On his first day in alias, John Braddock encountered a car crash, possible surveillance and a source who threatened to kill his boss. Fortunately, he was trained for all that. He was trained to think through the risks. And to structure them. And to take the risks, when the time was right.You see through his eyes how to take risks when the stakes are high and lives are on the line. You see the impact of small choices and situational awareness. You see the structure of risks, the importance of understanding necessary conditions, and having fallbacks.

When you're a spy, you see a lot of strategies. It's your job to see grand strategies. Regional strategies. National strategies. Most of all, individual strategies. It's your job to see them and to understand them, because that's how you know when threats exist. To identify threats, you're infiltrating an enemy's organization. You're figuring out who is making decisions. And who isn't. You're collecting intelligence on what they know. And what they don't know. You're figuring out their plans.

In this 45-minute listen, a former spy introduces two simple tools for thinking. The first describes how we think. The second helps us think ahead. They are the essential tools for getting things done. The tools are applied to an incident in a subway car in Europe where a spy faces a new enemy. Then, they're reapplied to Saddam Hussein's stockpiling (or not) of weapons of mass destruction.

After the mob destroys his restaurant, killing his pregnant wife in the process, Dan Stone has nothing left to live for except...payback. He unleashes a series of devastating attacks on the mob designed to destroy their operations before exacting his final revenge. Using his skills as an experienced army sniper, Dan methodically sets out to assassinate those responsible and take down the Brooklyn crime family involved in killing his wife.

Tom Walker arrives in his hometown, and in less than an hour, the clandestine government program he works for tries to kill him. Not much of a welcome. To make matters worse, the farm where he seeks refuge has–unbeknownst to the owner, Leila–an underground drug ring operating on property. And despite this newfound danger, Leila risks her own life just to nurse Walker back to health.

Detective Chief Inspector Harry Grimm is forced to take leave from Bristol’s Major Investigations Team when his boss, tired of Harry chasing the ghost of his murderous father, sends him north on secondment. Used to city life and high stress, Harry fears his life will now be spent handing out speeding tickets, finding lost sheep, and directing tourists. But when a local teenager runs away, Harry finds himself pulled into an investigation much worse than anyone could have ever expected.

When a mysterious client asks former Delta Force operator Case Lee to investigate a rebellion in South America, he uncovers an incredible global conspiracy. Welcome to revolution, murder, and behind-the-curtains intrigue. As events unfold, the spies and mercenaries come to a hard realization. You may mess with a lot on this good earth, but you don't mess with Case Lee.

Will Robie may have just made the first - and last - mistake of his career.... It begins with a hit gone wrong. Robie is dispatched to eliminate a target unusually close to home in Washington, D.C. But something about this mission doesn't seem right to Robie, and he does the unthinkable: He refuses to kill. Now, Robie becomes a target himself and must escape from his own people.

Fleeing the scene, Robie crosses paths with a wayward teenage girl, a 14-year-old runaway from a foster home. But she isn't an ordinary runaway....

Before he was considered a CIA superagent, before he was thought of as a terrorist's worst nightmare, and before he was both loathed and admired by the politicians on Capitol Hill, Mitch Rapp was a gifted college athlete without a care in the world...and then tragedy struck.

You've lost your daughter. She's addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be found. Then, by chance, you see her playing guitar in Central Park. But she's not the girl you remember. This woman is living on the edge, frightened, and clearly in trouble. You don't stop to think. You approach her, beg her to come home. She runs.

When you're the best at what you do, it's not always easy to walk away. Nathan McBride was retired. The trained Marine sniper and covert CIA operative had put the violence of his former life behind him. But not anymore. A deep-cover FBI agent has disappeared along with one ton of powerful Semtex explosive, enough to unleash a disaster of international proportions. The U.S. government has no choice but to coax Nathan out of retirement.

With vividly realized characters and a breathtaking pace, Last Man Standing is another spellbinding title from David Baldacci, best-selling author of Wish You Well. When the FBI Hostage Rescue Team is ambushed, it is up to sole survivor Web London to find the killer.

Not far from Washington, D.C., in a wooded area of Northern Virginia, a small house at the end of a gravel road serves a secret purpose. With its sophisticated security apparatus and hidden miniaturized cameras, it is being used by the FBI to interview one of the most important witnesses the agency has ever had, a young woman with an incredible story to tell. But a few people know about the secret meeting. And for them, a violent drama is about to begin.

In her career as an Army intelligence officer, Amy Cornwall has seen haunting sights half a world away. None compare to the chilling scene at her Virginia home. It is empty. A phone rings with a terrifying ultimatum: locate and liberate an unnamed captive in 48 hours, or her kidnapped husband and 10-year-old daughter are dead. Now, and in open defiance of Army Command, Amy must employ every lethal tactic she has to save them. To succeed, she must discover not only who dispatched her on this mission, but why. Without her family, she's dead anyway.

When nuclear waste is stolen by jihadists in the middle of the night from an unguarded New York City hospital, the police, in a frantic race against time, call in the FBI. Luke Stone, head of an elite, secretive department within the FBI, is the only man they can turn to. Luke realizes right away that the terrorists' aim is to create a dirty bomb, that they seek a high-value target, and that they will hit it within 48 hours.

