NBS recommends thrilling page-turners

ENDER’S GAME (MOVIE TIE-IN)

By Orson Scott Card

P315

Young Ender Wiggin thinks he is playing war games at the Battle School, high in orbit, but he is engaged in something far more desperate. Ender may be the military genius Earth desperately needs in a war against an alien enemy seeking to destroy all human life. The only way to find out is to throw Ender into ever-harsher training, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly.

BEST KEPT SECRET

By Jeffrey Archer

P399

London, 1945. Who shall inherit the Barrington family fortune? The vote in the House of Lords has ended in a tie. The Lord Chancellor’s deciding vote will cast a long shadow on the lives of Harry Clifton and Giles Barrington. Harry returns to America to promote his latest novel while Emma goes in search of the little girl who was found abandoned in her father’s office on the night he was killed. When the general election is called, Giles Barrington has to defend his seat in the House of Commons and is horrified to discover who the Conservatives select to stand against him. But it is Sebastian Clifton, Harry and Emma’s son, who ultimately influences his uncle’s fate.

INNOCENT BLOOD

By James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell

P765

In The Blood Gospel, brilliant archaeologist Erin Granger embarked on a mission to recover a miraculous artifact tied to Christ. Her journey put her in the path of a diabolical enemy and introduced her to an ancient and highly secret Vatican order known simply as the Sanguines. Now, an attack outside Stanford University thrusts Erin back into the fold of the Sanguines. As the threat of Armageddon looms, she must unite with the eternal spiritual order and a terrifying power to halt the plans of a ruthless and cunning man determined to see the world end, a man known only as Iscariot.

ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE BOURNE RETRIBUTION

By Eric Van Lustbader

P649

Bourne’s friend Eli Yadin, head of Mossad, learns that Ouyang Jidan, a senior member of China’s Politburo, and a major Mexican drug lord may have been trafficking in something far more deadly than drugs. Yadin needs Bourne to investigate. Bourne agrees, but only because he has a personal agenda: Ouyang Jidan is the man who ordered Rebeka—one of the only people Bourne has ever truly cared about—murdered. Bourne is determined to avenge her death, but in the process he becomes enmeshed in a monstrous world-wide scheme involving the Chinese, Mexicans, and Russians.

Bourne’s increasingly desperate search for Ouyang takes him from Tel Aviv to Shanghai, Mexico City, and, ultimately, a village on China’s coast where a clever trap has been laid for him. Bourne finds himself pursued on all sides and unsure whom he can trust. As he moves closer to Ouyang, closer to avenging the woman he loved, he also moves ever closer to his own death.

COMMAND

AUTHORITY

By Tom Clancy

P1,049

Decades ago, when he was a young CIA analyst, President Jack Ryan, Sr. was sent on what was supposed to be a simple support mission to investigate the death of an operative who had been looking into suspicious banking activities at a Swiss bank. Ryan’s dogged tenacity uncovered not only financial deceit, but also the existence of a KGB assassin, code-named Zenith. He was never able to find the killer.

In the present, a new strongman has emerged in the ever-chaotic Russian republic — the enigmatic President Valeri Volodin. His rise to power was meteoric, but shrouded in deception and treachery. The foundations of his personal empire are built on a bloody secret from his past, and he will eliminate anyone who comes close to that truth. For he has set in motion a plot to return Russia to its former glory and might, with the rest of the world once again trembling in fear of the mighty Bear.