I, Sniper Recruited by the FBI to examine the data, retired Marine sharpshooter Bob Lee Swagger penetrates the new technology of the secretive sniper world to unravel a sophisticated conspiracy run by his most ruthless adversary yet—a marksman whose keen intellect and pinpoint accuracy rival his own. But when the enemy and his deadly henchmen mistake Bob for the hunted, it’s clear that some situations call for a good man with a gun . . . and the guts to use it. Night of Thunder Woe unto he who crosses Bob Lee Swagger, especially when his daughter's life is at stake. Forced off the road and into a crash that leaves her in a coma, clinging to life, reporter Nikki Swagger had begun to peel back the onion of a Southernfried conspiracy bubbling with all the angst, resentment, and dysfunction that Dixie gangsters can muster. An ancient, violent crime clan, a possibly corrupt law enforcement structure, gunmen of all stripes and shapes, and deranged evangelicals rear their ugly heads and will live to rue the day they targeted the wrong man's daughter. It's what you call your big-time bad career move. All of it is set against the backdrop of excitement and insanity that only a weeklong NASCAR event can bring to the backwoods of a town as seemingly sleepy as Bristol, Tennessee. 47th Samurai Bob Lee Swagger and Philip Yano are bound together by a single moment at Iwo Jima, 1945, when their fathers, two brave fighters on opposite sides, met in the bloody and chaotic battle for the island. Only Earl Swagger survived. More than sixty years later, Yano comes to America to honor the legacy of his heroic father by recovering the sword he used in the battle. Bob Lee finds the sword and delivers it to Yano in Tokyo. On inspection, they discover that it is not a standard WWII blade, but a legendary shin-shinto katana, an artifact of the nation. It is priceless but worth killing for. Suddenly Bob is at the center of a series of terrible crimes he barely understands but vows to avenge…

Stephen Hunter has chosen the backdrop of the chaotic and cruel Spanish Civil War to weave a classic tale of espionage and counterespionage. Julian Raines was one of the first Englishmen to volunteer for the international brigade in Spain. The British Secret Service suspect that the flamboyant Raines was recruited for the KGB by the Bolsheviks during his student days at Oxford and send Robert Florry, a struggling young writer to Spain after Raines with orders to eliminate him. Florry was an old school chum to Raines and had every reason to hate him. The British are not alone on Raines' trail. The ruthless Communist leader in Barcelona believes that the identity of the double agent conceals a powerful and profitable secret. It is a novel that constantly surprises. From the Paperback edition.

Short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors A thrilling new novella from the bestselling author of the Bob Lee Swagger series A captain in the British Army, Basil St. Florian has been tasked with a dangerous mission in the midst of World War II. He has been sent across the English Channel to find and photograph a manuscript that does not officially exist, one that may hold the key to a code that, if cracked, could prevent the deaths of millions. St. Florian’s mission presents him with one challenge after another, and it doesn’t help that the SS and the Abwehr are following his every move in a cat-and-mouse chase across occupied France. But St. Florian is willing to risk his life to get to the manuscript—even if the genius professor Alan Turing can’t guarantee he’ll be able to break the code.

A second chance... In the windswept sands of the Middle East, Paul Chardy fought side by side with Ulu Beg: one, a charismatic, high-strung CIA covert warrior, the other a ferocious freedom fighter.  Then Chardy fell into the hands of the enemy, and Beg was betrayed.  Now the two men are about to meet again. A second gun... Beg has come over the Mexican border under a hail of bullets--determined to assassinate a leading American political figure and avenge his people's betrayal.  The CIA wants Chardy to stop the hit.  Chardy wants to save Beg's life. Between the two men is a tragic past, a failed mission, and a woman who knew them in war--and who knows their secrets now.  Around both men is a conspiracy of lies and violence that reaches back to the Cold War.  But as Beg moves in for his kill and as Chardy breaks loose from his handlers, a terrible truth begins to emerge: somewhere, someone wants both men to die. From the Paperback edition.

Mississippi, 1951: The last place any sane man wants to visit is Thebes State Penal Farm. Of the few who make the journey there, even fewer return. But when an old friend disappears inside Thebes, ex-Marine and Arkansas State Police Sgt. Earl Swagger takes a personal interest in the case. As he infiltrates the prison, what he experiences defies his wildest nightmares -- a savage world where death is the only salvation. As tough as he is, Swagger barely escapes with his life -- and his mind -- intact. But he's not going to stay away for long. Recruiting six of the hardest, deadliest gunmen ever known, bloody vengeance is soon at hand. Because Earl Swagger is going back to Thebes.

