by Michael Crichton

Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton is possibly the best science teacher for the masses since H.G. Wells, and Sphere, his thriller about a mysterious spherical spaceship at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, is classic Crichton. A group of not-very-complex characters (portrayed in the film by Sharon Stone, Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Queen Latifah) assemble to solve a cleverly designed roller coaster of a mystery while attempting (with mixed success) to avoid sudden death and expounding (much more successfully) on the latest, coolest scientific ideas, including the existence of black holes. Somehow, Crichton manages to convey the complicated stuff in utterly simplistic prose, making him, as his old pal Steven Spielberg puts it, "the high priest of high concept." Yet there is more to Crichton than science and big-ticket show biz. He is also, as any reader of his startling memoir Travels knows, a bit of a mystic--he is entirely open to notions spouted by spoon-bending psychics that most science writers would scorn. Sphere is not only a gratifying sci-fi suspense tale; it also reflects Crichton's keen interest in the unexplained powers of the human mind. When something passes through a black hole in Crichton's fiction, a lesson is learned. The book also contains another profound lesson: when you're staring down a giant squid with an eyeball the size of a dinner plate, don't blink first.

by Robin Cook

Still considered one of the best of the genre, Coma propelled Robin Cook to the top of his field and earned him a reputation as the "master of the medical thriller" (New York Times). Now readers have another chance to discover this classic masterwork of nightmarish possibility.

by Ray Bradbury

Bradbury's novel details the eternal war between censorship and freedom of thought and continues to be relevant today more than ever. In Bradbury's future, books are illegal and happily so--citizens are too busy watching their wall-sized televisions and listening to their in-ear "seashell" radios to care about the loss of good literature. Guy Montag begins the novel as a fireman who enforces the temperature of the title--that at which books burn--but then transforms and tries to show his society the mistake of censorship. It's a treat to hear Bradbury read his own work, almost as if a wise elder were sharing a cautionary tale. Sometimes the slower pace seems awkward for a novel of such action, but overall the reading does justice to the timeless classic.

by Tom Clancy

Somewhere under the Atlantic, a Soviet sub commander has just made a fateful decision: the Red October is heading west. The Americans want her. The Russians want her back. And the most incredible chase in history is on....

The Hunt for Red October is the runaway bestseller that launched Tom Clancy's phenomenal career. A military thriller so accurate and convincing that the author was rumored to have been debriefed by the White House. Its theme: the greatest espionage coup in history. Its story: the chase for a runaway top secret Russian missile sub.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Beneath the Atlantic's chilly waters, the captain of Russia's top secret missile submarine, Red October, secretly intends to defect--and U.S. intelligence agent Jack Ryan is eager to help him succeed. The Hunt for Red October is the runaway bestseller that launched Tom Clancy's phenomenal career. A military thriller so accurate and convincing that the author was rumored to have been debriefed by the White House.

by John Grisham

This addictive tale of a young lawyer defending a black Vietnam war hero who kills the white druggies who raped his child in tiny Clanton, Mississippi, is John Grisham's first novel, and his favorite of his first six. He polished it for three years and every detail shines like pebbles at the bottom of a swift, sunlit stream. Grisham is a born legal storyteller and his dialogue is pitch perfect.

The plot turns with jeweled precision. Carl Lee Hailey gets an M-16 from the Chicago hoodlum he'd saved at Da Nang, wastes the rapists on the courthouse steps, then turns to attorney Jake Brigance, who needs a conspicuous win to boost his career. Folks want to give Carl Lee a second medal, but how can they ignore premeditated execution? The town is split, revealing its social structure. Blacks note that a white man shooting a black rapist would be acquitted; the KKK starts a new Clanton chapter; the NAACP, the ambitious local reverend, a snobby, Harvard-infested big local firm, and others try to outmaneuver Jake and his brilliant, disbarred drunk of an ex-law partner. Jake hits the books and the bottle himself. Crosses burn, people die, crowds chant "Free Carl Lee!" and "Fry Carl Lee!" in the antiphony of America's classical tragedy. Because he's lived in Oxford, Mississippi, Grisham gets compared to Faulkner, but he's really got the lean style and fierce folk moralism of John Steinbeck.

