Having run short on cash, Reacher has paused in his travels and is working in Chicago when he stumbles into the kidnapping of FBI agent Holly Johnson and he is also held. The pair are whisked across the United States in the back of a stolen Ford Econoline van, while back in Chicago Holly''s colleagues frantically piece together the puzzle of her sudden disappearance. Initially they are detained in a barn in North Dakota but Reacher kills one of their captors and hides the body (this is discovered later). They are moved on again in the van. Arriving in Yorke County (fictional), a remote area of Montana, Reacher and Holly find themselves up against the Montana Militia, a band approximately 100 strong led by Beau Borken, a majestic yet ruthless megalomaniac intent on more than simple secession from the union. Holly is the daughter of a general - the head of the joint chiefs of staff. She''s defensive about her family connections, having had to work hard to dispel notions of nepotism, so it''s a while before she reveals to Reacher that she''s also the President''s god-daughter. To add to the complications, there''s Brogan, a mole infiltrated into the Chicago FBI team, and an undercover federal agent, Jackson, in the militia group. Before long, one betrays the other and Jackson dies a horrible death by being crucified in the woods. Even as they close in on the Montana camp, the FBI believe that Reacher was part of the kidnap team. Reacher''s old commanding officer, General Leon Garber, arrives to convince them otherwise and ends up playing a critical role.

Die Trying

Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition tells in four different chapters the story behind a fictional mass suicide that takes place on the Shinjuku Station in 2002, on which 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a train. This event unleashes in Japan—and soon after, in the world—a chain of suicides that seems endless. Police officers try to stop it and understand why this is happening, and after several events they find a connection between the suicides and a website that belongs to a mysterious organization called Family Circle. Through this website, Family Circle enrolls young people and incite them to run away from home to serve the Circle "family rentals", a service that the organization provides to families who lost relatives to suicide. Parallel to this, alongside the police''s quest, the book also follows the story of one of Family Circle''s new members that witnessed the mass suicide, Noriko Shimabara, and how her own family slowly falls apart to the suicide wave, while her father tries to "rescue" her from the Circle. In the end, all the pieces come together as the true meaning behind the website is revealed.

Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition

For almost fifteen years, old Berta had spent everyday sitting outside, watching over the little village Viscos, talking with her deceased husband. She is waiting for the devil to come, as her husband predicted. One day a stranger appears with the intention of staying one week in the village. In the woods he buries 11 bars of gold. On the way back he meets Chantal Prym, a young and beautiful barmaid, who is bored of the idyllic scenery and slow pace of life. Regularly she seduces tourists in the hope that one of them will prove to be her escape route. The stranger shows her the buried treasure and promises that it will belong to the villagers if they agree to kill someone. There is a ferocious battle within the young woman; a battle between her angel and her devil. She sees in the gold the ticket to finally escape. Still, something holds her back. After some days, she decides to tell what the stranger has proposed, trusting that they will refuse. The people’s reaction, however, plants the seed of doubt inside of Chantal. Now she fears for her own life. As an act of desperation, she plans to abandon Viscos with one of the stranger’s bars. Destiny sends a rogue wolf, which threatens Chantal’s life. The stranger arrives, and both escape. Meanwhile the villagers assemble to choose their victim. The scapegoat they choose is Berta, since she is already old and serves no purpose in the village. Before the villagers shoot a sedated Berta, Chantal convinces them that under no circumstances murder is justified; our conduct is a matter of control and choice.

