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Stephen Leather was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Before that, he was employed as a biochemist for ICI, shovelled limestone in a quarry, worked as a baker, a petrol pump attendant, a barman, and worked for the Inland Revenue. He began writing full-time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into more than ten languages. He has also written for television shows such as London’s Burning, The Knock and the BBC’s Murder in Mind series.
Photograph © Mark Mathers
March 2016 Book of the Month. Completely and brilliantly captivating, it all feels scarily real! Over several hours, in central London, at various locations, hostages are taken and held by men wearing explosive vests. As the emergency services respond, Supt Mo Kamran finds himself in command of the incident. The action starts immediately and doesn't let up. Time and events speed by, every second, every word matters. Stephen Leather keeps piling blazing suspense on top of biting tension, I felt on edge as clever, clever writing flashes between locations, people and their thoughts, feelings, views and beliefs. Every character is relevant, you are introduced to an awful lot of them, but it works, oh how it works. This is provocative stuff, it is all too believable and I had to keep reminding myself that I was reading fiction. Because it is so busy, I didn't have time to stop and think, I just read and read, totally consumed. When the ending arrived, I almost felt out of breath, and exclaimed in admiration at this truly fabulous read. ~ Liz Robinson
Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is used to putting his life on the line - for his friends and for his job with MI5. So when one of his former apprentices is kidnapped in the badlands of Pakistan, Shepherd doesn't hesitate to join a rescue mission. But when the plan goes horribly wrong, Shepherd ends up in the hands of al-Qaeda terrorists. His SAS training is of little help as his captors beat and torture him. Shepherd's MI5 controller Charlotte Button is determined to get her man out of harm's way, but to do that she's going to have to break all the rules. Her only hope is to bring in America's finest - the elite SEALs who carried out Operation Neptune Spear - in a do-or-die operation to rescue the captives.
August 2014 eBook of the Month. A Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd thriller. He is a great character, an old-fashioned gung-ho hero with knowledge of modern procedures and weapons. This is his eleventh adventure. It all revolves around the Bin Laden killing and a possible conspiracy involving the Brits. Tortures might reveal secrets best kept secret so Spider is called in to intervene, but he too is in trouble. This is a compelling read with the outcome uncertain right up until the last pages; great stuff.
The cops aren't getting anywhere so Jack Nightingale's nemesis, Superintendent Chalmers, asks him for help. Nightingale discovers that the murdered Goths had one thing in common: a tattoo connected to the secretive Satanic child-sacrificing cult called the Order of Nine Angles. As Nightingale closes in on the killers, the tables are turned and he finds himself in the firing line, along with his friends and family. The Order will stop at nothing to protect their secrets and Nightingale realises that there is nothing he can do to protect himself. Nor can he run, for the Order has connections across the world. It leaves him with only one way to stop the carnage - and that's to take his own life ...
The Russian oligarchs are the world's new elite. They treat the world as their plaything, travelling without borders and living lives of unimaginable luxury without fear or restraint. But when an assassin starts killing off some of the world's richest men, an oligarch with friends in high places seeks the protection of MI5. And Spider Shepherd is placed in the firing line. But while Shepherd has to save the life of a man he neither likes nor respects, he has to deal with a face from his past. The Taliban sniper who put a bullet in his shoulder turns up alive and well and living in London. And Shepherd is in no mood to forgive or forget.
Kidnapping is one of the cruellest crimes - lives are put at risk for cold, hard cash. But when Somali pirates seize the crew of a yacht off the coast of Africa, they bite off more than they can chew. One of the hostages has friends in high places and Spider Shepherd is put on the case. He goes deep undercover in an audacious plan to bring an end to the pirate gang's reign of terror. But as Shepherd closes in on his quarry he realises that there's much more at stake than the lives of the hostages and that the pirates are involved in a terrorist plot that will strike at the heart of London.
Jack Nightingale found it hard enough to save lives when he was a cop. Now he needs to save a soul - his sister's. But to save her he has to find her and they've been separated since birth. When everyone Jack talks to about his sister dies horribly, he realises that someone, or something, is determined to keep them apart. If he's going to save his sister, he's going to have to do what he does best - negotiate. But any negotiation with the forces of darkness comes at a terrible price. And first Jack must ask himself the question: is every soul worth saving?
His last book, Hard Landing, saw undercover policeman Dan Shepherd in trouble in prison. Now he is an assassin in a very tough and dangerous world. The action is good, the storyline is good, at times riveting and the further developments, the quirky and personal complications, endear one to the on-going hero. In fact, the whole thing is good.Comparison: Lee Child, Robert Crais, Harlan Coben.Similar this month: Karin Slaughter, Michael Cordy.
