Suspense Fiction: Ancient and Modern Times
Explore the best suspense fiction from ancient to modern times. Discover gripping tales from classic books to contemporary thrillers that keep you on the edge of your seat.
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Violent Sands
by Sean Young
A Jewish zealot who watched Roman soldiers kill his father and pillage his homeland is charged with a mission that could destroy or free Israel.
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The Chase
by Clive Cussler
The 1950 discovery of four bodies inside a sunken steam locomotive in a Montana lake gives way to the story of a murderous 1906 bank robber whose ruthlessness challenged Isaac Bell, a talented detective whose struggle to identify and capture the killer had been complicated by the great San Francisco earthquake. 750,000 first printing.
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The Navigator
by Clive Cussler
Years after an ancient Phoenician statue is stolen from the Baghdad museum, a series of murders sparks interest in the statue's relevance in Austin and Zavala, who lead the NUMA team on a historical investigation into the lost treasures of King Solomon. 650,000 first printing.
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Treasure of Khan
by Clive Cussler
When an oil survey team is abducted after a suspicious accident, Dirk Pitt follows leads to Mongolia, where he learns about a megalomaniac's plot to supply oil to China and to undermine global oil markets. By the author of Black Wind. 500,000 first printing.
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Dark Watch
by Clive Cussler
Juan Cabrillo and his crew aboard the Oregon take on modern-day pirates for a surprising new client in this novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series. Cabrillo and his motley crew aboard the clandestine spy ship Oregon have made a very comfortable and very dangerous living working for high-powered Western interests. But their newest clients have come from the Far East to ask for Cabrillo's special brand of assistance: a consortium of Japanese shipping magnates whose fortunes are being threatened by brutal pirates trolling the waters of Southeast Asia. Normally, such attacks on the high seas are limited to smaller ships and foreign-owned yachts-easy targets on the open ocean. Now, however, giant commercial freighters are disappearing. But when Cabrillo confronts the enemy, he learns that the pirates' predations hide a deadly international conspiracy-a scheme of death and slavery that Juan Cabrillo is going to blow out of the water.
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Night Probe!
by Clive Cussler
American agent Dirk Pitt's deep-sea mission to recover a lost treaty by which Canada was sold to the United States is countered by the British and the Soviets.
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Polar Shift
by Clive Cussler
NUMA operative Kurt Austin takes on a madman fronting as an evironmentalist in this #1 New York Times-bestselling series. Sixty years ago, an eccentric Hungarian genius discovered how to artificially trigger such a shift in the polar ice caps, which could cause massive eruptions, earthquaks, and even climate changes. But then his work disappeared, or so it was thought. Now, the charismatic leader of an antiglobalization group plans to use it to give the world’s industrialized nations a small jolt, before reversing the shift back again. The only problem is, it cannot be reversed. Once it starts, there is nothing anyone can do. Austin, Zavala, and the rest of the NUMA Special Assignments Team must make strange alliances to protect this technology from being exploited by their new and power-hungry nemesis before the entire planet is made to pay. Rich with all the hair-raising action and endless imagination that have become Cussler’s hallmarks, Polar Shift is a wonderful thriller—indeed, “vintage Cussler.”
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Sacred Stone
by Clive Cussler
Juan Cabrillo and his CIA-backed Oregon crew must beat opposing factions to a discovery that could prevent World War III in this novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series. In the remote wastes of Greenland, a young scientist has unearthed an artifact hidden in a cave for a millennium: a 50,000 year-old radioactive meteorite known as the Sacred Stone. But the astounding find places him in the crosshairs of two opposing groups who seek the stone for themselves. One is a group of Muslim extremists who have stolen a nuclear device. With the power of the meteorite, they could vaporize any city in the west. The other group is led by a megalomaniacal industrialist who seeks to carry out the utter annihilation of Islam itself. Caught between two militant factions bent on wholesale slaughter, Juan Cabrillo and his crew must fight to protect the scientist and the Sacred Stone—and prevent the outbreak of World War III...
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Treasure
by Clive Cussler
Dirk Pitt's hunt for ancient Egyptian treasure sis sidetracked when the White House is threatened by terrorists from Egypt and Mexico and a cruise ship carrying the presidents of Egypt and Mexico is hijacked.
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Shock Wave
by Clive Cussler
In the wake of a mysterious disaster that kills thousands of marine animals and nearly two hundred cruise ship passengers, Dirk Pitt rescues Maeve Fletcher and traces the incident to her father and sisters. Reprint.