The Devil and Miss Prym

After more than three years in exile on Grayson, several of Honor''s old political enemies decide to try to kill two birds with one stone. Klaus Hauptmann is able to have Honor appointed as commander of HMAMC Wayfarer, a prototype Q-ship. He believes that Honor will either deal with the piracy problems that are causing him losses in the Silesian Confederacy or die trying. Wayfarer includes space for carrying a squadron of Light Attack Craft (LACs), a large number of missile pods that can be quickly deployed through the ship''s rear cargo doors, and unusually heavy energy weaponry for the ship''s size and intended role, but it is essentially still a merchant ship, much slower than a regular navy vessel and with lighter defenses. Honor''s orders are to lead a squadron of four Q-ships to fight piracy in the Silesian Confederacy. Although piracy is a chronic problem in Silesia, the Royal Navy managed to keep it somewhat in check until the war began; with the fleet needed elsewhere piracy has gone completely out of control and the powerful Manticoran merchant cartels demand that the Navy do something. There are other considerations: Silesia is something of a disputed territory between the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Andermani Empire. While Honor leads her crew in battles against various pirates, the Havenites are also conducting covert commerce raiding in Silesia, in an attempt to destabilize Manticoran trade in the region and present themselves in a more favorable light to the Andermani. The Havenite light cruiser PNS Vaubon, under Citizen Commander Warner Caslet, had been pursuing a particularly loathsome group of raiders whose actions were repugnant to most of the Havenite officers involved. When Caslet sees some of these raiders attacking what he thinks is a Manticore merchant ship he decides to attack the raiders, despite being outnumbered. The Wayfarer destroys the raiders and Caslet is forced to surrender Vaubon to the superior vessel. With the additional intelligence gathered by the Havenites, Honor takes the fight the pirates led by the terrorist Andre Warnecke and with a hostage gambit liberates the planet Sidemore, which had been occupied by the pirates. After her defeat of the pirates Honor goes looking for the Havenite commerce raiders. This leads to a larger-scale conflict with Havenite forces. Klaus Hauptmann has traveled on the liner Artemis to see the piracy situation first hand in Silesea, and Honor encounters them just as the Havenites are closing in on the Artemis. In the ensuing battle Wayfarer is able to destroy two Havenite battlecruisers but is itself ultimately destroyed. The few surviving members of Honor''s crew, along with several Havenite prisoners, are rescued and return to Andermani space. Because of Honor''s bravery in saving Hauptmann''s life during the battle the two are reconciled.

Honor Among Enemies

In his grittiest investigation to date, Jesse Stone hunts for the killer of a woman whose body washes up on shore. The woman turns out to be Florence “Flo” Horvath, of Miami, Florida. She was pushed off a boat, then run over; knocking her unconscious and causing her to drown. The investigation comes to a halt shortly after she is identified, until Jesse acquires a tape of Flo having sex with two men at the same time. He also discovers that Flo rented a boat before she was murdered, but that it was returned to the wrong place. During the investigation he is led to the yacht “The Lady Jane.” He questions the yacht owner Harrison Darnell, and the other occupants, who of course all deny knowing Flo. In an attempt to get more information, Jesse sneaks onto the yacht and finds a stack of sex tapes. He takes one and reviews it, and although it is sexual in nature, he does not find anything criminal. Later seventeen-year old Cathleen Holten comes to Chief Stone with accusations of rape. She claims that a man took her onto his yacht, The Lady Jane, forces her to strip for his friends and then rapes her in his cabin. Although, Jesse does not believe her, and the rape later proves to be consensual sex, he uses this opportunity to get a warrant and search the yacht. Having been there before he goes right for the video tapes and confiscates them. While reviewing them with Molly, she recognizes her daughter’s fifteen year old friend as one of the sex partners. Although Jesse now has the yacht owner for statutory rape, he continues to investigate, determined to get the murderer. However in the end he does have him and another man arrested for statutory rape. He next finds one of the men in Flo’s sex tape and discovers that the men in the tape were brothers. He reveals that it was Flo’s sisters that made the tape. He next interviews Flo’s sisters, twins Claudia and Corless. They tell Jesse they learned of Flo’s death from their friend Kimmie Young. They also tell him that they made the tape to make Flo’s boyfriend, Harrison Darnell, jealous. Jesse strikes up a partnership with Miami detective Kelly Cruz, and has her interview Flo’s parents and Kimmie. Although Flo’s parents seem harmless, Kimmie tells Cruz that she had no idea that Flo was dead. She later tells Cruz that Flo’s father raped her when she was fifteen and routinely had sex with all three of his daughters. Kelly Cruz also interviews Darnell’s private pilot and discovers that he flew her to Boston a few days before her murder. Finally Chief Stone discovers through Flo’s father''s E-ZPass that he drove to Boston the week that she was murdered, although he denies the trip. After discovering this, Jesse flies down to Miami where he and Kelly Cruz confront him about the trip. His wife, in a drunken rage, accuses him of murdering their daughter and he confesses. Jesse later speculates that Flo’s father had her rent a boat, pushed her off of it, then returns it to the first place he sees, explaining why it had been returned to the wrong place. He responds that he did indeed argue with her on the boat, and push her off, but that she simply drowned unbeknownst to him. After he discovered she had died he denied the trip all together fearing that he would be accused of murder. Jesse later asks the twins why they said they learned of Flo’s death from Kimmie, because had they not said that he may have never suspected their father. They claim to not remember saying Kimmie. Jesse speculates that they may have subconsciously wanted their father caught. The twins also reveal that the sex tape was not made for Flo’s boyfriend, but for their father. It is this tape that causes him to fly into a jealous rage and drive up to Boston to murder her. Having all seen the tape, it causes the twins and their mother all to suspect that he murdered Flo.