Black Friday America's largest shopping mall Suburban Minneapolis 3:00 P.M. Ten thousand people jam the aisles, the corridors, the elevators, and the escalators of America, the Mall--a giant Rubik's Cube of a structure with its own amusement park located in the spacious center atrium. Of those people, nine thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight have come to shop. The other twelve have come to kill. Stephen Hunter's hyper-drive, eighth-gear new thriller, "Soft Target, "chronicles the day when the unthinkable happens: twelve gunmen open fire in the mall corridors, driving the pack before them. Those on the upper floors take cover or get out any way they can; but within a few minutes the gunmen have herded more than a thousand hostages into the amusement park. Ray Cruz, one of the heroes of Hunter's last bestseller, "Dead Zero," is in the mall with his fiancee and her family. The retired Marine sniper thought he was done with stalking and killing--but among the trapped thousands, he's the only one with a plan and the guts to confront the self-proclaimed "Brigade Mumbai." Now all he needs is a gun. FBI Sniper Dave McElroy has a gun. But positioned on the roof of the vast building, looking down through one of its thickly paned Great Lakes-shaped skylights, and without explosives or fuses--or the go-ahead from his superiors--he is effectively cut off from his targets and forced into the role of witness to the horror unfolding below. Set during the four hours of the terrifying event, the story follows both hostages and gunmen, detailing the complex strategic police response, the full-press media saturation coverage, even the politics of SWAT as both the Minnesota State Police and the FBI struggle to control, confront, and ultimately defuse the crisis. Having learned the lessons of Columbine, the feds believe that immediate action is the only solution. But Douglas Obobo, the charismatic and ambitious commandant of the state police, orders cooperation, tolerance, communication, and empathy for the gunmen. He feels that with his superior negotiating skills, he can make contact with the shooters and gently nudge them into surrender. But what if their goal all along has been unparalleled massacre--and they're only waiting for prime time? With unrelenting suspense and vivid scenes of violence and chaos in the center of a terror-crazed afternoon in Middle America, thriller master Stephen Hunter takes us into the belly of the softest of soft targets.

Stephen Longacre, good for nothing playboy, is given an ultimatum by his wealthy father. Unless he rises to a certain challenge, his father will disconnect him from his world, and that includes paying for his lavish lifestyle. Longacre finally takes his life seriously as he finds his voice in a turbulent time, filled with hatred and violence.

From New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Hunter comes a thriller that plunges deep into the world of high-tech national security, the hearts and minds of those who kill for duty, and the latest mission for veteran sniper Bob Lee Swagger— who may have finally met the only man who can outshoot him. Who killed Whiskey 2-2? And why won’t it stay dead? A marine sniper team on a mission in tribal territories on the Afghan-Pakistan border, Whiskey 2-2 is ambushed by professionals using the latest high-tech shooting gear. Badly wounded, the team’s sole survivor, Gunnery Sergeant Ray Cruz, aka “the Cruise Missile,” is determined to finish his job. He almost succeeds when a mystery blast terminates his enterprise, leaving a thirty-foot crater where a building used to be—and where Sergeant Cruz was meant to be hiding. Months pass. Ray’s target, an Afghan warlord named Ibrahim Zarzi, sometimes called “The Beheader,” becomes an American asset in the region and beyond, beloved by State, the Administration, and the Agency. He arrives in Washington for consecration as Our Man in Kabul. But so does a mysterious radio transmission, in last year’s code. It’s from Whiskey 2-2. MISSION WILL BE COMPLETED. CONFIDENCE IS HIGH. Is Ray Cruz back? Has he gone rogue, is he insane, or just insanely angry? Will he succeed, though his antagonists now include the CIA, the FBI, and the same crew of bad boys that nearly killed him in Zabol province? Not to mention Bob Lee Swagger and a beautiful CIA agent named Susan Okada who gives Swagger more than just a patriotic reason to take the case. Swagger, the legendary hero of seven of Hunter’s novels from Point of Impact to last year’s bestselling I, Sniper, is recruited by the FBI to stop the Cruise Missile from reaching his target. The problem is that the more Swagger learns about what happened in Zabol, the more he questions the U.S. government’s support of Zarzi and the more he identifies with Cruz as hunter instead of prey. With its hallmark accuracy on modern killing technologies, Dead Zero features an older, more contemplative Swagger, but never lets up on the razor-sharp dialogue, vivid characterizations, extraordinary action scenes, and dazzling prose that define Hunter’s landmark series. And with this installment, the stunning revelations— both political and private—will leave readers begging for more long after the last bullet finds its way home.

