POLITICAL THRILLERS

If you're not already paranoid about the government, you will be after reading
these hair-raising tales of assassins, terrorists, conspirators & power-hungry politicians!

Neil Abercrombie & Richard Hoyt
Blood of Patriots. Forge, 1996.
When terrorists invade the House of Representatives and leave more than 100 dead or wounded the President calls upon ex-CIA agent James Burlane to find out who perpetrated the attack and for what purpose.

Richard Aellen
The Cain Conversion. Fine, 1993.
Secret Service agent Bill Sullivan learns that he has been programmed by the KGB to assassinate the President he has sworn to protect. By the same author: Redeye (1988).

Steve Alten
The Shell Game. Sweetwater, 2007.
In 2012, oil expert Ace Futrell is charged by his dying wife with preventing the U.S. government's plan to nuke an American city and pin the blame on Iran as a cover to take out that country's radical leadership.

Russell Andrews
Gideon. Ballantine, 1999.
A writer hired to pen a work of fiction from an old diary and letters in which all the proper names have been blacked out, learns that his potential best-seller is the revelation of a chilling decades-long cover-up by someone with far-reaching power who has no intention of having the past come to light.

Jeffrey Archer
Honor Among Thieves. HarperCollins, 1993.
Saddam Hussein plots to steal the Declaration of Independence and destroy it in front of the world's media.

David Baldacci
First Family. GCP, 2009.
After her niece is kidnapped from a Camp David, birthday party, First Lady Jane Cox calls in former Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell to find her. But their efforts are hampered by government security forces and Michelle's personal demons. Latest in a series that started with Split Second (2003); Hour Game (2004) and Simple Genius (2007). By the same author: Absolute Power (1996); Saving Faith (1999).

The Camel Club. Warner, 2005.
Four middle-aged men who see political conspiracies under every stone witness the murder of a government official and finds themselves in the midst of a REAL conspiracy. Followed by: The Collectors (2006); Stone Cold (2007); and Divine Justice (2008).

Harris Baseman
The Accidental President. iUniverse, 2004.
The "crime of the century" elevates the Secretary of Education to the office of President of the United States, who must informed an outraged nation that the suspected mass assassin, thought to have killed himself, is instead on the loose. Now, the world's most sought after fugitive ends up in an Al Qaeda training camp where he devises another plan to kill President Ben Silver and attack the United States.

William Bernhardt
Capitol Murder. Ballantine, 2006.
When the senior senator (and a former law school colleague) from Oklahoma becomes inv loved in a sex-scandal that leads to murder, crusading trial lawyer Ben Kincaid heads for Washington, D.C., to defend him. But soon even Ben begins to doubt the innocence of his old friend. Followed by: Capitol Threat (2006); Capitol Conspiracy (2008); and Capitol Betrayal (2010).

Richard Bowker
Senator. Morrow, 1994.
Massachusetts Senator Jim O'Connor finds his career and re-election in jeopardy when his mistress is murdered in her own home.

Barbara Boxer, w/Mary -Rose Hayes
A Time to Run. Chronicle, 2005.
Ellen Fines takes over her husband's campaign for the Senate after he is killed in a car accident, but her political career is threatened when journalist Greg Hunter, a former lover, shows up with incendiary regarding a controversial Supreme Court nominee she opposes. Followed by: Blind Trust (2009).

Bill Brannon
Let Us Prey. HarperCollins, 1994.
Set in the "immediate future" revolutionaries plot to destroy an out-of-control US government by destroying the IRS.

David Callahan
State of the Union. Signet, 1999, 1998.
After accepting a high-level position at the Pentagon, former Special Forces commando Lt. Zachary Turzin uncovers evidence of a shadow government within the government. Two of the most powerful men in Washington have struck a secret alliance and are partners to a chilling criminal conspiracy that stretches back thirty years.

Richard A. Clarke
The Scorpion's Gate. GPPS, 2005.
In the year 2010, a coup overthrows the ruling sheiks of Saudi Arabia. Everyone has their own agenda, including Washington, which strikes a devil's bargain to fundamentally realign the map of the Middle East. By the same author: Breakpoint (2007).

William S. Cohen
Dragon Fire. Forge, 2006.
Upon the assassination of the Secretary of Defense, former senator and Vietnam POW Michael Santini is called upon by his President to fill the vacancy. Once there, he discovers that the United States is under attack by a rogue faction in the Chinese government

Peter Deutermann
Official Privilege. St. Martin's, 1995.
Investigating the murder of a young lieutenant, Naval Commander Dan Collins and investigative lawyer Grace Snow uncover evidence implicating a U.S. Senator.