Money can't buy everything But it can buy revenge Can a doctor take lives instead of saving them? British doctor Raj Patel puts his own life on the line to treat the injured in war-torn Syria. His medical skills help casualties survive against all the odds. But Raj needs to rely on a completely different set of skills when he is taken hostage in a dangerous case of mistaken identity. Billionaire big-game hunter Jon van der Sandt is driven by revenge - his family have been killed by jihadist terrorists and he wants his vengeance up close and personal. He has hired ex Special Forces hard men to snatch the ISIS killers from the desert and transport them halfway across the world to the vast wilderness of his American estate. But they grab Raj by mistake, and once the killing begins it's too late to plead mistaken identity. To survive, he'll have to become as ruthless a killer as the man who is hunting him.
Money can't buy everything But it can buy revenge Can a doctor take lives instead of saving them? British doctor Raj Patel puts his own life on the line to treat the injured in war-torn Syria. His medical skills help casualties survive against all the odds. But Raj needs to rely on a completely different set of skills when he is taken hostage in a dangerous case of mistaken identity. Billionaire big-game hunter Jon van der Sandt is driven by revenge - his family have been killed by jihadist terrorists and he wants his vengeance up close and personal. He has hired ex Special Forces hard men to snatch the ISIS killers from the desert and transport them halfway across the world to the vast wilderness of his American estate. But they grab Raj by mistake, and once the killing begins it's too late to plead mistaken identity. To survive, he'll have to become as ruthless a killer as the man who is hunting him.
'Leather's latest full-throttle thriller could hardly be more topical . . . it hurtles off the page, grabbing the reader by the throat' Daily Mail 'This cracking Spider Shepherd thriller zips along like a sniper's bullet' The Sun Should we bring them back? There are thousands of jihadi brides in refugee camps in the Middle East. Some of them were once British before they were stripped of their citizenship. Were they brainwashed or simply naive when they set out for Syria as teenagers? And, if they were allowed to return, would they pose a threat to our country? Spider Shepherd is about to be sent on an extraordinary mission to the Syrian border by his MI5 boss. There he will have to decide which of the women he meets is still a threat, and if not, which of them has information useful to the Secret Service and can be allowed back. His are life or death decisions. But there is one bride he must take back to the UK whatever her circumstances. She is the wife of a notorious ISIS bombmaker, Salam Jaraf. Jaraf is an asylum seeker who has information on terrorist cells in Britain. But the bombmaker will only tell MI5 what he knows if his wife and son are brought to him. However, it soon becomes obvious that hostile forces are following Spider and Mrs Jaraf across Turkey. Bringing this woman back from the warzone will become one of the most dangerous missions Spider has ever undertaken.
'Leather's latest full-throttle thriller could hardly be more topical . . . it hurtles off the page, grabbing the reader by the throat' Daily Mail 'This cracking Spider Shepherd thriller zips along like a sniper's bullet' The Sun Should we bring them back? There are thousands of jihadi brides in refugee camps in the Middle East. Some of them were once British before they were stripped of their citizenship. Were they brainwashed or simply naive when they set out for Syria as teenagers? And, if they were allowed to return, would they pose a threat to our country? Spider Shepherd is about to be sent on an extraordinary mission to the Syrian border by his MI5 boss. There he will have to decide which of the women he meets is still a threat, and if not, which of them has information useful to the Secret Service and can be allowed back. His are life or death decisions. But there is one bride he must take back to the UK whatever her circumstances. She is the wife of a notorious ISIS bombmaker, Salam Jaraf. Jaraf is an asylum seeker who has information on terrorist cells in Britain. But the bombmaker will only tell MI5 what he knows if his wife and son are brought to him. However, it soon becomes obvious that hostile forces are following Spider and Mrs Jaraf across Turkey. Bringing this woman back from the warzone will become one of the most dangerous missions Spider has ever undertaken.
In what could be his highest-profile mission ever, Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is called in to prevent the assassination of a head of state on British soil. As an MI5 agent, Spider is used to going undercover, but when he's asked to assume the identity of the contract killer hired to take out President Vladimir Putin, he knows he'll become a wanted man. And things are about to get more complicated: Spider is told that his MI5 controller and close friend Charlotte Button has been running an off-the-books assassination operation, taking vengeance on the men who killed her husband. Spider owes his life to Button - but this discovery will stretch his loyalty to the limit...
