Goodbye Paris Pono Hawkins Thriller Book 3

Second in the Pono Hawkins series after the critically-acclaimed, best-seller SAVING PARADISE, Mike Bond's KILLING MAINE is an insider's view of crooked Maine politics and industrial crime, the state's magical and fast-disappearing natural beauty, how a lone commando hunts down those who hunt him, and is based on the author's own experiences in Maine, the Middle East and elsewhere. The Plot: Surfer and Special Forces vet Pono Hawkins leaves Hawaii for Maine's brutal winter to help former SF buddy Bucky Franklin beat a politically motivated murder rap. Pono quickly learns that Maine is as politically corrupt as Hawaii, with huge energy corporations gobbling up the state's beautiful mountains and purchasing its politicians at bargain prices. He is hunted, shot at, betrayed, and stalked by knife-wielding assassins as he tries to find the murderer and free his buddy. Nothing is certain, no one can be trusted, no place is safe. And with a rap sheet that includes two undeserved jail sentences, Pono is a target for every cop in the state.

Special Forces veteran Pono Hawkins races from a Tahiti surfing contest to France when he learns that an ISIS terrorist he'd thought was dead, Mustafa al-Boudienne, has an Iranian backpack nuclear weapon and plans to destroy Paris. Pono was once Mustafa's prisoner in Iraq and is now the only one left alive to identify him. When Pono reaches Paris he finds that his closest comrade has been kidnapped, and that the date to destroy the city is fast approaching. Joining forces with allies from US and French intelligence, and with a fearless and brilliant French agent, Anne Ronsard, with whom he soon falls in love, Pono sets out against impossible odds to catch and kill Mustafa and his terrorist cell before they can destroy the most beautiful city on earth. As they dig deeper into the terrorist networks, their own lives are more and more endangered, while the terrorists change tactics again and again to outwit them as the time to save the city runs out. Spanning a fast two weeks in and around Paris, Goodbye Paris is a window to today's France, its elegance and poverty, humanism and fanaticism, beauty and despair, to the still-magical French countryside with its white castles and dark forests, the food, wine, and joyous ironic people, the magic of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame and the tragic fate awaiting them. Third in the best-selling Pono Hawkins series after Saving Paradise and Killing Maine, Goodbye Paris takes us into never-before revealed depths of covert action on three continents, to insider secrets in the war against terrorism, into intense memories of combat in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, and to the depths of love when everything seems lost. Based on the author's years of experience with terrorism and Middle East wars, and his deep knowledge of French and US intelligence and military operations, Goodbye Paris is a stunning thriller, an entrancing love story, and an exciting account of anti-terror operations from Paris and Morocco to Afghanistan. Goodbye Paris is a hallmark Mike Bond thriller: tense, exciting, and alive with real details and places, and that will keep you up all night.

Shot down over the jungle with a planeload of marijuana, Vietnam War hero Joe Murphy gets caught up in the brutal Guatemalan Civil War when he witnesses an attack on a Mayan village by the Guatemalan Army and its CIA "advisors". Badly injured, he escapes on a nightmare trek through the jungle, hunted by the Army, the CIA, and death squads. Healed by guerrilla doctor Dona Villalobos, he falls in love with her and tries to save her from the War's widening horror of insanity, tragedy, and death. Caught in the crucible of violence and love, he learns the peaks and depths the human heart can reach, and what humans will do for, and to, each other. Based on the author's own experiences as one of the last foreign correspondents left alive in Guatemala after over 100 journalists had been killed by Army death squads.

"An extraordinary and deftly crafted novel that combines interesting characters within an historically detailed background... a fascinating read from cover to cover." - MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW From the war-shattered jungles of Vietnam to America's burning cities, near-death in Tibet, peace marches, the battle of Hué and the battle of the Pentagon, wild drugs, rock concerts, free love, CIA coups in Indonesia and Greece, the Six Days' War, and Bobby Kennedy's last campaign, Freedom puts you in the Sixties as if it were now. Mick leaves for the Himalayas while Troy heads to Vietnam with the Marines. Daisy starts her PhD in brain research, and Tara battles heroin as her rock band reaches stardom. Troy is soon caught up in mind-numbing combat in Vietnam, while Mick returns to the States to lead the antiwar effort. Tara's band signs a Motown contract amid the Detroit riots. At Stanford, Daisy expands her study of the human brain under LSD and other mind-altering drugs. Troy falls in love with a Vietnamese teacher and is slowly losing faith in the War. Freedom ends the night before the Tet uprising in Vietnam that will change the War, and trap Troy and his beloved in the fires of hell.

This first of a seven book series follows four young friends through the turbulent 1960s in America--presidential assassination, Vietnam war, a battle for civil rights, and the explosion of sex, drugs, rock 'n roll.

The time was the 1980s. The place was Wall Street. The game was called Liar’s Poker. Michael Lewis was fresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar’s Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years—a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business. From the frat-boy camaraderie of the forty-first-floor trading room to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game of bluffing and deception, here is Michael Lewis’s knowing and hilarious insider’s account of an unprecedented era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune.

Hadamar is the story of Ingrid Marchand, a young woman of mixed German-French-African race and her struggle to survive as the Nazis rise to power and Hitler's barbaric racial policies are introduced. While Ingrid's colour has always ostracisedher in the community, the rise of Adolf Hitler increases the level of hatred and prejudice to a new, frightening level. When Ingrid begins to suffer from epileptic fits, she is forcibly sterilised and sent to Hadamar, an institution for the mentally and physically disabled. There she discovers the true horrors of the Nazi regime, as well as a strength she never knew she had.,

Siblings Bert, Willet, and Pansy know better than to go swimming at the old rock quarry. According to their father, it's the Devil's place, a place that's been cursed and forgotten. But Mississippi Delta summer days are scorching hot and they can't resist cooling off in the dark, bottomless water. Until the day six-year-old Pansy disappears. Not drowned, not lost . . . simply gone. After years with no sign, no hope of ever finding Pansy alive, Bert and Willet have tried to move on. But as surely as their mother died of a broken heart, they can't let go. So when clues surface drawing them to the remote tip of Florida, they drop everything and drive south. Deep in the murky depths of the Florida Everglades they may find the answer to Pansy's mysterious disappearance . . . but truth, like the past, is sometimes better left where it lies. Perfect for fans of Flannery O'Connor and Dorothy Allison, The Past Is Never is an atmospheric, haunting story of myths, legends, and the good and evil we carry in our hearts.