances, A Crooked Man is a complex and thoughtful suspense novel, fast paced yet yielding up new twists and revelations at each turn, to the very end. Filled with perfectly realized characters - Nick's estranged but still-loved wife; a curiously literate organized crime chief; Nick's rival, both in politics and for his family's affection, the enigmatic and powerful Emery - A Crooked Man is about a family haunted by its own secrets, and about the way in which these secrets, never faced or discussed, emerge into the larger world of public affairs, with deadly results.

Why would a nurse's aide terrified of heights hurl herself from a twentieth story rooftop in Queens? Why would an attractive librarian with a water phobia be found naked and floating facedown in the Astoria Park swimming pool? How did the scantily clad body of a young bookstore clerk with a horror of snakes end up inside a Central Park Zoo cage with a two-hundred-pound python? NYPD Detective Max Segal, strung out from a devastating divorce, is determined to find the killer before more women die. A sadistic ex-con who masquerades as a shrink is seducing phobic women into psychic hell and literally scaring them to death. When Max Segal picks up the killer's trail, Max's new girlfriend is chosen to become victim number four. Like Love Kills and Exes , Dan Greenburg's previous bestselling thrillers, Fear Itself is a terrifyingly realistic, darkly humorous, startlingly sexy, street-tough page-turner with a surprising climax.

One man's secret is another man's weapon . . . The ground-breaking debut thriller from the UK's foremost political journalist, ITV News' Political Editor Robert Peston.

Told across five decades, in the voices of all four main characters, this paints on canvases large and small, from the struggle against apartheid to the secrets and brutalities that tear apart a family. Equal parts geopolitical thriller and one man's search for truth, it explores the damage inflicted by history, and the havoc wrought by lies.

'I am absolutely terrified of losing a job I absolutely hate.' Stephen Maserov has problems. A onetime teacher, married to fellow teacher Eleanor, he has retrained and is now a second-year lawyer working at mega-firm Freely Savage Carter Blanche. Despite toiling around the clock to make budget, he's in imminent danger of being downsized. And to make things worse, Eleanor, sick of single-parenting their two young children thanks to Stephen's relentless work schedule, has asked him to move out. To keep the job he hates, pay the mortgage and salvage his marriage, he will have to do something strikingly daring, something he never thought himself capable of. But if he's not careful, it might be the last job he ever has... Warm, dramatic, and at times laugh-out-loud funny, with the narrative pull of a thriller, Maybe the Horse Will Talk is a love story, a reflection on contemporary marriage, and on friendship. It is also an unflinching examination of sexual harassment in the workplace and an expose of corporate corruption that taps directly into the pulse of our times. 'Australia's outstanding social novelist' ( Times Literary Supplement ), Elliot Perlman '. . . has many things working in his favor as a novelist- curiosity, erudition, daring and a gift for seducing readers into going along with him for the ride. He'll get you where you want to go . . .' ( Washington Post )

A darkly comic novel about the bizarre realities of life in Israel today. 'Why is everyone so paranoid in this country? Can't dark guys get on buses with suit bags any more?' Eitan Enoch - 'Croc' to his friends - is taking his usual bus to work in Tel Aviv one morning when a fellow passenger starts to worry about the dark-skinned man with the suit-bag sitting up at the front.Thus begins a week of bloody bombings and bloodier reprisals, at the end of which Croc is transformed into an inadvertent national celebrity: 'CrocAttack - the man the terrorists couldn't kill!' Naturally, the Palestinian cell behind the attacks are less than happy about this reluctant symbol of Israeli defiance. They may not have been after him before, but they are now. Meanwhile, in a hospital somewhere in Jerusalem, a young Palestinian suicide bomber lies in a coma, fighting for his life and trying to piece together how he got there - and just exactly what happened when he finally met the Croc... Fast as a thriller, blackly funny and very contemporary, 'CrocAttack!' is the story of the lethal convergence of two very different lives, and a tragicomic portrait of the country exploding around them.

Another riveting international thriller from bestselling author Alan Gold. Book Three in the Amras Journey trilogy.Book Three of Amras Journey that began with The Gift of Evil and continued with The Marmara Contract.Content details to follow.

Octavius Gaye, founder and creator of the hugely successful magazine empire, Plain Man Enterprises, saw himself as the original 'plain man'. The truth however was rather different and Gaye was an unscrupulous tycoon with a strangely captivating nature who surrounded himself by a series of weak-willed puppets that he manipulated to his heart's content. One such puppet was Francie Lake and as the plot unfolds, Symons reveals how and why Francie simply had to die.