by Michael DiMercurio

In the near-future of this uneven but exciting techno-thriller, the Russian Republic's newest super-sub, the Kaliningrad, departs for the Arctic Ocean under hard-liner Adm. Alexei Novskoyysp evidently ok . His objective: to coordinate a massive nuclear strike on the U.S. under the guise of a routine naval maneuver. Stalking the Kaliningrad in turn is the U.S. attack sub Devilfish --whose captain, Cmdr. Michael Pacino, learns just before sailing that Novskoyy sank his father's sub 20 years ago. Why an officer with personal motives for vengeance is assigned to such a vital mission is but one of the unnecessary implausibilities that burden the story line. These structural shortcomings, however, are secondary to convincing depictions of cat-and-mouse games in the waters beneath the Arctic icepack. As told by first novelist Dimercurio, a former submarine officer, collision poses a greater risk than do torpedoes and missiles as the submarines hunt each other at point-blank range, building to a page-turning, nuclear-tipped climax.

by Dale Brown

It is not the Reagan Administration that has secretly been developing a Strategic Defense Initiative in this first book by retired USAF Captain Brown, but the Soviets, and as soon as the system comes on line, the Russians flagrantly attack American intelligence and military craft with their laser weapon. The President and his advisors appeal to the UN Security Council; they even dispatch sophisticated B-1 bombers and a new, armed space satellite, but both are thwarted, and the U.S. is left dangerously incapable of detecting a missile launch from the eastern U.S.S.R. Desperate, they decide to send a souped-up veteran B-52 bomber, the Old Dog, and its expert navigator Patrick McLanahan on a crucial mission into Siberia to neutralize the death ray. Brown knows his airborne and naval high-tech equipment and the cockpit bantering of crews, and can tell a basically interesting story. He does not, however, examine the frightening political consequences of the superpowers trading shots.

by Richard N. Bolles

In the last four years, the United States has lost 2.3 million jobs—the most in any four-year period since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Currently, millions of workers are unemployed both in the United States and worldwide and the problem isn’t likely to abate anytime soon. In the 2005 edition of his legendary job-hunting book, WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? Richard Bolles presents a detailed plan for facing this societal problem head-on, declaring that we must each begin by mastering this new world for ourselves and then, once empowered, share our knowledge with others to empower the world.

In PARACHUTE 2005, Bolles offers a completely new book for this uncertain job market, laying out a simple, step-by-step plan for finding meaningful work and mission despite our economy’s jobless recovery. Featuring fresh explanations of old concepts and the introduction of new ideas, Bolles defines the distinctions between "resume jobs" and "grapevine jobs," between "passive job-hunting" and "active job-hunting," between "weak ties" and "strong ties," and much more. These are not normal times. And this is not your normal PARACHUTE. It faces squarely the "workquake" that is shaking up the job market around the world, and gives not only simple steps but steady hope.

by Stephen Coonts

With this well-crafted first novel, the publishers of The Hunt for Red October again demonstrate a sure eye for picking winners in the thriller genre. Jake Grafton is an A-6 Intruder pilot during the Vietnam War who flies his bomber on sorties past enemy flak and SAM missiles, and then must maneuver his plane, often at night, onto the relatively small deck of an aircraft carrier. Former Navy flyer Coonts gives an excellent sense of the complexities of modern air raids and how nerve-wracking it is, even for the best airmen, to technically solve sudden problems over and over, knowing that even a twist of fatea peasant wildly firing a rifle from a fieldcould wipe out the crew. Grafton alternates between remorse over the fate of his unseen Vietnamese victims on the ground and a gung-ho "let's win this war" sentiment that lashes at both policymakers who select less-than-important targets for the dangerous missions and advocates for peace back in the States.

Stephen Coonts flew A-6's in Vietnam. He has the credentials to write this story, which helps explain its long stay on the best seller list.

A-6's were called Intruders. Their pilots tackled assignments of dazzling complexity and flew them with daring and dispatch. But they paid a price...in lost lives, disillusion, incredible tension.

They had one reward -- exhilaration -- worth the whole candle. You share the airmen's special brand of comradery, the one stabilizing force in an otherwise precarious life, that only an insider knows.

"Documentary and dramatic, FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER is to the novel what TOP GUN was to film."

Oak Harbor, Washington

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