Fade (Mills)

New York Times bestselling author Kyle Mills rewrites the rules for thrillers with Fade-a novel ripped from today's headlines. Welcome to the new war on terror. A secret wing of Homeland Security is recruiting agents to work undercover in the Middle East, and the director wants his second-in-command, Matt Egan, to bring aboard an old friend, Salam Al Fayed-better known as Fade. He's perfect: An ex-Navy Seal and the son of immigrants, he speaks flawless Arabic. Trouble is, he's "retired"; he was wounded in the line of duty, and the government refused to pay for the risky surgery that could have helped him. Now he's walking around with a bullet lodged near his spine, and he's not too fond of anyone in the government-least of all, his ex-best friend Matt Egan, whom he blames for his present condition. Against Egan's wishes, the director tries to "persuade" Fade to join the team. But Fade is prepared to fight back at any cost. The chase is on-will Matt be able to find his friend-turned-fugitive before Fade can take the ultimate revenge? Fade is a remarkable, take-no-prisoners program from an unparalleled writer at the height of his talents.

Brandon Vale is a career thief, the best there is. Of course, he is serving out a prison term for a robbery gone bad-albeit one that he didn't commit. But then he is broken out of prison against his will by Richard Scanlon, the former FBI agent who framed him in the first place. Scanlon, who still has ties to the U.S. intelligence community, has discovered that a Ukrainian crime organization is auctioning twelve nuclear warheads to the highest bidder, but he can't convince the government that the sale isn't a hoax. The only way he can get his hands on the $250 million necessary to take the warheads off the market is to arrange for Brandon to steal it. Not that Brandon has much choice-it's either do it or go back to jail with the added years of a failed "escape" tacked on to his sentence-but he decides to get the cash by pulling off the heist he had been planning when he and Scanlon first met: hijacking the trucks that drive the casinos' cash out of Las Vegas once a week. As the day of the warhead sale approaches, though, their carefully constructed plan begins to breakdown, and Brandon starts to suspect that the deal has even higher stakes than he had imagined. With this heart-stopping, all-too-real novel, Kyle Mills proves once again that he is one of the freshest and most original thriller writers working today.