Reeling from a shattered personal life, Net Force Commander Alex Michaels is informed that top secret information from a joint air force-navy venture has been accessed and downloaded. The research involves an atmospheric weapon with the capability to drive half a country into madness using low frequency wave generation. Now the technology has fallen into the wrong hands - and testing has begun....

John Smith has a special gift that seems more like a curse: He can access other people's thoughts. He hears the songs stuck in their heads, their most private traumas and fears, the painful memories they can't let go. The CIA honed his skills until he was one of their most powerful operatives, but Smith fled the agency and now works as a private consultant, trying to keep the dark potential of his gift in check - and himself out of trouble.

In Silicon Valley, the eccentric inventor of a new encryption application is murdered in an apparent drug deal. In Istanbul, a cynical undercover operator receives a frantic call from his estranged brother, a patent lawyer who believes he is the next victim. And on the sun-drenched slopes of Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley's nerve center of money and technology, old family hurts sting anew as two brothers who share nothing but blood and bitterness wage a desperate battle against a faceless enemy.

Burke's newest client is a woman named Flood, who has the face of an angel, the body of a high-priced stripper, and the skills of a professional executioner. She wants Burke to find a monster for her - so she can kill him with her bare hands. In this thriller, Andrew Vachss's renegade private eye teams up with a lethally gifted avenger to follow a child's murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is blind and the penthouses are as dangerous as the basements.

This is the book you've been looking for: a deep, dark conspiracy that should delight those who loved the Jason Bourne movies, as well as fans of authors Vince Flynn, Tom Clancy, and Stephen Hunter. You won't believe what happens when free speech slams into the messy realities of national security. Meet Nick Woods, a former Marine Scout Sniper, who used to be one of our country's greatest operatives. Meet Allen Green, a ballsy reporter in his fifties, who's desperate to break the biggest story since Watergate.

In the year 2010, computers are the new superpowers. Those who control them control the world. To enforce the Net Laws, Congress creates the ultimate computer security agency within the FBI: the Net Force. It's the rich man's drug of choice - and it's being sold on the Internet for a thousand dollars a capsule. A potent mixture of smart drugs, psychedelics, angel dust, and steroids, it can turn a 50-year-old into a raging beast of aggression and sexual desire. Now it's up to the Net Force to find the source of this dangerous designer drug.

Every week a hundred million dollars in cash arrives at Miami International Airport, shipped by German banks to the Federal Reserve. A select group of trusted workers moves the bags through customs and loads them into armored trucks.

When you're the best at what you do, it's not always easy to walk away. Nathan McBride was retired. The trained Marine sniper and covert CIA operative had put the violence of his former life behind him. But not anymore. A deep-cover FBI agent has disappeared along with one ton of powerful Semtex explosive, enough to unleash a disaster of international proportions. The U.S. government has no choice but to coax Nathan out of retirement.

Sports agent Myron Bolitar is poised on the edge of the big-time. So is Christian Steele, a rookie quarterback and Myron's prized client. But when Christian gets a phone call from a former girlfriend, a woman who everyone, including the police, believes is dead, the deal starts to go sour. Suddenly Myron is plunged into a baffling mystery of sex and blackmail.

Steven James' Christy Award-nominated crime thriller pits FBI Special Agent Bowers against a serial killer who enjoys torturing women. After visiting the mountain vistas where the murderer posed his dead victims, Bowers receives a taunting call from the "Illusionist." Although Bowers gets close, his insidious foe continues to elude him.

One minute Jake O'Connell is on top of the world, with a beautiful family and bright future as a stock broker in New York; the next it's all ripped away when he's embroiled in a fraud investigation, his childhood friend is murdered, and he finds himself on the run. Dodging the FBI and targeted by the Mob, Jake is thrown into a Wall Street underworld of crypto currencies and autonomous corporations, where he discovers a dark secret setting the world on a path to destruction.

It looked for all the world like a terrible, tragic accident. Susanna Morgan had gotten up in the middle of the night, tripped, fallen, and broken her neck. Yet when detective Justin Westwood inspects the victim's apartment, he can't help noticing that the details don't quite add up. The glass on the bedside table is knocked over but there are no cuts on her body. The scrape on her knee looks suspiciously fresh. And then a terrified witness comes forward, confirming his worst fear.

Orson Scott Card is a master storyteller, who has earned millions of fans and reams of praise for his previous science-fiction and fantasy works. Now he steps a little closer to the present day with this chilling look at a near-future scenario: a new American Civil War. The American Empire has grown too fast, the fault lines at home are stressed to the breaking point, and the war of words between Right and Left has collapsed into a shooting war.

I used to work for the Telepath’s Guild before they kicked me out for a drug habit that wasn’t entirely my fault. Now I work for the cops, helping Homicide Detective Isabella Cherabino put killers behind bars. My ability to get inside the twisted minds of suspects makes me the best interrogator in the department. But the normals keep me on a short leash. When the Tech Wars ripped the world apart, the Guild stepped up to save it. But they had to get scary to do it - real scary.

FBI agent Jessica Blackwood believes she's left her complicated life as a gifted magician behind her - until a killer with seemingly supernatural powers puts her talents to the ultimate test. A hacker who identifies himself only as "Warlock" brings down the FBI's website and posts a code in its place that leads to a Michigan cemetery, where a dead girl is discovered rising from the ground - as if she tried to crawl out of her own grave.