'Leather's latest full-throttle thriller could hardly be more topical . . . it hurtles off the page, grabbing the reader by the throat' Daily Mail 'This cracking Spider Shepherd thriller zips along like a sniper's bullet' The Sun Should we bring them back? There are thousands of jihadi brides in refugee camps in the Middle East. Some of them were once British before they were stripped of their citizenship. Were they brainwashed or simply naive when they set out for Syria as teenagers? And, if they were allowed to return, would they pose a threat to our country? Spider Shepherd is about to be sent on an extraordinary mission to the Syrian border by his MI5 boss. There he will have to decide which of the women he meets is still a threat, and if not, which of them has information useful to the Secret Service and can be allowed back. His are life or death decisions. But there is one bride he must take back to the UK whatever her circumstances. She is the wife of a notorious ISIS bombmaker, Salam Jaraf. Jaraf is an asylum seeker who has information on terrorist cells in Britain. But the bombmaker will only tell MI5 what he knows if his wife and son are brought to him. However, it soon becomes obvious that hostile forces are following Spider and Mrs Jaraf across Turkey. Bringing this woman back from the warzone will become one of the most dangerous missions Spider has ever undertaken.
As a big player in the 90s London underworld, Terry Greene has always made a priority of 'taking care of business' personally. Preston Snow was out of line. So the up-close-and-personal visit was in no way out of character. It was a messy hit. But the job was done. More messy however, was the aftermath. Fingered by one of his own crew, Terry finds himself taking the fall and is put away for life. The only person he can trust in the entire world is his estranged wife, Sam. She must now take over the reins of his organisation, find the snitch and - in theory - get Terry off the hook. But after a shaky start, she quickly starts to get her own ideas . . . *********** PRAISE FOR STEPHEN LEATHER 'A master of the thriller genre' Irish Times 'As tough as British thrillers get . . . gripping' Irish Independent 'The sheer impetus of his story-telling is damned hard to resist' Sunday Express
The plan is so complex, the target so well protected that the three snipers have to rehearse the killing in the seclusion of the Arizona desert.Cole Howard of the FBI knows he has only days to prevent the audacious assassination. But he doesn't know who the target is. Or where the crack marksmen will strike.Former SAS sergeant Mike Cramer is also on the trail, infiltrating the Irish community in New York as he tracks down Mary Hennessy, the ruthless killer who tore his life apart.Unless Cramer and Howard agree to co-operate, the world will witness the most spectacular terrorist coup of all time ...
Hong Kong, 1991. The colony is preparing for Chinese rule. Geoff Howells, a government-trained killing machine, is brought out of retirement and sent to there. His brief: to assassinate Chinese Mafia leader, Simon Ng. Howells devises a dangerous and complicated plan to reach his intended victim - only to find himself the next target. Patrick Dugan, a Hong Kong policeman, has been held back in his career because of his family connections: his sister is married to Simon Ng. But when Ng's daughter is kidnapped and Ng himself disappears, Dugan gets caught up in a series of violent events and an international spy ring that has spun out of control . . . *********** PRAISE FOR STEPHEN LEATHER 'A master of the thriller genre' Irish Times 'As tough as British thrillers get . . . gripping' Irish Independent 'The sheer impetus of his story-telling is damned hard to resist' Sunday Express
A heart-pounding new standalone thriller from Sunday Times bestselling author Stephen Leather. 'He has the uncanny knack of producing plots that are all too real, and this is no exception' (Daily Mail on First Response) When a British Special Forces soldier goes rogue, carrying out an attack at a US army base in Syria leading to the death of two men, ex-MI5 controller Charlotte Button is hired to work out what his plan is and to take him down before he can carry it out. Charlotte puts her best man on the case - hitman Lex Harper. It's up to Lex to assemble a crack team and get to the soldier before he carries out what could be a massive terrorist attack. But Charlotte might require Lex's help with a more personal problem too . . . As ex-MI5, Charlotte holds information on thousands of the agency's dirty operations, and keeps a store of those secrets in three flash drives hidden in separate safety deposit vaults. Now someone is taking extraordinary measures to recover the secrets through Hatton Garden-style robberies. So far two vaults have been raided, and two flash drives have gone. If the third is stolen, Charlotte's life will be in jeopardy. While it's down to Lex to prevent a potential terrorist attack on British soil, Charlotte must work out who is after her and what they want.
Stephen Leather's BESTSELLING breakthrough thriller. The Chinaman understood death. Jungle-skilled, silent and lethal, he had killed for the Viet Cong and then for the Americans. He had watched helpless when his two eldest daughters had been raped and killed by Thai pirates. Now all that was behind him. Quiet, hard-working and unassuming, he was building up his South London take-away business. Until the day his wife and youngest daughter were destroyed by an IRA bomb in a Knightsbridge department store. Then, simply but persistently, he began to ask the authorities who were the men responsible, what was being done. And was turned away, fobbed off, treated as a nuisance. Which was when the Chinaman, denied justice, decided on revenge. And went back to war.
