Tags:thrillers
Phase Three Alert
March 1943, at the height of World War II, a newly commissioned B-17 bomber is nearing the west coast of Greenland.Flown by a carefully picked crew, it is carrying a piece of vital secret cargo that under no circumstances can be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy.Caught by an unexpected and fearfully violent Arctic storm, the pilot is forced to crash-land on the vast, awesome Greenland Ice Cap. The crew is saved, but the plane itself and the ultrasensitive cargo it is carrying are swallowed by another great storm and disappear.Three decades later Lieutenant Scott Ferguson, the pilot of a ski-equipped Air Force C-130, discovers an unknown B-17 rigidly frozen on an all-but-unexplored section of the ice cap. Ferguson is bound for Thule Air Base, named for Ultima Thule—the end of the earth. Only 960 miles from the North Pole, in the extreme Arctic, Thule is one of the most exotic places on earth—and one of the most remote. It sits squarely on the bomber and missile route from the Soviet Union to the United States and Canada.When he reports his find, Ferguson receives sudden orders from the Pentagon: go back to the frozen bomber, get inside, and recover, if possible, a certain piece of cargo.This, the first book about Thule and the people who are stationed there, is filled with the vastness, the danger, and the fascination of the very high Arctic. And, from the first page to the last, it is a story about aircraft and the men who fly them. When Lieutenant Ferguson and his crew set about to recover the yellow color-coded crate from the wreck of the B-17, they open the door to more adventure and extraordinary flying than even Ferguson's lively imagination can conceive. For that was not an ordinary B-17…
The Kiwi Target
Sent to New Zealand by his company to avert a hostile takeover, Peter Ferguson stumbles upon love, murder and laundered money. Then when he discovers a multi-million dollar scheme to turn a stretch of beautiful coastline into a parade of neon signs, liquor stores and casinos, Ferguson thinks he can see through muscle men, lawyers and policemen all the way to a Chinese syndicate in Hong Kong."A top notch mystery."—News & Observer"A breathtaking suspense thriller."—Seattle Post-Intelligencer"The Kiwi Target is the last book that John Ball wrote. We shall miss his inspiration."—Mystery SceneJohn Ball's international bestseller In the Heat of the Night was made into an Oscar-winning movie starring Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier and became a high-rating television series.
Mark One: The Dummy
Ed Nesbitt has a problem.Nesbitt is the author of dozens of phenomenally successful suspense novels starring that lethal super-agent of the West, Mark Day, master of karate and aikido, and irresistible womanizer. Everyone loves his books—"So realistic," they say; "Day is so true-to-life." The problem is: he's too realistic. Everyone thinks Nesbitt is Mark Day. Even the enemy. And the enemy means to do something about it.Which explains what the large man with the very sharp knife is doing in Nesbitt's hotel room in Berlin. Which explains why Nesbitt's luggage and possessions are being ransacked.Which does not explain what happens the next moment, when Ed Nesbitt quite suddenly finds himself transformed into a man three inches taller, several years younger—and possessed of some of the most awesome fighting capabilities the West has ever known.Ed Nesbitt, meet Mark Day. You're about to save your own life—in a most remarkable fashion.
The Fourteenth Point
The Right Reverend Philip Roundtree, bishop of the Church of England, is not exactly your average clergyman. Unpredictability surrounds him like an aura. Whenever he steps into a pulpit to speak, anything can happen. And this time, anything does.Before an entire convocation of church dignitaries, he makes an incredible suggestion: He proposes a universal religion. A religion which all of the known faiths would adopt as their own, scrapping their dogmas and rites. A religion that would unite man-kind in a single, simple worship of God. One religion.Shocking, of course. Except to Philip Roundtree—and to Sir Cyril Throckmorton Plessey, the aged but extremely lively multi¬millionaire who takes it into his head to become Roundtree's sponsor. The bishop sparks an interest in Plessey, that interest sparks Plessey's money—and that money sparks one of the most momentous, earth-shaking conferences in the history of the world.How Roundtree manages to bring together leaders of all the world's religions in one place, what happens when the Orthodox Jews meet the Moslems, how the Christian Scientists get along with the Sunni sect of the Buddhists, what transpires when a strict young Anglican priest falls in love with a Buddhist Thai beauty, and finally, how the conference is shatteringly resolved—these are all parts of John Ball's provocative, inspiring and immensely exciting novel, The Fourteenth Point.
The Murder Children
Here is a frightening, realistic novel of terror in the streets, of the growing power wielded by lawless youth gangs.When newly-promoted Lieutenant Ralph Mott of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was assigned to gang control in East Los Angeles, he knew little about the barrio or the extent of the violence there. Although he had heard of the seventeen warring youth gangs, he was unprepared for fourteen-year-old hitmen, for the savage brutality of boys still in their teens. Now with gang activity increasing, he plunged into the fight to control the armed robberies, the gang rapings, the shotgun attacks on houses, and the constant warfare between hostile gangs that raged on every street and hillside. Most of the people in the Mexican-American community were law-abiding, yet Mott soon learned that fear of gang vengeance kept them silent when they had witnessed a crime.Chillingly accurate in its detail, The Murder Children is a story of fast, exciting action. It is also a story of people—of individual gang members, of priests and prostitutes, of good citizens and bad. And it is the story of Lieutenant Mott, who with the men and women of the sheriff's forces, had the dangerous job of trying to contain a spreading evil.John Ball was sworn into the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and then spent more than two years working in the barrio, riding patrol units, meeting with gang members, riding in their cars, and sometimes helping to put their dead bodies into the coroner's wagons. The result of these experiences is this powerful book.