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Flood Tide
by Clive Cussler
Dirk Pitt faces one of his most formidable foes--a madman bent on killing hundreds of innocent men, women, and children with a catastrophic surge of mass destruction.
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Fire Ice
by Clive Cussler
Leader of the NUMA Special Assignments team, Kurt Austin must work with a former KGB spy to save the United States from a lunatic with a generations-spanning grudge in this novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series. Kurt Austin is preparing for an interview while aboard a research vessel in the Black Sea. But his television spot suddenly becomes a rescue mission when the waiting film crew is attacked on a nearby island. With little information on the attackers, and no clue to their true agenda, Austin is forced to turn to an unlikely source: his old KGB Cold War adversary Vladimir Petrov. According to Petrov, the island is actually an old submarine base that’s been commandeered by clever mobster-turned-billionaire-businessman Mikhail Razov. Razov is certain he descends from the great Romanov family and he’s out to reclaim his rightful position as czar of Russia. With a powerful resource called “fire ice”, discovered by his mining company, Razov may just have the ammunition he needs to take over the modern world. To stop him, Austin will have to work with Petrov. And he’ll have to find out fast how much trust he can offer an old nemesis in this thrilling adventure that “goes down like a chilled Stolichnaya martini.” (Kirkus Reviews)
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The Innocent Man
by John Grisham
Presents the real-life case of Ron Williamson, a mentally ill former baseball player who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for the 1982 murder of a 21-year-old woman in his Oklahoma hometown.
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Bleachers
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • High school all-American Neely Crenshaw was probably the best quarterback ever to play for the legendary Messina Spartans. Fifteen years have gone by since those glory days, and Neely has come home to Messina to bury Coach Eddie Rake, the man who molded the Spartans into an unbeatable football dynasty. Now, as Coach Rake’s “boys” sit in the bleachers waiting for the dimming field lights to signal his passing, they replay the old games, relive the old glories, and try to decide once and for all whether they love Eddie Rake – or hate him. For Neely Crenshaw, a man who must finally forgive his coach – and himself – before he can get on with his life, the stakes are especially high. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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The Testament
by John Grisham
Heart of darkness... In a plush Virginia office, a rich, angry old man is furiously rewriting his will. With his death just hours away, Troy Phelan wants to send a message to his children, his ex-wives, and his minions, a message that will touch off a vicious legal battle and transform dozens of lives. Because Troy Phelan's new will names a sole surprise heir to his eleven-billion-dollar fortune: a mysterious woman named Rachel Lane, a missionary living deep in the jungles of Brazil. Enter the lawyers. Nate O'Riley is fresh out of rehab, a disgraced corporate attorney handpicked for his last job: to find Rachel Lane at any cost. As Phelan's family circles like vultures in D.C., Nate is crashing through the Brazilian jungle, entering a world where money means nothing, where death is just one misstep away, and where a woman--pursued by enemies and friends alike--holds a stunning surprise of her own....
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The Broker
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world’s most sophisticated satellite surveillance system. Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country in a military cargo plane, given a new name, a new identity, and a new home in Italy. Eventually, after he has settled into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis. Then the CIA will do what it does best: sit back and watch. The question is not whether Backman will survive—there is no chance of that. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him? Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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The Partner
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Once he was a well-liked, well-paid young partner in a thriving Mississippi law firm. Then he stole ninety million dollars from his own firm—and ran for his life. “One terrific book—smart, fast, stingingly satiric, and almost criminally entertaining.”—Entertainment Weekly For four years Patrick Lanigan evaded men who were rich and powerful, and who would stop at nothing to find him. Then, inevitably, on the edge of the Brazilian jungle, they finally tracked him down. Now Patrick is coming home. And in the Mississippi city where it all began, an extraordinary trial is about to begin. As prosecutors circle like sharks, as Patrick’s lawyer prepares his defense, as Patrick’s lover prays for his deliverance and his former partners wait for their revenge, another story is about to emerge. Because Patrick Lanigan, the most reviled white-collar criminal of his time, knows something that no one else in the world knows. He knows the truth.
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The Rainmaker
by John Grisham
Rudy Baylor is a newly qualified lawyer: he has one case, and one case alone, to save himself from his mounting debts. His case is against a giant insurance company which could have saved a young man's life, but instead refused to pay the claim until it was too late. The settlement could be worth millions of dollars, but there is one problem: Rudy has never argued a case in court before, and he's up against the most expensive lawyers that money can buy.
