Warriors

February 10, 2014
China seeks to rule the world in bestseller Bell’s entertaining eighth novel featuring MI6 super-agent Alex Hawke (after 2012’s Phantom). For five years, a Chinese military unit under the command of Gen. Sun-Yat Moon, “someone capable of unspeakable cruelty,” has held Dr. William Lincoln Chase, “the legendary American scientist and Nobel laureate,” on Xinbu Island in the South China Sea. Chase is the genius behind the Centurion Submariner Project, which has produced an unmanned submersible vessel capable of launching 40 long-range nuclear missiles. To ensure Chase’s cooperation, his wife and children are held hostage in a North Korean death camp. Hawke and his team set out to rescue Chase and family, and deal with the Chinese threat. Silly prose aside (e.g., “He had it in for people who starved, tortured and murdered children”), this is a thrilling ride that even includes a cameo appearance by the current Queen of England. Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency.

April 1, 2014
A family outing in which a man is celebrating his wife's birthday at a fancy restaurant with the couple's children turns tragic when Chinese gunmen abduct the group. Four years later, the president of the U.S. begins acting strangely, and an enemy begins to plot an overthrow. The murder of a Cambridge professor and the growing threat of war between the U.S. and China have the world on edge. An incident in the South China Sea gets Alex Hawke involved, and he will not stop until he can end the madness, even if it means sneaking into China and staging an impossible rescue. Hawke is one of those heroes whose arrogance makes him a bit hard to admire, but he clearly wears a white hat. The sheer scope of this high-concept thriller, and the well-placed shocks throughout, make it Bell's best effort to date. A perfect tale for fans of plot-driven action-adventure and, especially, for the Cussler crowd.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)