The bestselling author of First Blood delivers his breakout novel, an international thriller in the tradition of Ludlum's The Bourne Identity. The Fifth Profession deals with the timely subject of executive protection and corporate security, which Morrell researched at G. Gordon Liddy's Academy of Corporate Security and Private Investigation. "Taut, tightly written . . . well-paced, ingenious".--The Washington Post.

The protagonist is Brendan Buchanan. He also goes by other names - Potter, Crawford, Block, Davis - in fact, over two hundred others. A member of a special-operations until so covert it may as well be run by ghosts, Buchanan is a master of impersonation, a specialist in assuming false identities. But now his unique gifts - and desperate pathology - threaten to destroy him. The beginning of his nightmare occurs in Cancun, Mexico, where Buchanan's latest alias is brutally unmasked. Racing through a torturous escape route, he is shocked to discover that his controllers will no longer give him a...

After a harrowing experience in Bosnia, war photographer Mitch Coltrane makes a vow. From now on, he will only take those pictures that celebrate life; that document hope instead of despair. Still, wartorn images continue to haunt him. He learns to shield himself by fixating on a beautiful woman in an old photograph. But slowly he grows obsessed. Who is she? He must know. And as Coltrane searches for answers, he falls hopelessly in love, forgetting that the past can sometimes intrude on the present, with terrifying consequences.

Ex-marine Chase Malone must stop a dangerous and powerful arms dealer before he kills again in this new high-action thriller by the bestselling author of "Double Image" and "Black Evening." The wealthy and dangerously twisted arms agent has spent the last two decades marrying a succession of beautiful women--all of whom have met with mysterious deaths just after having their portraits painted by a top artist.

He has walked through the valley of death and man's depravity. Now war photographer Mitch Coltrane is trying to escape his memories. As he loses himself in a world of art and obsession in L.A., a haunting photograph of a woman pulls him into the mystery of a beautiful starlet during Hollywood's golden age. But past and present are about to collide. A living woman, eerily like the woman in his photograph, comes into his life. So does a killer -- straight from the hell that Coltrane survived. Deception, double identities, and murderous revenge will shatter his new life, and force Coltrane to...

"Riveting...Crackling...It really moves."
WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
They were orphans, Chris and Saul--raised in a Philadelphia school for boys, bonded by friendship, and devoted to a mysterious man called Eliot. He visited them and brought them candy. He treated them like sons. He trained them to be assassins. Now he is trying desperately to have them killed.
Spanning the globe, here is an astonishing novel of fierce loyalty and violent betrayal, of murders planned and coolly executed, of revenge bitterly, urgently desired.

The Successful Novelist reveals the truth about writing, providing the perspective authors need to write successful fiction that sells.

From the bestselling author of First Blood comes a spectacular thriller, in which a former Navy SEAL and a Japanese samurai master are bound together in a terrifying past that never happened.

Drew MacLane is a star agent in Scalpel, a clandestine, government-sanctioned organization named for its purpose: precise surgical removal. Assassination. Then MacLane decides to stop killing. He withdraws from the operation and retreats to a monastery, where for six years he lives the life of a hermit. But then someone tracks him down, leaving a trail of bodies. Someone who knows all about him-and will stop at nothing to destroy him.

In this novel of thrilling suspense, a former killer is drawn back into that electrifying world where no one is as he seems-and where life's most...

David Morrell, whose many bestsellers include Double Image, Extreme Denial, and The Brotherhood of the Rose, has consistently redefined the modern thriller. Now he turns to a darker side of suspense in a powerful collection of tales, many of them award winners, that delve into the weird, uncanny terrors that lurk just beneath the comforting surfaces of daily life.
Fear of loss, fear of pain, fear of madness, fear of being trapped, fear of the inescapable, unspeakable horrors that fester deep within the soul.... No matter who or where you are, fear is always with you, always ready to...