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A Time to Kill
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The master of the legal thriller probes the savage depths of racial violence in this searing courtroom drama featuring the beloved Jake Brigance. “John Grisham may well be the best American storyteller writing today.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer The life of a ten-year-old black girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless white men. The mostly white town of Clanton in Ford County, Mississippi, reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime—until the girl’s father acquires an assault rifle and takes justice into his own hands. For ten days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client’s life—and then his own. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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The Street Lawyer
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Michael Brock is billing the hours, making the money, rushing relentlessly to the top of Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm. One step away from partnership, Michael has it all. Then, in an instant, it all comes undone. A homeless man takes nine lawyers hostage in the firm’s plush offices. When it is all over, the man’s blood is splattered on Michael’s face—and suddenly Michael is willing to do the unthinkable. Rediscovering a conscience he lost long ago, Michael is leaving the big time for the streets where his attacker once lived—and where society’s powerless need an advocate for justice. But there’s one break Michael can’t make: from a secret that has floated up from the depths of Drake & Sweeney, from a confidential file that is now in Michael’s hands, and from a conspiracy that has already taken lives. Now Michael’s former partners are about to become his bitter enemies. Because to them, Michael Brock is the most dangerous man on the streets. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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The Firm
by John Grisham
A young lawyer works undercover for the F.B.I. to reveal his firm's Mafia connection.
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The Client
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In a weedy lot on the outskirts of Memphis, two boys watch a shiny Lincoln pull up to the curb.... Eleven-year-old Mark Sway and his younger brother were sharing a forbidden cigarette when a chance encounter with a suicidal lawyer left Mark knowing a bloody and explosive secret: the whereabouts of the most sought-after dead body in America. Now Mark is caught between a legal system gone mad and a mob killer desperate to cover up his crime. And his only ally is a woman named Reggie Love, who has been a lawyer for all of four years. Prosecutors are willing to break all the rules to make Mark talk. The mob will stop at nothing to keep him quiet. And Reggie will do anything to protect her client—even take a last, desperate gamble that could win Mark his freedom... or cost them both their lives. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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The Pelican Brief
by John Grisham
A law student in New Orleans writes a legal brief that ends up making her enemies in high places. Movie tie-in. Reprint.
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The Runaway Jury
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Every jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs to them. They are at the center of a multimillion-dollar legal hurricane: twelve men and women who have been investigated, watched, manipulated, and harassed by high-priced lawyers and consultants who will stop at nothing to secure a verdict. Now the jury must make a decision in the most explosive civil trial of the century, a precedent-setting lawsuit against a giant tobacco company. But only a handful of people know the truth: that this jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs to him. He is known only as Juror #2. But he has a name, a past, and he has planned his every move with the help of a beautiful woman on the outside. Now, while a corporate empire hangs in the balance, while a grieving family waits, and while lawyers are plunged into a battle for their careers, the truth about Juror #2 is about to explode in a cross fire of greed and corruption—and with justice fighting for its life. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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A Painted House
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Until that September of 1952, Luke Chandler had never kept a secret or told a single lie. But in the long, hot summer of his seventh year, two groups of migrant workers — and two very dangerous men — came through the Arkansas Delta to work the Chandler cotton farm. And suddenly mysteries are flooding Luke’s world. A brutal murder leaves the town seething in gossip and suspicion. A beautiful young woman ignites forbidden passions. A fatherless baby is born ... and someone has begun furtively painting the bare clapboards of the Chandler farmhouse, slowly, painstakingly, bathing the run-down structure in gleaming white. And as young Luke watches the world around him, he unravels secrets that could shatter lives — and change his family and his town forever.... Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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Angels & Demons
by Dan Brown
The explosive Robert Langdon thriller from Dan Brown, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code and Inferno—now a major film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones. Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war. This is the book that started it all: we meet Robert Langdon for the first time, caught up in a race against time to find an apocalyptic time-bomb, planted by an ancient secret society that has surfaced to carry out its ultimate threat: to destroy the Vatican.
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The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu work to solve the murder of an elderly curator of the Louvre, a case which leads to clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci and a centuries-old secret society.
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Deception Point
by Dan Brown
On the eve of a presidential race in which NASA's budget is a pivotal issue, the space agency announces the discovery of an ancient meteorite filled with fossils deep in the Arctic ice.
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Digital Fortress
by Dan Brown
A former National Security Agency programmer threatens to release a mathematical formula that will allow organized crime and terrorism to skyrocket.