Leonard Downie, Jr.
The Rules of the Game. Knopf, 2009.
When ambitious investigative Washington journalist Sarah Page uncovers the secrets of a powerful lobbying firm, she finds her life at risk, while inexperienced President Susan Cameron, who came into the job with her predecessor's sudden death, is forced to choose between her political future and the nation's well-being after learning of Sarah's discoveries.

Brendan DuBois
Final Winter. Five Star, 2008.
After 9/11 NYC cop Brian Doyle joins a newly formed, top-secret, anti-terrorist task force that is drawing recruits from inside and outside existing government agencies. Assigned to stop a massive anthrax attack that could wipe out millions of U.S. citizens, Brian soon begins to suspect that a greater threat could exist from within the team's own ranks.

Howard Fast
Greenwich. Harcourt, 2000.
A dinner party in the wealthy section of Greenwich, CT, becomes a trap for the powerful & influential as murder interrupts the meal and the guests--who include a catholic nun, a linguistics professor, and a successful novelist--struggle to stay alive.

Joseph Flynn
The Next President. Bantam, 2000.
When presidential hopeful Del Rawley, who is African American, bends down to accept a rose from a little girl, a sniper's bullet misses its target. The gunman, J. D. Cade, who is being blackmailed to do the job, has nothing against Rawley personally, plans his second attempt while hoping to force the people threatening to kill his son, out in the open.

Vince Flynn
Term Limits. Pocket, 1998, 1997.
One morning, a shocked America finds that two senators and a congressman have been murdered by killers who send a chilling message that the killings will continue until political leaders set aside petty partisan politics and serve the interests of the citizens.

Transfer of Power. Pocket, 1999.
Terrorists invade the White House and take more than 100 hostages, although the quick actions of the Secret Service get the President out of harm's way. Mitch Rapp, the CIA's top counter-terrorism operative manages to sneak into the executive mansion and soon discovers that the terrorists are the least of the president's--and the nation's--problems. Followed by: The Third Option (2000); Separation of Power (2001); Executive Power (2003); Memorial Day (2004); Consent to Kill (2005); Act of Treason (2006); Protect and Defend (2007); Extreme Measures (2008); Pursuit of Honor (2009); and Term Limits (2010).

Allan Folsom
The Machiavelli Covenant. Forge, 2006.
After a controversial congressman uncovers a massive clandestine bio-weapons program, he and his family are murdered. .Meanwhile, members of President's own administration order the assassination of two world leaders. Now on the run himself, President Harris finds a pair of unlikely allies in former LAPD rogue detective Nicholas Marten and a beautiful French journalist. Followed by The Hadrian Memorandum (2009).

Stan Gallon
Darkest Days. Berkley, 2007.
With the President of the United States confirmed dead after Air Force One crashes into the sea, America's enemies plot its destruction. But its citizens may have more to fear from those now in charge in Washington.

Alton Gansky
The Incumbent. Zondervan, 2004.
Someone has it in for Madison “Maddy” Glenn, the controversial mayor of the beautiful tourist town of Santa Rita, California, who is considering (but has yet to announce) a run for Congress, and uses her friends and loved ones to torment her.

Thomas Gifford
Saints Rest. Bantam, 1996.
Ben Driscoll, a Wall Street lawyer whose unmasking of treachery in the Vatican several years earlier (The Assassin, 1990), earned him a reputation for near savage determination to get at the truth, is called upon by his longtime friend, President Charles Bonner, to investigate two violent deaths that threaten not only his troubled presidency but the future of free elections in America.

Edward Gorman
Sleeping Dogs. Minotaur, 2008.
When his political consultant commits suicide, Senator Warren Nichols, who is running for re-election, hires cynical but seasoned Dev Conrad to take his place, even though Dev is uneasy about the Senator's reputation for sleeping around. Dev knows politics is a cut-throat business, but even he isn't prepared for blackmail and murder that unfolds.

James Grady
White Flame. Dove, 1996.
Veteran FBI Inspector Dalton Cole, Special Agent Sallie Pickett, and battle-scarred D.C. homicide detective Nick Sherman are drafted to protect Faron Sears, a wealthy, brilliant black ex-con who has traveled up America's success ladder to the rank of favored presidential contender and political visionary who is out to revolutionize the system they have sworn to serve. By the author of Six Days of the Condor (Norton, 1974).

