The Man Who Heard Too Much

When a mentally challenged man in possession of deadly secrets is targeted by an assassin, he must fight to survive, in this chilling espionage thriller. Martin Fowler is a determined twenty-eight-year-old who hasn’t let his mental handicap hold him back. He has a job at a service station, a bed in a halfway house, and a real shot at leading a normal life. He’s a kind man who’s never done anyone harm, but for reasons beyond his control, he’s been marked for death. Corrupt Washington senator Rutledge Galatin Baxter believes Martin knows a secret about him, and the politician will kill to keep it safe. He dispatches his lover, expert assassin Althea Remington, to end Martin’s life. The first attempt fails, but Althea won’t stop until she succeeds. Martin may be innocent, but to survive, he’ll have to learn to understand the nature of evil. And with the help of the director of his halfway house, Martin will do something he never thought he would have to do: stand and fight—or die. In the spirit of classic conspiracy thriller Six Days of the Condor, this is a story of a man on the run from sinister forces he can’t understand. Its hero is someone never before seen in a spy novel, making The Man Who Heard Too Much one of the most unique espionage thrillers in history.

It begins in Sweden. A low-level defection by a Russian sailor in Stockholm coincides with the theft of critical tapes at a high-level Soviet-American conference in Malmo. At stake is a sophisticated computer virus potentially more lethal that any biological plague in history. From Paris to Copenhagen to Washington to the Vatican, two adversaries once more find themselves on opposite sides: Henry McGee, the traitorous, seemingly indestructible double agent, and Devereaux, code name November, waging his personal, deadly war for--and against--both the CIA and the KGB.

“Mommy, I used to be a tall baseball player.” “Yes, you will be a tall baseball player someday.” With a look of exasperation, he stomped his foot and hollered. “No! I was a tall baseball player —tall like Daddy!” What was my son trying to say to me? Did he mean . . . he couldn’t mean . . . was he trying to tell me that he was a grown-up in a previous lifetime? At the tender age of two, baseball prodigy Christian Haupt began sharing vivid memories of being a baseball player in the 1920s and ’30s. From riding cross-country on trains, to his fierce rivalry with Babe Ruth, Christian described historical facts about the life of American hero and baseball legend Lou Gehrig that he could not have possibly known at the time. Distraught by her son’s uncanny revelations, Christian’s mother, Cathy, embarked on a sacred journey of discovery that would shake her beliefs to the core and forever change her views on life and death. In this compelling and heartwarming memoir, Cathy Byrd shares her remarkable experiences, the lessons she learned as she searched to find answers to this great mystery, and a story of healing in the lives of these intertwined souls. The Boy Who Knew Too Much will inspire even the greatest skeptics to consider the possibility that love never dies.

People have been collecting—and stealing—books since before Gutenberg invented the printing press. Internationally, according to Interpol, rare book theft is more widespread than fine art theft. Although dealers will tell you “every rare book is a stolen book,” the stories of these heists have remained quiet, shielded by an insular community of book dealers and book collectors that prefers to keep its losses secret. In The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, Allison Hoover Bartlett takes us deep inside the world of rare books, and tells the cat-and-mouse story of two men caught in its allure. Here we meet Bartlett John Gilkey, an unrepentant, obsessive book thief, and Ken Sanders, the equally obsessive self-styled “bibliodick,” a book-dealer turned amateur detective. While their goals are at direct odds, both men share a deep passion for books and a fierce tenacity—Gilkey, to steal books; Sanders, to stop him.