Five Thrillers to Keep you on the Edge of Your Seat

Senior reference librarian, Rosemary Jerome, chooses five of her favorite thrillers, which are on the shelves at the Dix Hills Library right now.

Glen Scott Allen, The Shadow War (2010)

Allen's debut novel.  Library of Congress historian Benjamin Wainright receives a call from an old college roommate, Jeremy Fletcher, now a fellow at the prestigious and secretive American Heritage Foundation, who invites Benjamin to come to the think tank in western Massachusetts for reasons he won't divulge over the phone. Benjamin arrives the next day to find Jeremy dead of a heart attack. Samuel Wolfe, a foundation security analyst enlists Benjamin's help in discovering why Jeremy, a nuclear war theorist, was interested in Benjamin's area of expertise, the Puritan era. Their quest for answers takes them from the Berkshires to an underground nuclear missile base in Russia.

Lawrence Goldstone, Astronomer: A Novel of Suspense (2010)

Author of The Anatomy of Deception (2008).  Set in 1534 Paris, after the murder of a young man on a mission for the Inquisition, Amaury de Faverges, an astronomer, is forced to take on an undercover assignment for the good of Catholicism and on behalf of the inept and unpredictable monarch, Francois I. In the course of his investigation, Amaury meets John Calvin and Nicolaus Copernicus whose ideas open new vistas for a young man already nagged by religious doubt and a dawning certainty that Earth is not the center of the universe.

Mike Lawson, House Justice: A Joe DeMarco Thriller (2010)

When a CIA officer in Iran is captured and murdered because of a congressional leak, the Speaker of the House sends his fixer, Joe DeMarco, to find those responsible in this fifth book in the series after House Secrets. Joe works with CIA agent Angela DeCaprio to find the unknown killer who is tracking and killing the individuals who leaked the information. Joe is in the dark about the multiple conspiracies he uncovers but he won't or can't give up.

Mario Reading, The Nostradamus Prophecies (2010)

Already a bestseller in the UK, where its sequel The Mayan Codex has already been published. This thriller, by Nostradamus expert Reading, opens in Paris where American writer Adam Sabir is chasing down an Internet lead about Nostradamus. Nostradamus, the 16th-century prophet, wrote 1,000 quatrains predicting various future events, but only 942 survived. Or so history said; now it appears that the lost quatrains have resurfaced.  Sabir and Achor Bale, an assassin for an ancient society of guardians of the Third Antichrist, are both hunting for the lost prophecies for very different reasons.

David Stone, Skorpian Directive (2010)

Bestseller Stone's fourth book featuring Micah Dalton (after The Venetian Judgment) takes the CIA "cleaner" to Vienna where he finds himself being followed by a team of agents of unknown origin.  Everyone wants Micah dead, including his own CIA handlers. Why has he become a marked man?  The author, a former intelligence officer (David Stone is a pseudonym), adds insider details to this nonstop action spy thriller.