Andrew Greeley
The Senator and the Priest. Forge, 2006.
A a liberal Catholic senator from Illinois finds himself the target of vicious personal attacks, false rumors, and assassination attempts. He is also opposed by his own brother, a conservative Catholic priest who sides with his political enemies.

Tim Green
The First 48. Warner, 2004.
When his daughter, an investigative reporter for the Washington Post, vanishes while preparing to break a story about a powerful senator, Tom Redmond heads for Washington, determined to uncover the truth and find his daughter.

Exact Revenge. Warner, 2005.
His career and reputation irrevocably derailed when he is framed and convicted for murder, attorney & political candidate Raymond White methodically plots both his escape and his revenge throughout the course of an 18-year imprisonment.

John Griffiths
The Presidential Archive. C&G, 1996.
While doing research in Moscow, Cass Reynolds finds information suggesting that her uncle, the leading Republican contender for the Presidency, may be a KGB agent.

John Grisham
The Pelican Brief. Doubleday, 1992.
A law student stumbles upon the truth behind the assassinations of two Supreme Court justices.

Gary Grossman
Executive Actions. S&S, 2004.
Congressman Teddy Lodge is running a distant second in the Democratic primary until an assassin misses his mark and kills his wife. Lodge rides the wave of public sympathy all the way to the Oval Office, but those loyal to the defeated incumbent president begin to suspect a deadly plot.

Timothy Hallinan
Breathing Water. Morrow, 2009.
Poke Rafferty, an American ex-pat writer living in Thailand, lands the "opportunity" to write the biography of Khun Pan, a self-made billionaire with a criminal past and far-reaching political ambitions. He is soon learns that Pan has a number of dark secrets and a good number of enemies who wish to hold onto the power he is a threat to.

Richard Hawke
House of Secrets. RH, 2010.
In spite of having it all--a successful political career, a very bright future, and a devoted family--handsome and charismatic Senator Andy Foster risks it all with a series of affairs until one of his lovers ends up murdered and his indiscretion caught on tape by an unknown enemy.

Noel Hynd
The Enemy Within. Forge, 2006.
Laura Chapman, a Secret Service agent assigned to the White House, is stunned when the CIA assigns her to locate an alleged assassin whose target is the new president, an assassin who is a member of the Secret Service.

David Kent
Department Thirty. Pocket, 2003.
30 years after the suicide of his parents, Ryan Elder receives a battered letter in his mother's handwriting containing only a phone number and the words "Department Thirty." His investigation into his parents' connections to a mysterious government agency envelopes him in a decades-old web of treachery and assassination. Followed by: The Mesa Conspiracy (2005).

Stephan Kimball
Death Duty. Dutton, 1996.
Kate Verdi is a death officer for the US State Department, assigned to deal with the deaths of Americans abroad. When she is suddenly promoted and relieved of two complicated cases, she can't shake the suspicion that some sort of elaborate cover-up has taken place. As she begins to ask questions she finds her life in danger and only an unshakable black police detective will believe her.

Michael Lawson
The Inside Ring. Doubleday, 2005.
Following an assassination attempt that wounds the president and kills the president's closest friend, Andy Banks, the Secretary of Homeland Security, who had warned the Secret Service about the attack but couldn't get anyone to take seriously his charge that someone on the inside had gone bad, decides to conduct a clandestine investigation and gets lawyer Joe DeMarco for the job. Followed by: The Second Perimeter (2006); House Rules (2008); and House Secrets (2009).

Robert Ludlum
The Chancellor Manuscript. Dial, 1977.
Best-selling thriller writer Peter Chancellor stumbles onto information that reads like one of his books-revealing that J. Edgar Hoover did not die a natural death.

The Icarus Agenda. Random, 1988.
When terrorists seize the American embassy in the Arab city of Masqat, 40-year old Congressman Evan Kendrick offers his services to the government on the condition that his part in the undertaking be kept a secret forever. A year later someone has leaked the story to the media and now everyone from the terrorists to secret government forces with their own agendas want a piece of him.