***'Thought-provoking, high-octane chase thriller with style' - Financial Times*** ***'Leather once again delivers high-octane thrill-a-minute action that reads like a pitch for a Netflix series' - Irish Independent*** The explosive new stand-alone thriller from the author of the Spider Shepherd series Sally Page is an MI5 'footie', a junior Secret Service Agent who maintains 'legends': fake identities or footprints used by real spies. Her day consists of maintaining flats and houses where the legends allegedly live, doing online shopping, using payment, loyalty and travel cards and going on social media in their names - anything to give the impression to hostile surveillance that the legends are living, breathing individuals. One day she goes out for coffee leaving the safe house from which she and her fellow footies operate. When she comes back they have all been murdered and she barely escapes with her own life. She is on the run: but from whom she has no idea. Worse, her bosses at MI5 seem powerless to help her. To live, she will have to use all the lies and false identities she has so carefully created while discovering the truth . . .
'Leather's latest full-throttle thriller could hardly be more topical . . . it hurtles off the page, grabbing the reader by the throat' Daily Mail 'This cracking Spider Shepherd thriller zips along like a sniper's bullet' The Sun Should we bring them back? There are thousands of jihadi brides in refugee camps in the Middle East. Some of them were once British before they were stripped of their citizenship. Were they brainwashed or simply naive when they set out for Syria as teenagers? And, if they were allowed to return, would they pose a threat to our country? Spider Shepherd is about to be sent on an extraordinary mission to the Syrian border by his MI5 boss. There he will have to decide which of the women he meets is still a threat, and if not, which of them has information useful to the Secret Service and can be allowed back. His are life or death decisions. But there is one bride he must take back to the UK whatever her circumstances. She is the wife of a notorious ISIS bombmaker, Salam Jaraf. Jaraf is an asylum seeker who has information on terrorist cells in Britain. But the bombmaker will only tell MI5 what he knows if his wife and son are brought to him. However, it soon becomes obvious that hostile forces are following Spider and Mrs Jaraf across Turkey. Bringing this woman back from the warzone will become one of the most dangerous missions Spider has ever undertaken.
***'Thought-provoking, high-octane chase thriller with style' - Financial Times*** ***'Leather once again delivers high-octane thrill-a-minute action that reads like a pitch for a Netflix series' - Irish Independent*** The explosive new stand-alone thriller from the author of the Spider Shepherd series Sally Page is an MI5 'footie', a junior Secret Service Agent who maintains 'legends': fake identities or footprints used by real spies. Her day consists of maintaining flats and houses where the legends allegedly live, doing online shopping, using payment, loyalty and travel cards and going on social media in their names - anything to give the impression to hostile surveillance that the legends are living, breathing individuals. One day she goes out for coffee leaving the safe house from which she and her fellow footies operate. When she comes back they have all been murdered and she barely escapes with her own life. She is on the run: but from whom she has no idea. Worse, her bosses at MI5 seem powerless to help her. To live, she will have to use all the lies and false identities she has so carefully created while discovering the truth . . .
***'Thought-provoking, high-octane chase thriller with style' - Financial Times*** ***'Leather once again delivers high-octane thrill-a-minute action that reads like a pitch for a Netflix series' - Irish Independent*** The explosive new stand-alone thriller from the author of the Spider Shepherd series Sally Page is an MI5 'footie', a junior Secret Service Agent who maintains 'legends': fake identities or footprints used by real spies. Her day consists of maintaining flats and houses where the legends allegedly live, doing online shopping, using payment, loyalty and travel cards and going on social media in their names - anything to give the impression to hostile surveillance that the legends are living, breathing individuals. One day she goes out for coffee leaving the safe house from which she and her fellow footies operate. When she comes back they have all been murdered and she barely escapes with her own life. She is on the run: but from whom she has no idea. Worse, her bosses at MI5 seem powerless to help her. To live, she will have to use all the lies and false identities she has so carefully created while discovering the truth . . .
The explosive new thriller in the Spider Shepherd series Dan 'Spider' Shepherd's career path - soldier, cop, MI5 officer - has always put a strain on his family. So he is far from happy to learn that MI5 is using teenagers as informants. Parents are being kept in the dark and Shepherd fears that the children are being exploited. As an undercover specialist, Shepherd is tasked with protecting a 15-year-old schoolboy who is being used to gather evidence against violent drug dealers and a right-wing terrorist group. But when the boy's life is threatened, Shepherd has no choice but to step in and take the heat. And while Shepherd's problems mount up on the job front, he has even greater problems closer to home. His son Liam has fallen foul of the Serbian Mafia and if Shepherd doesn't intervene, Liam will die. ****************** Praise for Stephen Leather 'A master of the thriller genre' Irish Times 'As tough as British thrillers get . . . gripping' Irish Independent 'The sheer impetus of his story-telling is damned hard to resist' Sunday Express