The First Team
Moscow has taken the USA without a shot. Student protesters are being slaughtered in the Midwest. The Jewish pogroms have begun. You are now living in Soviet–occupied America!One nuclear submarine and a handful of determined patriots against the combined might of Russia and Soviet–occupied America… The Most Explosive and Gripping “What If” Novel of Our Time!
Rescue Mission
"The guy certainly knows his airplanes well and he held my interest very tightly as he developed the story."—RICHARD BACH, author of Stranger to the Ground and BiplaneThe hurricane warnings were up in the Caribbean when Herb Stallings brought his crippled Constellation in for a landing on Tres Santos. The Connie wasn't safe to fly farther, and the nearest parts for repairing it were in Miami. Stallings decided he'd tie the big plane down on the sheltered side of the hangar, fill the tanks for ballast, and hope the plane would ride out the storm safely.With the plane well anchored, its captain, crew, and the airfield staff flew out ahead of the storm in a DC-3, to the mainland and to safety.Meanwhile two Civilian Air Patrol pilots, who had been on a rescue mission over the water searching for some men adrift in a rubber raft, realized that the wind was increasing and that they had better head for land. The nearest land was Tres Santos.When the CAP pilots arrived at Tres Santos, they found the airfield deserted: only the giant Constellation was there... which was bewildering.Then they were approached by two of the islanders and a priest—who begged them to fly a very sick man and a badly burned little girl out of the storm's path to the mainland and a doctor.The CAP pilots knew that men whose only flight experience and training had been in one-engine planes could not possibly handle anything the size of a Constellation. They protested—said they couldn't do it.But it seemed to be a matter of life and death. Foolhardy and dangerous though they knew the attempt to be, they finally agreed to try to fly the big plane out. They didn't know its condition—and one of them certainly didn't have any idea what his passenger list was like.Desperately they began the terrifying task of getting the Connie up into the air to outrace the hurricane.John Ball (who has flown many air rescue missions himself) knows what he's writing about—and his exciting novel lets the reader share a pilot's experiences with unusual immediacy.
Last Plane Out
This is the gripping, compelling saga of men and their machines and their lonely women. Men who have only one goal—get up in the sky in anything that flies!The Captain—a man not to be grounded, determined to fly the last plane out of the war; Jennings—survivor of a terrifying crash, who kept his eyes turned to the skies all his life; The copilots, navigators, technicians, ground crews—and the two young women who tie together the threads of their lives.They could live no other way. Praise for Last Plane Out"As exciting a story of adventure in the sky as anything ever given us..."—Chicago Tribune (Last Plane Out)
The Van: A Tale of Terror
The Van: A Tale of TerrorJohn Ball said of this novel: "The series of bizarre and frightful murders described in the pages that follow is based on an actual case, the complete file of which is shattering reading."The setting for the powerful story is the Los Angeles area. The van, a dark-colored one, basic to much of the horror, was not much of a van.The many victims whose mutilated bodies were discovered were chosen haphazardly. There were two killers. The Los Angeles sheriff’s office and homicide bureau included many able, well-trained men, used to dealing with murders. But when the tapes the killers enjoyed making were found and played, they were the most horrifying piece of evidence the technicians had ever listened to.The victims were always young ladies—often very young.Working with the police department was Dr. Flavia de la Torre, a sociologist who had been given a grant to do a study on the incidence of serious crimes committed by men on parole. She was an attractive woman who was an asset—but who wasn't really aware (were any of them?) of the criminal minds she'd be encountering.The reader should be prepared, too, as he (or she) reads ahead.
The First Team
Moscow has taken the USA without a shot.Student protesters are being slaughtered in the Midwest.The Jewish pogroms have begun.You are now living in Soviet–occupied America!One nuclear submarine and a handful of determined patriots against the combined might of Russia and Soviet–occupied America… The Most Explosive and Gripping “What If” Novel of Our Time!
A Killing in the Market
MONEY, MANIPULATION, AND MURDER A successful Wall Street speculator is turning his custom-built car into the private drive of his vast Long Island estate when a bomb blasts him and the vehicle to bits. In nearby Westchester another financial manipulator is executed in the back seat of his Cadillac. Police specialist John Harbizon is called in to investigate. He soon realizes that he has a difficult task before him; the careers of both men consisted mainly in taking away other people's money, and many had cause to hate them. Then the vice president of an L.A. brokerage firm is electrocuted while taking a shower and another financial advisor leaps or is pushed from the twenty-third floor of his Chicago penthouse. Harbizon recognizes the frightening potential of the pattern that is emerging. Police specialists from New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles and two eager journalists join the investigation as the series of murders stuns the financial world. Someone seems to be more interested in collecting death certificates than stock certificates. A novel of ruthlessly professional murders, brilliant police work, and swift suspense by the author of In the Heat of the Night.
Trapped (Mina Dabiri and Vincent Walder, Book 1)
An incredible new thriller you won’t want to put down! A shocking murder...It’s a case unlike anything detective Mina Dabiri has seen before. A woman trapped inside a magician’s box, with swords pierced through. But this time, it’s not a magic trick. It’s murder. A case which twists and turns...Knowing she has a terrifying killer on her hands, Mina enlists the help of celebrity mentalist, Vincent Walder. Only he can give her an insight into the secret world of magic and illusions. A ticking clock to stop a serial killer...Mina and Vincent soon discover that the murder victim has the roman numeral III engraved on her leg. The killer is counting down. There are going to be three more murders. And time is running out to stop them.