Thriller

Title: Mead's Trek
Author: Tom Gauthier
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewer: John Monteith

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0984663800

Marine Corps Major Amos Mead, a lawyer by education and a Special Agent for the FBI by trade, is recruited as an agent in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in early 1943. His latest mission: Assess the level of cooperation among the factions conducting the war against the Empire of Japan in the Asian Theater of Operations. Known only to a few, additional orders direct Major Mead to seek out a powerful Asian leader and investigate the possibility of the Vice President of the United States being involved in secret negotiations with Vietnamese Communists for a post-war alliance.

En route to his assignment, unexpected life-threatening events befall Mead's team. The mission then takes on a new urgency—one of survival. Mead and his team are forced onto a trek in an enemy infested jungle that will test the limits of their mental toughness and physical endurance.

Title: Ghosts of Babylon
Author: R. A. Mathis
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Reviewer: Cathryn J. Prince

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1478130091

Set against a backdrop of escalating terror, Ghosts of Babylon is a fast-paced military thriller that features an intense, gritty, and powerful cast of characters. In a desperate attempt to salvage both his career and a wrecked personal life, archaeologist Stuart Knight volunteers to serve in Iraq as a translator, but his real objective is to get his hands on Babylon's ancient treasures. Once on the ground, he meets Captain Allen, a battalion intelligence officer determined to catch Al-Khayal, the insurgent who blew off his leg and annihilated his entire crew with an IED.

Entangled in the grisly web of Allen's private war, Knight's quest for redemption turns into a struggle for survival with deadly enemies on both sides of the wire. Stuart soon finds himself staring into the face of terror, his own mortality, and an evil as old as Babylon itself.

Title: Mistletoe, Merriment, and Murder
Author: Sara Rosett
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Reviewer: Betsy Beard

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0758269218

.Super organizer Ellie Avery could really use some Christmas cheer when Gabrielle Matheson, a grinchy professional rival, sets up shop in the same small Georgia town. But before the halls are even halfway decked with holly, someone uses Ellie's terrifically tasteless white elephant swap gift as ...a murder weapon! Ellie's now a suspect. Besides playing Mrs. Santa for her Air Force pilot husband and their two kids, shielding her eyes from the garishly over-decorated house down the street, and helping a client who's a hardcore hoarder, Ellie also has to solve this ho-ho-homicide ...and find a killer who wishes her a very deadly Christmas.

Title: Beware the Jabberwock
Author: Chester D. Campbell
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Reviewer: Lee Boyland

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0984604464

As the Cold War sputters to a close and the Soviet Union disintegrates, international telephone intercepts trigger a CIA investigation into the nebulous codeword "Jabberwock." Burke Hill, whose tarnished FBI career ended years earlier after dismissal by a surly J. Edgar Hoover, is recruited to help an old CIA buddy, Cameron Quinn, whose superiors doubt Jabberwock's dangerous potential. When an accident stops Quinn in Hong Kong, the CIA brass warns Hill to drop the investigation. Knowing Quinn's fears about the operation, Hill and Quinn's daughter, Lorelei, continue the chase. Rogue elements on both sides of the old Iron Curtain work to stop them, along with a relentless Federal bureaucracy. As the clock ticks down on Jabberwork, Burke and Lori realize they alone are the only hope of stopping a plot to assassinate the American and Russian presidents.

Title: The Team
Author: David M. Salkin
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewer: Terry Shoptaugh

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1479275247

Enrique Antonio Vega runs one of the largest cocaine cartels in South America, deep in the rain forest of the Tri-Border region. With a tribe of cannibalistic Guarani Natives as his personal army, he operates with impunity. That is, until he takes part in the murder of the U.S. Ambassador. When a small army is needed, but the operation must remain covert, the President calls on The Team—a very special ensemble of Marines, Rangers, SEALs and CIA operatives who make up one of the most lethal fighting forces in the US arsenal. Based loosely on a true operation run in Southeast Asia in the sixties, The Team is guaranteed to keep you turning pages!