Eric Van Lustbader
First Daughter. Forge, 2008.
Alli Carson, the 19-year-old daughter of the U.S. president-elect is abducted a month before her father's inauguration. ATF agent Jack McClure, whose deceased daughter was Ali's roommate and is the "only person" the newly elected President says he can trust, is put on the case. Can Jack find her before the looming inauguration is used to commit mass-murder? Followed by: Last Snow (2010).

Phillip Margolin
Executive Privilege. HarCol, 2008.
A routine surveillance job becomes anything but for p.i. Dana Cutler when a young woman he is tailing witnesses a rendezvous between the young woman and the president is subsequently the victim of a brutally murder. By the same author: Lost Lake (2005).

Brian McGrory
The Incumbent. Pocket, 2000.
White House correspondent Jack Flynn finds his life in danger when, shortly before the election, he questions the incumbent president as to why he pardoned a certain felon.

Abigail McCarthy & Jane Gray Muskie
One Woman Lost. Athenaeum, 1986.
Senator John Mann becomes vice president in spite of his wife Celia's embarrassing peace movement activities. When she discovers high-level government corruption, she is drugged and hospitalized against her will and isolated from anyone who might believe her. Celia is finally rescued by a few trusting friends who form an unlikely alliance of the powerless against the mighty.

Brad Meltzer
The Book of Fate. Warner, 2006.
Presidential aide Wes Holloway is wounded in an assassination attempt that kills President Leland Manning's deputy chief of staff, Ron Boyle. Eight years later, the dead man reappears, disfigured but very much alive and apparently stalking the former president. Trying to figure out what really happened takes Wes back into disturbing secrets buried in Freemason history, a decade-old presidential crossword puzzle, and a two-hundred-year-old code invented by Thomas Jefferson that conceals secrets worth dying for.

Barbara Mikulski & Marylouise Oates
Capitol Offense. Dutton, 1996.
On her first day on the job Norie Gorzack, the newest member of the U.S. Senate, witnesses a horrible "accident" on the Senate subway. Norie realizes it was murder and that the victim was trailing her. Then the threats begin, and as she stakes out her claim on the important issue of MIAs, Norie begins to see a connection between her cause and the murdered man.

Casey Moreton
The Greater Good. Pocket, 2006. 2005.
When the vice president is assassinated just hours after making a shocking videotape confession, the search for the missing video and its bombshell secret become the subject of a high-stakes race.

Rob Palmer
Eyes of the World. Leisure, 2008.
The "eyes of the world" are upon Carolyn Connor, the first female President of the United States, so the discovery that her childhood friend Mike Stanbridge has become her lover would be ruinous to her career and her marriage. So when Mike becomes the main suspect in a murder, he doesn't know who he can trust while he is pursued by political assassins and the FBI.

Richard North Patterson
No Safe Place. Knopf, 1998.
Sen. Kerry Kilcannon is campaigning against Vice President Dick Mason for the Democratic Party nomination for president. He runs in the shadow of his older brother, Jamie, who was assassinated 10 years earlier, and he is haunted by a potential public revelation of a sexual affair he had with reporter Lara Costello. By the same author: Balance of Power (2003).

The Race. Holt, 2007.
Corey Grace, a Republican senator from Ohio (and former Gulf War hero) is a man noted for voting his own conscience rather than the party line. As he seeks the Republican nomination for president, he becomes locked in a no-holds-barred primary campaign with Senate Majority Leader Rob Marotta, a calculating and unscrupulous hack prepared to do anything to win and Bob Christy, a leader of the Christian right.

Ralph Peters
Traitor. Avon, 1999.
When two of his old Army buddies die suspiciously and his girlfriend is killed by a car bomb, Lt. Col. John Reynolds begins to realize his life has somehow become linked with the fate of a staggeringly expensive and controversial Next-Generation Fighter Bomber.

Steve Piezenik
Maximum Vigilance. Warner, 1992.
As the personal psychiatrist of the President of the United States, Dr. Desaix Clark, a prominent international crisis manager, must decide whether the President is mentally competent to manage an international crisis than might precipitate World War III. Thrust into a maze of betrayal and conspiracy, Clark must uncover a shadowy enemy.

Marilyn Quayle & Nancy T. Northcott
The Campaign. Zondervan, 1996.
Robert Hawkins Grant, a strong favorite in the next presidential race, is a shoe-in for re-election to the Senate, but nine days before the senatorial election, a reporter who has been publicly dogging him is murdered and evidence points to Grant.

