From #1 New York Times bestselling author and Edgar Award winner Alex Berenson comes a supercharged thriller about marriage and the dangerous secrets spouses keep.
Rebecca and Brian Unsworth appear to have it all. A nice house in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Two well-behaved, healthy teenage children. Important government jobs—Rebecca working in counterterrorism for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Brian serving as a coder for the National Security Agency. Their lives stand to improve even more as Brian, in his off-hours, has just developed and sold a highly profitable app.
However, the Unsworths' marriage isn't as perfect as it seems. After two decades together, they've drifted apart, talking little and having sex even less. Seeking to revive their strained relationship, they decide for their twentieth wedding anniversary to take their two kids, Kira and Tony, on a European getaway.
They have a blast…until one night in Barcelona when Kira doesn't come home from a dance club. She's gone. Abducted. Over the course of a single weekend, the Unsworths will do everything possible to find her—as Kira herself discovers just how far she'll go to break free of the trap that's been set for her. And even as Rebecca and Brian come together for Kira, they realize their marriage is more tenuous than they realized.
The Power Couple is both a fast-paced, globe-trotting espionage novel full of surprising twists and a nuanced look at modern marriage—the challenges of balancing career, parenthood, sex, and love.
An eye-opening report from an award-winning author and former New York Times reporter reveals the link between teenage marijuana use and mental illness, and a hidden epidemic of violence caused by the drug—facts the media have ignored as the United States rushes to legalize cannabis.
Recreational marijuana is now legal in nine states. Almost all Americans believe the drug should be legal for medical use. Advocates argue cannabis can help everyone from veterans to cancer sufferers. But legalization has been built on myths– that marijuana arrests fill prisons; that most doctors want to use cannabis as medicine; that it can somehow stem the opiate epidemic; that it is not just harmless but beneficial for mental health. In this meticulously reported book, Alex Berenson, a former New York Timesreporter, explodes those myths:
• Almost no one is in prison for marijuana;
• A tiny fraction of doctors write most authorizations for medical marijuana, mostly for people who have already used;
• Marijuana use is linked to opiate and cocaine use. Since 2008, the US and Canada have seen soaring marijuana use and an opiate epidemic. Britain has falling marijuana use and no epidemic;
• Most of all, THC—the chemical in marijuana responsible for the drug's high—can cause psychotic episodes. After decades of studies, scientists no longer seriously debate if marijuana causes psychosis.
Psychosis brings violence, and cannabis-linked violence is spreading. In the four states that first legalized, murders have risen 25 percent since legalization, even more than the recent national increase. In Uruguay, which allowed retail sales in July 2017, murders have soared this year.
Berenson's reporting ranges from the London institute that is home to the scientists who helped prove the cannabis-psychosis link to the Colorado prison where a man now serves a thirty-year sentence after eating a THC-laced candy bar and killing his wife. He sticks to the facts, and they are devastating.
With the US already gripped by one drug epidemic, this book will make readers reconsider if marijuana use is worth the risk.
The Russians don't just want to influence American elections-they want it all. Former CIA agent John Wells confronts a plot of astonishing audacity as New York Times-bestselling author Alex Berenson goes beyond today's headlines to tomorrow's all-too-real threats.
It was supposed to be a terrorist sting. The guns were supposed to be disabled. Then why was there so much blood?
The target was the American Airlines Center, the home of the Dallas Mavericks. The FBI had told Ahmed Shakir that his drug bust would go away if he helped them, and they'd supply all the weaponry, carefully removing the firing pins before the main event. It never occurred to Sami to doubt them, until it was too late.
When John Wells is called to Washington, he's sure it's to investigate the carnage in Dallas, but it isn't. The former CIA director, now president, Vinnie Duto has plenty of people working in Texas. He wants Wells to go to Colombia. An old asset there has information to share-and it will lead Wells to the deadliest mission of his life, an extraordinary confluence of sleeper cells, sniper teams, false flag operations, double agents high in the U.S. government-and a Russian plot to take over the government itself. If it succeeds, what happened in Texas will only be a prelude.
To unmask a CIA mole, John Wells must resume his old undercover identity as an al Qaeda jihadi-and hope he can survive it-in this cutting-edge novel from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.
It is the most dangerous mission of John Wells's career.
Evidence is mounting that someone high up in the CIA is doing the unthinkable-passing messages to ISIS, alerting them to planned operations. Finding out the mole's identity without alerting him, however, will be very hard, and to accomplish it, Wells will have to do something he thought he'd left behind forever. He will have to reassume his former identity as an al Qaeda jihadi, get captured, and go undercover to befriend an ISIS prisoner in a secret Bulgarian prison.
Many years before, Wells was the only American agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda, but times have changed drastically. The terrorist organizations have multiplied: gotten bigger, crueler, more ambitious and powerful. Wells knows it may well be his death sentence. But there is no one else.
CIA agent John Wells refuses to let a privilegedbusinesmman walk away from a crime in this novel of modern suspense from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.
