Secret Weapon

The CIA keeps a lot of secrets. None more deadly than him.After a covert mission became personal, the only way elite counterterrorism operative, Alexander King, could keep his loved ones safe, and the eyes of Washington's enemies blind to his existence, was to disappear.A year after his family buried a body they thought was his, King saves a young woman from a car bomb in London, and that's when his work in the shadows becomes complicated. Because she's not who he thinks she is, and the web that King is pulled into is tangled with enemies that reach the highest levels of the United States government.But this web being spun by a sadistic terrorist isn't your average one-time explosive attack. Saajid Hammoud is aiming higher. He isn't trying to cripple the greatest military in the world, he's looking to control it. And owning the presidential candidate with a clear path to the White House gets him all the way to the top.When politics fail, and the might of the world's most powerful nation hangs in the balance, it's secret weapons like Alexander King who scour the alleys and back avenues that often make the difference. Unfortunately, King isn't the only secret in this high stakes game of war. But for the sake of the free world, he sure as hell better be the best.If you couldn't put down Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp, Lee Child's Jack Reacher, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Brad Thor's Scot Harvath, or David Baldacci's Will Robie, fans of Bradley Wright believe you won't be able to put down the addictive Alexander King._____________________________Praise for international bestselling author Bradley Wright: ★★★★★ "Best new thriller author since Vince Flynn, David Baldacci, and Brad Thor!"★★★★★ "Loved ALL the books. Bradley is one of my favorite writers. When you start the book, it is impossible to put down."★★★★★ "As soon as you start this book, and every other book by Bradley Wright, you are immediately engulfed in nonstop action and suspense!"★★★★★ "King sits alongside Rapp, Reacher, and Harvath as my favorite action-thriller heroes.

Alex Rider is now an IMDBtv original series! "Readers ages 8 to 15 with a taste for tough-guy thrills will gobble this one up."--Wall Street Journal International bestselling author Anthony Horowitz's short story collection expands the universe of teen spy Alex Rider with more thrilling action, espionage, and pulse-pounding heroics. Inspired by Horowitz's millions of fans worldwide, Secret Weapon expands the world of Alex Rider with more thrilling action and pulse-pounding heroics. Follow Alex as he infiltrates a terrorist hideout in Afghanistan, fights to prevent an assassination attempt at a ski resort over Christmas, and much more! The #1 New York Times bestselling Alex Rider is back with more exciting, edge-of-your-seats adventures! Contains a combination of new and previously published material, together for the first time! Praise for Never Say Die: "Once again amid races, chases, hails of bullets, and increasingly spectacular explosions, the teenage James Bond pulls off one awesome feat of derring-do after another. [This] fresh caper . . . roars along to a (naturally) explosive climax." --Booklist

Many executives don't take full advantage of the assistant who sits right outside their door. This book educates executives about all the ways in which they can streamline and improve the way they work with the help of a great assistant, while teaching them to identify great candidates and maximize the benefits of this special relationship.

Stalin's Secret Weapon is a gripping account of the early history of the globally significant Soviet biological weapons program, including its key scientists, its secret experimental bases and the role of intelligence specialists, establishing beyond doubt that the infrastructure created by Stalin continues to form the core of Russia's current biological defense network. Anthony Rimmington has enjoyed privileged access to an array of newly available sources and materials, including declassified British Secret Intelligence Service reports. The evidence contained therein has led him to conclude that the program, with its network of dedicated facilities and proving grounds, was far more extensive than previously considered, easily outstripping those of the major Western powers. As Rimmington reveals, many of the USSR's leading infectious disease scientists, including those focused on pneumonic plague, were recruited by the Soviet military and intelligence services. At the dark heart of this bacteriological archipelago lay Stalin, and his involvement is everywhere to be seen, from the promotion of favored researchers to the political repression and execution of the lead biological warfare specialist, Ivan Mikhailovich Velikanov.

Drawing on extensive interviews and previously secret CIA files, two sisters describe how they began their top-secret careers as espionage agents at the age of seven, the government programs that created them, and their work in a covert world of government intrigue.

A New York Times bestseller! Who’s really to blame for America’s catastrophic financial meltdown and devastating national recession? Contrary to what the “Occupy Movement” might tell you, it’s not just greedy Wall Street executives (though they certainly earned their share of scorn). It’s not just failed regulation (even though Washington has failed miserably, both Republicans and Democrats, to protect us). As one of America’s top financial professionals reveals in this shocking new book, the failures of Wall Street and Washington have opened us up to economic warfare, with our foreign enemies exploiting our lurking financial weaknesses. In Secret Weapon, Kevin D. Freeman unveils how all the evidence—including motive, means, and opportunity—points to America’s foreign enemies as deliberately pushing our economy over the brink.

Mostly tiny, infinitely delicate, and short-lived, insects and their relatives—arthropods—nonetheless outnumber all their fellow creatures on earth. How lowly arthropods achieved this unlikely preeminence is a story deftly and colorfully told in this follow-up to the award-winning For Love of Insects. Part handbook, part field guide, part photo album, Secret Weapons chronicles the diverse and often astonishing defensive strategies that have allowed insects, spiders, scorpions, and other many-legged creatures not just to survive, but to thrive. In 69 chapters, each brilliantly illustrated with photographs culled from Thomas Eisner’s legendary collection, we meet a largely North American cast of arthropods—as well as a few of their kin from Australia, Europe, and Asia—and observe at firsthand the nature and extent of the defenses that lie at the root of their evolutionary success. Here are the cockroaches and termites, the carpenter ants and honeybees, and all the miniature creatures in between, deploying their sprays and venom, froth and feces, camouflage and sticky coatings. And along with a marvelous bug’s-eye view of how these secret weapons actually work, here is a close-up look at the science behind them, from taxonomy to chemical formulas, as well as an appendix with instructions for studying chemical defenses at home. Whether dipped into here and there or read cover-to-cover, Secret Weapons will prove invaluable to hands-on researchers and amateur naturalists alike, and will captivate any reader for whom nature is a source of wonder.

A radical new take on one of humanity's most misunderstood periods of transition: the midlife crisis. Only two species of mammal have a post-reproductive life that lasts longer than their reproductive life: killer whales, whose elders are able to sniff out food supplies over vast oceanic distances to keep their pods fed, and Homo sapiens. While the evolutionary purpose of the killer whale’s extensive life seems clear, what is the point of ours? This was a question that intrigued the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who observed that if a culture is to maintain its deepest, profoundest roots while moving forward to embrace the challenges of historical and technological change, it needs to find an equilibrium between the energy, vigor, and creativity of those in the ego-driven first half of life and the experience, dignity, and wisdom of those in the second. But to make it to that second half of life, we need to traverse the dreaded middle years, when so many of us find ourselves discontented with our jobs, unhappy in our relationships, and lamenting our fetishized youths. In this highly readable and groundbreaking new book, the psychoanalyst Andrew Jamieson examines the Jungian concept of the midlife crisis to show how it is an essential evolutionary and social rite of passage that we all must proceed through—a set of challenges that we either take advantage of or ignore, depending on whether our complex or neurosis blocks this developmental impulse. Drawing on history, psychology, science, and literature, Jamieson shows just how ubiquitous, and crucial, the “midlife crisis” is, and the devastating consequences for society at large if we continue to regard it as something we can, and should, avoid.