Embrace the Serpent. Crown, 1992.
After Fidel Castro suffers a fatal heart attack idealist Senator Bob Grant tries to prove that the dictator's US-sponsored successor is actually in Moscow's pocket.

Thom Racina
Hidden Agenda. Dutton, 1998.
When ex-CNN staffer Jonelle Patterson is hired by Network One things begins to happen. Suddenly sensational stories are falling into her lap and she always seems to be in the right place at the right time, making her America's media darling. But her husband begins to suspect that the events are being orchestrated and Jonelle discovers that the TV execs and Christian rightists are setting her up for the Presidency in 2008.

Ralph Reed
Dark Horse. Howard, 2008.
While the nation is thrown into further chaos by a three-way presidential race, the country seems destined to clash with a newly nuclear Iran. Meanwhile, a well-financed terrorist with ties to al Qaeda, leads a dedicated band of followers on a mission of mass destruction.

Doug Richardson
Dark Horse. Avon, 1997.
After the untimely death of a long-time political incumbent, lawyer Mitch Dutton thinks he has his party's nomination for congress sewn up. Then Shakespeare McCann shows up. The ultimate dark horse, McCann captures fifteen percent of the vote and begins a terrifying campaign--with the goal of winning at any cost.

David Rollins
The Death Trust . Bantam, 2007.
An American soldier in Iraq is killed while on routine patrol and the NATO commander in Germany is dies in a crash. When battle-scarred maverick Special Agent Vin Cooper is sent to investigate (the dead men were father and son) he is drawn him into a web of terrorism and corruption.

Joel C. Rosenberg
The Last Jihad. Forge, 2002.
When Saddam Hussein dispatches his top hit men to assassinate the President of the United States and Iraqi terrorists spread carnage throughout the world, only the top-secret project of White House advisor Jon Bennett and his partner Erin McCoy--involving a billion dollar oil deal and an Arab-Israeli alliance--may be the key to avoiding global devastation. Followed by: The Last Days (2004); The Ezekiel Option (2005); and Dead Heat (2008).

John Sandford
Dead Watch. GPPS, 2006.
When former Virginia senator Lincoln Bowe disappears, Army intelligence veteran Jacob Winter is called in to investigate. Bowe's wife thinks it's the work of a political enemy and things get even more complicated when the missing man--a man not without some secrets--is discovered to have been murdered.

Robert Tannenbaum
Corruption of Blood. Dutton, 1995.
When Congress reopens the investigation into the JFK assassination, Manhattan Assistant D.A. Butch Karp is assigned to the case, but as Karp and his team uncover dramatic new evidence, they become enmeshed in a web of conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of government.

Michael Weaver
The Lie. Warner, 1997.
The ailing U.S. president has decided to turn an international conference on human rights into the scene of his greatest triumph--but instead is taken hostage by a group prepared to kill for world peace. Painter Paul Waters, formerly a contract killer for the CIA, joins forces with his lover, Kate Dinneson, to foil the plans of the extremist group and rescue American's leader. But can they stop the fanatics in time? And did the president plan his own kidnapping?

Joe Webber
Primary Target. Berkeley, 1999.
A group of hard-line Communists plan to return the Soviet Union to its former glory by aligning themselves with Middle East extremists. Their target: the president of the United States.

Caspar Weinberger & Peter Schweizer
Chain of Command. Atria, 2005.
Secret Service Agent Michael Delaney becomes the prime suspect when his gun is found next to the bloody corpse of the President of the United States.

F. Paul Wilson
Deep as the Marrow. Forge, 1997.
When President Thomas Winston decides to back the legalization of narcotics, organized crime bosses want him dead. To achieve their goal they kidnap the daughter of the President's best friend and personal physician in order to force him to commit murder. But when one of the kidnappers is overcome by her maternal feelings towards the child, the chase is on.

Stuart Woods
Mounting Fears. GPPS, 2009.
In this seventh entry in the Will Lee saga, incumbent U.S. president, William Jefferson Lee, has his hands full while he runs for re-election. His Vice President has died and the man he has chosen as a running mate turns out to be a serial womanizer. Meanwhile, rogue CIA agent Teddy Fay is plotting revenge on CIA Director Kate Rule Lee, the First Lady. To make matters even worse, a nuclear warhead is missing in Pakistan. Other titles in the series are: Run Before the Wind (1983); Deep Lie (1986); Grass Roots (1989); The Run (2000); and Capitol Crimes (2003)

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