Sea Change

Aristocrat Rowland Lacy falls in love with middle class girl Rose Oatley, but both their fathers refuse to approve the match because of the class difference and Rowland''s spendthrift lifestyle. Rowland is told to redeem himself by joining the army fighting in France. To avoid going, he persuades someone else to take his place and disguises himself as a "Dutch" shoemaker, Hans. He becomes an apprentice of eccentric but hard-working tradesman Simon Eyre and uses this position to be able to find Rose again and secretly marry her. Meanwhile, another shoemaker, Ralph, is sent off to war to the great dismay of his wife, Jane. While he is away, Hammon, a gentleman, falls in love with Jane and attempts to woo her. She is not interested, but once shown a false document that says her husband is dead, she agrees that if she ever marries again, she will marry Hammon. Ralph later returns from the war, with his legs having been amputated. He is further distraught when he cannot find his wife and later suspects (based on the appearance of her shoe that he once made for her) that she has agreed to marry someone else. He locates her, and when given the choice, Jane returns to her husband. Hammon attempts to buy her from Ralph, but Ralph refuses. Later in the play, Simon Eyre is made, first, Sheriff, and then Lord Mayor of London. He decides to create a special holiday to honour apprentices. The King comes to see him. He finds his mannerisms strange, but enjoys his company. The play ends with the King defending Rose and Rowland''s marriage to their fathers, and knighting Rowland so that Rose may be a lady and their social classes may be more appropriately matched. He does this while claiming that love goes beyond social class.