John Wells has just barely managed to stop an operation designed to drive the United States and Iran into war, but the instigator himself disappeared behind an impenetrable war of security. Now it's time for him to pay, and Wells has made it his personal mission. There are plenty of crosscurrents at work, though. The White House doesn't want anybody stirring the pot; his old CIA bosses have their own agendas; other countries are starting to sniff around, sensing something unusual. It is when Russia and China enter the mix, however, that the whole affair is set to combust. With alarming speed, Wells is once again on his own...and the wolves are closing in.
A John Wells Novel.
John Wells has only twelve days to stop the United States from being tricked into invading Iran in the new cutting-edge novel of modern suspense from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author.
Twelve days.
Wells, with his former CIA bosses Ellis Shafer and Vinnie Duto, has uncovered a staggering plot, a false-flag operation to convince the President to attack Iran. But they have no hard evidence, and no one at Langley or the White House will listen.
Now the President has set a deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear program, and the mullahs in Tehran—furious and frightened—have responded with a deadly terrorist attack. Wells, Shafer, and Duto know they have only twelve days to find the proof they need. They fan out, from Switzerland to Saudi Arabia, Israel to Russia, desperately trying to tease out the clues in their possession. Meanwhile, the United States is moving soldiers and Marines to Iran’s border. And Iran has mobilized its own squad of suicide bombers.
And as the days tick by and the obstacles mount, they realize that everything they do may not be enough…
John Wells returns for another deadly mission from New York Times bestselling author Alex Berenson...In an Istanbul hotel, a deep source warns a CIA agent that Iran intends to kill a CIA station chief. Quickly, John Wells is called in to investigate, but before he can get far, the tip comes true. Which means that the next warning the source gives will be taken very seriously indeed. And it's a big one. A radioactive one. As the threat level jumps and the government mobilizes, Wells must figure out what's really going on. From a drug lord's mansion in Guatemala to a secret plastic surgery center in Thailand to the slums of Istanbul, Wells uses every skill he has including his ability to go undercover in the Arab world to chase down leads. But the enemy he faces is equally determined. And soon he may be too late to pull the United States back from the brink of war…From the Paperback edition.
John Wells enters new territory, as he goes underground in East Africa to track four kidnapped Americans and the Somali bandits who snatched them, in the tough, thoughtful, electrifying new novel from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.
Four friends, recent college graduates, travel to Kenya to work at a giant refugee camp for Somalis. Two men, two women, each with their own reasons for being there. But after twelve weeks, they're ready for a break and pile into a Land Cruiser for an adventure.
They get more than they bargained for. Bandits hijack them. They wake up in a hut, hooded, bound, no food or water. Hostages. As a personal favor, John Wells is asked to try to find them, but he does so reluctantly. East Africa isn't his usual playing field. And when he arrives, he finds that the truth behind the kidnappings is far more complex than he imagined.
The clock is ticking. The White House is edging closer to an invasion of Somalia. Wells has a unique ability to go undercover, and to make things happen, but if he can't find the hostages soon, they'll be dead - and the U.S. may be in a war it never should have begun.
August Busch IV had everything - or seemed to. In 2006, Busch became the chief executive of Anheuser-Busch, the sixth member of his family to control the legendary brewery. At age 42, Busch was handsome, wealthy, married to a beautiful woman, and running one of the biggest companies in America.
Two years later, Busch lost control of Anheuser-Busch. Soon he was jobless, divorced, and struggling with alcohol and drugs. Then he woke to find his girlfriend, a waitress named Adrienne Martin, dead in his bed. From prize-winning novelist and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, The Prince of Beers is the true story of the secrets, lies, addiction, and family dysfunction behind Martin''s death and Busch''s shocking downfall.
When novelist and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson traveled to Afghanistan for an embed with the 101st Airborne Division, he found great soldiers - and a seemingly hopeless mission. This is the gripping non-fiction tale of how the United States is spending $100 billion a year on a war that even the men on the front lines can't explain.
In 2009, the CIA's Kabul Station fell for a source who promised to lead it to Bin Laden, but instead he blew himself up, taking the station's most senior officers with him. Now, more than two years later, the station is still floundering, agents are dying, and at Langley the CIA's chiefs wonder if the unthinkable has happened, if somehow the Taliban has infiltrated the station.
When they ask John Wells to investigate, he reluctantly agrees to return to the country where his career as an undercover operative began. But there, he finds a vipers' nest of hostility and mistrust-and clues that hint at a drug-trafficking operation involving the Agency, the military, and the Taliban. Americans are dying, and an American is responsible. And only John Wells stands in his way . . . for now.
John Wells goes undercover in Saudi Arabia in a cutting-edge novel of modern suspense from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.
John Wells may have left the CIA, but it hasn't left him. A mysterious call brings a surprise meeting with the aged monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah. 'My kingdom is on a precipice,' he tells Wells. 'Powerful factions are plotting against me, and my own family is in danger. I don't know who I can trust, but I'm told I can trust you.'
Reluctantly, and with the secret blessing of the CIA, Wells goes undercover; but the more he learns, the more complicated things become, and soon he, too, is unsure whom to trust, in Saudi Arabia or Washington. One thing, however, is clear: If the conspirators prevail, it will mean more than the fall of a monarch-it may be the beginning of the final conflagration between America and Islam.
