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.

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.

Former special ops pilot Maya, home from the war, sees an unthinkable image captured by her nanny cam while she is at work: her two-year-old daughter playing with Maya's husband, Joe - who had been brutally murdered two weeks earlier. The provocative question at the heart of the mystery: Can you believe everything you see with your own eyes, even when you desperately want to?

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.

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.