The Shoemaker''s Holiday

Hector Kipling is an artist who is famous for his ovarian paintings of big heads. When visiting the Tate Modern in London with one of his best friends and fellow artists, Lenny Snook, he breaks down upon seeing a Munch, which Lenny explains as Stendhal Syndrome. Several days later he visits his parents in his native Blackpool with his Greek girlfriend Eleni. Eleni is four days late, but when she and Hector have sex on the settee that night, she bleeds through, leaving a large stain on it. Another of Hector''s closest friends and also an artist, Kirk Church, is found to have a brain tumor. Hector finds himself longing for someone close to him to die, because that would mean that Hector, as one left behind, would receive much sympathy. When Eleni''s mother Sofia is in a kitchen accident -- being burned with boiling fat and falling into the resulting fire -- Eleni heads for Crete. Hector and Eleni are in a fight shortly before this, because Hector makes the implication that he would be glad if Sofia dies. He denies this, though, because if Eleni''s mother would die, Eleni would be the one to receive all the sympathy. Meanwhile, Hector''s own father has ended up in hospital as well: Hector''s mother Connie threw away the blood-stained settee and bought a second-hand one out of the paper for 850 pounds. The new settee smells of cigarette smoke and this, combined with the amount of money spent on it, is too much for Hector''s father to take. During an open poetry night at a café, Hector''s eye falls on an American punk poet named Rosa Flood. The two meet again during the opening of an exhibition of Hector''s large head paintings. At that exhibition, an assailant badly damages Hector''s paining "God Bolton", which depicts Hector''s previous neighbour Godfrey Bolton shortly after his suicide by hanging. Rosa takes Hector home to comfort him and the two end up having sex. The assailant meets up with Hector to apologize and introduces himself as Freddie Monger; Godfrey Bolton was Monger''s father who severely abused him. To make up for the damage done he will buy the settee off of Hector''s parents'' hands without letting them know Hector is behind it, so as to get Hector''s father out of hospital. While he does buy the settee with Hector''s money, he also robs his parents of 15,000 pounds and kills their pet dog, the remains of which are later found inside the settee. Eleni makes an unexpected return home and announces her mother has died. She leaves again in anger when she finds Rosa in the bathtub. Monger reveals his father''s death wasn''t a suicide and says he only wants one thing from Hector: blood. Monger ends up killing Lenny and Rosa, however, when he mistakes Lenny for Hector who was staying at his house. Hector ends up shooting Monger with the latter''s gun. He does not call the police, as he yelled out "I will kill you both" to Lenny and Rosa when they left together earlier that night while a policeman stood nearby. Instead, he heads for the Tate Britain and paints the words "L''acte Surréaliste le plus simple est de marcher dans une peuplée avec un revolver chargé, et de tirer au hasard" on the wall with blood. He hides inside one of Lenny''s artworks (a hole in the floor of the museum) for the rest of the night and jumps out in the morning when Brian Sewell translates the words to mean "The simplest act of surrealism is to walk into a crowded street with a loaded revolver, and open the fire at random." Hector does just that and kills several art critics who had gathered for the opening of Lenny Snook''s exhibition. From inside Wandsworth Prison Hector relates the rest of events: not only was he charged with killing the art critics, but with killing Rosa and Lenny as well. Hector has decided to let it go. Reactions to his mass murder are varied, from outright disgust to admiration. Hector''s father has died in hospital upon hearing of his son''s deeds and his mother has committed suicide by throwing herself in the Irish Sea. He has never heard from Eleni again and hopes she never learned of what he had done, because then there would be still one person in the world who loves him, even a little bit. In the end, Hector wishes for nothing but something to write with, so that he can write down his story.

The Late Hector Kipling

Two Bad Mice reflects Potter''s deepening happiness in her professional and personal relationship with Norman Warne and her delight in trouncing the rigors and strictures of middle class domesticity. For all the destruction the mice wreak, it is miniaturized and thus more amusing than serious. Potter enjoyed developing a tale that gave her the vicarious thrill of the sort of improper behaviour she would never have entertained in real life. The tale begins with "once upon a time" and a description of a "very beautiful doll''s-house" belonging to a doll called Lucinda and her cook-doll Jane. Jane never cooks because the doll''s-house food is made of plaster and was "bought ready-made, in a box full of shavings". Though the food will not come off the plates, it is "extremely beautiful". One morning the dolls leave the nursery for a drive in their perambulator. No one is in the nursery when Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca, two mice living under the skirting board, peep out and cross the hearthrug to the doll''s-house. They open the door, enter, and "squeak for joy" when they discover the dining table set for dinner. It is "all so convenient!" Tom Thumb discovers the food is plaster and loses his temper. The two smash every dish on the table &ndash; "bang, bang, smash, smash!" &ndash; and even try to burn one in the "red-hot crinkly paper fire" in the kitchen fireplace. Tom Thumb scurries up the sootless chimney while Hunca Munca empties the kitchen canisters of their red and blue beads. Tom Thumb takes the dolls'' dresses from the chest of drawers and tosses them out the window while Hunca Munca pulls the feathers from the dolls'' bolster. In the midst of her mischief, Hunca Munca remembers she needs a bolster and the two take the dolls'' bolster to their mouse-hole. They carry off several small odds and ends from the doll''s-house including a bird cage and a bookcase that will not fit through the mouse-hole. The nursery door suddenly opens and the dolls return in their perambulator. Lucinda and Jane are speechless when they behold the vandalism in their house. The little girl who owns the doll''s-house gets a policeman doll and positions it at the front door, but her nurse is more practical and sets a mouse-trap. The narrator believes the mice are not "so very naughty after all": Tom Thumb pays for his crimes with a crooked sixpence placed in the doll''s stocking on Christmas Eve and Hunca Munca atones for her hand in the destruction by sweeping the doll''s-house every morning with her dust-pan and broom.