Stephen Hunter tells a story of derring-do behind German lines in World War II, with oddball British and American agents vying to figure out how best to blow a bridge — for all the good it does in the end.

New York Times bestselling author Stephen Hunter returns with his most riveting Bob Lee Swagger volume to date. The stakes are high – and personal because this time, Swagger's daughter's life is at stake. Forced off the road and into a crash that leaves her clinging to life in a coma, Nikki Swagger had begun to peel back the onion of a Southern Fried scandal. Corrupt constabulary, meth lab crackers, and deranged evangelicals rear their ugly heads and when Swagger picks up where Nikki left off, his swift sword of justice is let loose. All of it is set against the backdrop of the excitement and insanity that only a weeklong NASCAR event can bring to the backwoods of a town as seemingly sleepy as Bristol, VA. A master at the top of his game, Hunter provides a host of riveting new reasons to read as fast as we can. Stephen Hunter is the bestselling author of THE 47TH SAMURAI, HAVANA and PALE HORSE COMING, among other titles.

Bob Lee Swagger is back in a thriller fifty years in the making . . . It’s not even a clue. It’s a whisper, a trace, a ghost echo, drifting down through the decades via chance connections so fragile that they would disintegrate in the puff of a breath. But it’s enough to get legendary former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger interested in the events of November 22, 1963, and the third bullet that so decisively ended the life of John F. Kennedy and set the stage for one of the most enduring controversies of our time. Swagger begins his slow night stalk through a much-traveled landscape. But he’s asking questions that few have asked before: Why did the third bullet explode? Why did Lee Harvey Oswald, about to become the most hunted man on earth, risk it all by returning to his rooming house to secure a pistol he easily could have brought with him? How could a conspiracy that went unpenetrated for fifty years have been thrown together in the two and a half days between the announcement of the president’s route and the assassination itself? As Bob investigates, another voice enters the narrative: knowing, ironic, almost familiar, that of a gifted, Yale-educated veteran of the CIA Plans Division. Hugh Meachum has secrets and the means and the will to keep them buried. When weighed against his own legacy, Swagger’s life is an insignificant expense—but to blunt the threat, he’ll first have to ambush the sniper. As each man hunts the other across today’s globe and through the thickets of history, The Third Bullet builds to an explosive climax that will finally prove what Bob Lee Swagger has always known: it’s never too late for justice.From BooklistStarred Review For nearly 50 years, the world has been obsessing over the assassination of JFK, from grassy knolls to magic bullets. Finally, though, there’s somebody on the case who likes to act more than talk: Bob Lee Swagger, former Vietnam sniper and the man you want on your side when it comes down to “straight killing time.” When the wife of a murdered thriller writer (with a bio very like Hunter’s own) asks Bob Lee to find her husband’s killer—and mentions that the writer was working on a book about the assassination (a book very like this one)—it’s no surprise that Swagger, who has no interest in who killed JFK, says no thanks. But then the widow tells him that an overcoat that her husband found in a building across the way from the Texas Book Depository had a peculiar stain on the back, as if a bicycle had run over it, and suddenly Bob Lee is very interested indeed. It takes nearly 500 pages before Hunter explains what it all means—with the narrative jumping between 1963 and the present—and while assassination fanatics will likely find all kinds of problems with the scenario he constructs (naturally, it hinges on ballistics, Bob Lee’s area of expertise), the rest of us will have no problem willingly suspending disbelief. Best of all, though, the novel isn’t just about what happened in Dallas 50 years ago; connected to the unraveling of the JFK story is a contemporary manhunt that takes Bob Lee first to Russia and then to the Connecticut countryside, where, finally, it’s straight killing time yet again. Who knows (or cares, really) if Hunter’s hypothesis is accurate, but, like Stephen King in 11/22/63 (2011), he has used the assassination to forge a terrific thriller. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Bob Lee Swagger wipes the floor with all the usual suspects connected to the death of JFK—now there’s a premise for the ages! Hunter does his subject proud, and the marketing campaign to support the launch will do the book just as proud. --Bill Ott Review“The Swagger novel we've all been waiting for, and the Swagger novel Stephen Hunter was born to write . . . a magnificent thriller—and it might even be true.” (Lee Child #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Wanted Man and *The Affair* )“Like an elite sniper, Stephen Hunter zeroes in on one of the most infamous shots ever fired and delivers a mind-bending thriller that answers the question ‘What if?’ in astonishingly plausible detail. The Third Bullet is his best Bob Lee Swagger thriller yet.” (Vince Flynn #1 New York Times bestselling author of *Kill Shot* )“Former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger tackles the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories—the 1963 Kennedy assassination—in his latest adventure. . . . The author’s obsessive attention to the events of Nov. 22 yields a stunningly plausible theory that will have readers holding the book in one hand and Googling satellite photos of Dealey Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository with the other.” (*Entertainment Weekly* )“Hunter’s action-packed new thriller, The Third Bullet . . . introduces a shockingly plausible alternative to the Lee Harvey Oswald-‘lone gunman’ explanation.” (*Fort Worth Star-Telegram* )“For nearly 50 years, the world has been obsessing over the assassination of JFK, from grassy knolls to magic bullets. Finally, though, there’s somebody on the case who likes to act more than talk: Bob Lee Swagger. . . . like Stephen King in 11/22/63, Hunter has used the assassination to forge a terrific thriller.” (Booklist (starred review) )“Bestseller Hunter’s solid eighth thriller featuring master sniper Bob Lee Swagger . . . plunges into the byzantine world of conspiracy theory. Hunter develops some new angles on the JFK assassination.” (*Publishers Weekly* )“The Third Bullet is as riveting as it is ambitious. It's Stephen Hunter's best so far.” (Michael Connelly #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Drop and *The Black Box* )“Stephen Hunter is the bullseye ace of the modern thriller, a cerebral mix of mystery, blood, brutality, treachery and suspense. The Third Bullet is Hunter at the absolute apex of his art. Come on—it's time to hunt!” (Stephen Coonts New York Times bestselling author of *The Disciple* )“One of the hardest things for a writer to do is establish an identity, but there is no mistaking Stephen Hunter’s thrillers. They have a unique insight into what it takes to be a hero, combined with an unequaled lyrical, even poetic approach to the ballistics, tactics, and firearms of a gunfight. Hunter’s novels (what a great last name, given his themes) combine authenticity with fascinating, compelling, real-feeling characters, and in The Third Bullet, he even adds a further dimension, experimenting with structure while embedding literary quotations. To me, he's a model of what a thriller author can be.” (David Morrell New York Times bestselling author of *First Blood* )“Only Stephen Hunter, with his brilliant knowledge of firearms, could have produced The Third Bullet and offered up a plausible explanation for one of our nation’s greatest mysteries. Despite the explosive subject matter, there is a jauntiness approaching pure joy in both the reading and the storytelling. This book will be huge.” (C.J. Box New York Times bestselling author of *Force of Nature* )

In this tour de force - part historical thriller, part modern adventure - from the New York Times bestselling author of I, Sniper, Bob Lee Swagger uncovers why WWII's greatest sniper was erased from history...and why her disappearance still matters today. Ludmilla "Mili" Petrova was once the most hunted woman on earth, having raised the fury of two of the most powerful leaders on either side of World War II: Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. But Kathy Reilly of TheWashington Post doesn't know any of that when she encounters a brief mention of Mili in an old Russian propaganda magazine, and becomes interested in the story of a legendary, beautiful female sniper who seems to have vanished from history. Reilly enlists former marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger to parse out the scarce details of Mili's military service. The more Swagger learns about Mili's last mission, the more he's convinced her disappearance was no accident - but why would the Russian government go to such lengths to erase the existence of one of their own decorated soldiers? And why, when Swagger joins Kathy Reilly on a research trip to the Carpathian Mountains, is someone trying to kill them before they can find out? As Bob Lee Swagger, "one of the finest series characters ever to grace the thriller genre, now and forever" (Providence Journal-Bulletin), races to put the pieces together, She, Sniper takes readers across oceans and time in an action-packed, compulsive read.