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Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code
by Bart D. Ehrman
A biblical historian examines the history of the early Christian church that forms the background for "The Da Vinci Code," pointing out inaccuracies in the novel and providing an introduction to biblical scholarship.
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The Bourne Identity
by Robert Ludlum
A man has been shot and now has no memory and as he searches for his origins he comes to fear he may have been an international assassin.
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Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Arctic Event
by Robert Ludlum
On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic, researchers discover the wreckage of a mysterious World War II-era aircraft, a discovery that forces the Russian Federation into a shocking admission. The unmarked plane is a Soviet strategic bomber that disappeared with its crew more than fifty years ago while carrying two metric tons of weaponized anthrax. Desperate to prevent a political and diplomatic firestorm, the U.S. president dispatches a Covert-One team led by Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith to the crash site. But others have reached the frigid, windswept island first, including an international arms dealer and his crew of vicious mercenaries. As for the Russians, they are lying: a second, even deadlier secret rests within the hulk of the lost bomber, a secret the Russians are willing to kill to protect. Trapped in a polar wilderness, Smith and his team find themselves fighting a savage war on two front--against an enemy they can see and another hiding within their own ranks.
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The Bourne Trilogy
by Robert Ludlum
THE BOURNE IDENTITY: He has no past. And he may have no future. His memory is blank. He only knows that he was fished out of the Mediterranean Sea, his body riddled with bullets. There are a few clues: evidence that plastic surgery has altered his face, a Swiss bank account containing four million dollars, and a name: Jason Bourne. But he is marked for death, racing for survival through the layers of his buried past into a world of murderous conspirators - led by the world's most dangerous assassin, Carlos. And no one can help Bourne but the woman who once wanted to escape him. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY: In a Kowloon Cabaret, scrawled in a pool of blood, is a name the world wanted to forget: Jason Bourne. The Chinese vice-premier has been slain by a legendary assassin. World leaders ask the same fearful questions: Why has Jason Bourne come back? Who is the next to die? But US officials know the truth: there is no Jason Bourne. The name was created as cover for David Webb on his search for the notorious killer Carlos. Someone else has taken the Bourne identity and unless he is stopped, the world will pay a devastating price. So Jason Bourne must live again. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM: The world's two deadliest spies in the ultimate showdown.Two men, each mysteriously summoned by telegram, witness a bizarre killing. The telegrams are signed Jason Bourne. Only they know Bourne's true identity and understand the telegram is really a message from Bourne's mortal enemy, Carlos, the world's deadliest and most elusive terrorist. And they also know that he wants a final confrontation with Bourne. Now David Webb must do what he hoped he would never have to do again - assume the terrible identity of Jason Bourne.
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The Prometheus Deception
by Robert Ludlum
Nicholas Bryson, an agent for a covert American group called the Directorate, comes out of retirement after learning the Directorate is actually a traitorous group and joins forces with the CIA to put a stop to their actions.
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The Tristan Betrayal
by Robert Ludlum
American ambassador Stephen Metcalfe has been summoned to find the one man who controls the levers of power in absolute secrecy--an official knowns only as the Dirizhor.
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The Chancellor Manuscript
by Robert Ludlum
“[The Chancellor Manuscript] exerts a riveting appeal, as it seems to justify our worst nightmares of what really goes on in the so-called intelligence community in Washington.”—The New York Times Book Review Did J. Edgar Hoover die a natural death? Or was he murdered? When a group of high-minded and high-placed intellectuals known as Inver Brass detect a monstrous threat to the country in Hoover’s unethical use of his scandal-ridden private files, they decide to do away with him—quietly, efficiently, with no hint of impropriety. Then bestselling thriller writer Peter Chancellor stumbles onto information that makes his previous books look like harmless fairy tales. Now Chancellor and Inver Brass are on a deadly collision course, spiraling across the globe in an ever-widening arc of violence and terror. All roads lead to a showdown that will rip the nation’s capital apart—leaving only one damning document to survive. Praise for Robert Ludlum and The Chancellor Manuscript “Ludlum stuffs more surprises into his novels than any other six-pack of thriller writers combined.”—The New York Times “Engrossing . . . pure, adrenaline-raising escapism.”—King Features Syndicate “A roaring ride on a roller coaster of suspense.”—The Pittsburgh Press “Powerhouse momentum . . . as shrill as the siren on the prowl car.”—Kirkus Reviews “A complex scenario of inventive double-crossing.”—Chicago Sun-Times