The Tale of Two Bad Mice

Mija Jherun, a fey seventeen-year-old peasant woman, lives in a world inexorably being overwhelmed by the sea. One day, after looting a barrow, the tomb of a young warrior-king, she is chased by an armored man on horseback back to her village. He breaks into the poor home she shares with her family, helps himself to some food, and asks if anyone has seen a pale woman on a grey horse. After repulsing an attack by the men of the village, he departs for Shiuan, a richer land ruled by the khal, another race that is enough like humans to successfully interbreed. Jherun, yearning for a less bleak future than marrying the thuggish Fwar, runs after him. Instead of finding him, she stumbles upon his mortal enemies: his cousin, Nhi Vanye, and Vanye''s lord, Morgaine, the pale woman. They inform her that Chya Roh''s body had been taken over by an evil creature who had extended his life countless times by this means. He had betrayed Morgaine and sent ten thousand men to their doom a century before. Fleeing her, he had passed through a Gate from Vanye''s world to this one, closing the passageway forever, but not quickly enough to prevent Morgaine and Vanye from following. Jherun knows of two Gates, which she calls Wells. The newcomers had emerged from one; the other is in Shiuan. Morgaine''s mission is to travel from world to world, closing their Gates permanently, as they can (and have in the past) destroyed whole civilizations when their immense power is misused. She is the last survivor of a band of one hundred sent for that purpose. Vanye is a chance-met warrior, bound to obey her initially by his stubborn sense of honor and later for other reasons. As they travel towards Shiuan, it begins to rain heavily. They become separated when Vanye is knocked off his horse by an uprooted tree carried by the rapidly rising, onrushing water. He finds Jherun, but not Morgaine. Knowing that Morgaine will make for the Well of Shiuan, he heads there also, accompanied by Jherun. Along the way, Jherun persuades him to seek food and shelter at the fortress of Ohtij-in, held by half-breed khal. This proves to be a grave mistake, as Roh had preceded him there. He treats Vanye well, claiming that the Roh Vanye knew still coexists with his "murderer"; Vanye is uncertain and does not kill him when Roh deliberately gives him the opportunity. Roh has promised the khal a way out of their dying world. The old lord, Bydarra, is skeptical, but his ruthless son Hetharu is more receptive. He murders his own father and puts the blame on Vanye. He assembles his forces and heads off to the Gate with Roh. Vanye is left behind, a prisoner of Hetharu''s brother Kithan, but is rescued by Morgaine and an army she has recruited from Jherun''s people and their neighbors, the marshlanders. However, when they learn what Morgaine intends, they turn on her, forcing her to kill many with her advanced weapons. Morgaine, Vanye, Jherun and Kithan flee on horseback, followed by the mob on foot. They reach the control room for the Gate of Shiuan, only to find that Roh has locked the controls. He has also left a message: he will allow Vanye safe passage through, but not Morgaine. She orders Vanye to go to Roh, wait his chance to kill him, and continue on with her mission. Knowing that the two of them stand no chance against Roh''s army, he reluctantly obeys, taking the other two with him. Roh sees through the ruse immediately, but still accepts his cousin. As they prepare to pass through the Gate, Morgaine attacks with the human rabble, with which she has forged an uneasy alliance. In the confusion, Vanye fights his way to her, and together they force their way through, to continue their quest on yet another world. The rest, khal and human alike, follow, save Jherun and Kithan. Then the Gate closes.

Well of Shiuan

The story''s narrator is a writer who works as a fact checker for a high-brow magazine—likely based on Harpers or The New Yorker, where McInerney himself once worked as a fact checker—for which he had once hoped to write. By night, he is a cocaine using party-goer seeking to lose himself in the hedonism of the 1980s yuppie party scene, often going to a nightclub called Heartbreak. His wife, Amanda, recently left him and he copes with this by pretending nothing happened and telling no one that she''s gone. Initially hopeful that she will return someday, he eventually resorts to searching for her at a fashion event. He obsesses over every item she owned in his apartment, every modeling photo and every club she visited, even repeatedly visiting a mannequin based on her. Also, his partying is affecting his work and he appears to be on the verge of getting fired by his temperamental boss. The novel would go on to be the source material for the 1988 film Bright Lights, Big City, which was also written by McInerney. In 1999, an off Broadway stage musical was produced by the New York Theater Workshop, written by Paul Scott Goodman and directed by Michael Grief, with orchestrations and musical direction by Richard Barone.

Bright Lights, Big City

After arriving at his London club at 10:30 am precisely,which he has been doing every morning for many years, Sir Eustace Pennefather, a known womanizer whose divorce from his current wife is pending, receives a complimentary box of chocolates through the post. Disapproving of such modern marketing techniques, Sir Eustace is about to throw away the chocolates in disgust but changes his mind when he learns that Graham Bendix, another member of the club whom he hardly knows, has lost a bet with his wife Joan and now owes her a box of chocolates. Bendix takes the box home and, after lunch, tries out the new confectionery together with his wife. A few hours later Joan Bendix is dead, whereas her husband, who has eaten far less of the chocolate, is taken seriously ill and hospitalized (but later recovers). The police can establish a few facts beyond any doubt: that the parcel was posted the previous evening near The Strand; that the poison that was injected into each of the chocolates is nitrobenzene; and that the accompanying letter was typewritten on a piece of stationery from the manufacturers of the chocolates but not composed or sent by them. Quite soon in the police investigations it becomes evident that the intended victim was Sir Eustace himself rather than the innocent Joan Bendix: No criminal could have predicted Sir Eustace giving away the box of chocolates to a man he hardly knew who just happened to be present when it was delivered. However, at a loss as to the further details of the crime, Scotland Yard conclude that the sender must have been some maniac or a fanatic trying to rid society of one of its most immoral members. Worthy pillars of society including a barrister, a writer of detective novels, and a female author, the members of Roger Sheringham''s Crimes Circle go about individually solving the case. After a week has passed, they present their findings on consecutive nights to their colleagues. Not surprisingly, they come up with various suspects: Sir Eustace''s estranged wife; the father of a young lady whom Sir Eustace intended to marry after his divorce got through; one of Sir Eustace''s discarded mistresses; and some more. While these discussions are going on, the murderer seems to feel safe with no need to cover up their tracks any further. At the very end of the novel, however, there is no doubt as to the identity of the perpetrator.

The Poisoned Chocolates Case

It tells the story of Saul and Chris, two orphans who are adopted by a top espionage agent and trained to be assassins. When their adopted father tries to have them killed, their training, determination and loyalty are put to the test. The brothers find out that the conspiracy is even larger than they expected spanning security agencies of different nations, Each of the brotherhood member is 4th in ranking in the respective organizations and have loyal assassins trained from tender age. Chris died during a duel with one of the loyal assassins of another brotherhood member and the story became that of revenge. Their adopted father Elliot ran into a sort of national safe house for security agents which is where the later part of the book concentrated on. Saul being a Jew later went back to his native land and married his love interest Erica from their training days, who is a Mossad Agent. The other novels in this loose trilogy are The Fraternity of the Stone and The League of Night and Fog.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Die Trying

By Lee Child

Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition

By Sion Sono

The Devil and Miss Prym

By Paulo Coelho

Honor Among Enemies

By David Weber

Sea Change

By Robert B. Parker

The Shoemaker's Holiday

By Thomas Dekker

The Late Hector Kipling

By David Thewlis

The Tale of Two Bad Mice

By Beatrix Potter

Well of Shiuan

By C. J. Cherryh

Bright Lights, Big City

By Jay McInerney

The Poisoned Chocolates Case

By Anthony Berkeley Cox

Brotherhood of the Rose

By David Morrell