Garden Valley District Library

Bestselling authors Goyer (Night Song) and Yorkey (Every Man's Battle series) collaborate for the first time in this WWII novel that centers around real historical events. Goyer and Yorkey open their text with a brief primer on the unsuccessful 1944 attempt on Adolf Hitler's life (dramatized in the movie Valkyrie). This story takes off immediately following that event; Hitler, bent on revenge, goes after anyone remotely capable of injuring him and sets up countless spies in key positions to take out persons with even the slightest Jewish heritage. Gabi Mueller, a Swiss-American woman who works for the American Office of Strategic Services, finds herself enlisted in safecracking, a job for which she is highly skilled. As Gabi seeks to make a difference in the face of evil, she is asked to help rescue a German physicist who is working on the atomic bomb. While her loyalties are not in question, Gabi struggles over whom to trust as the stakes become life and death.

It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta-despite her busy schedule and her continuing work as the senior forensic analyst for CNN- to offer her services pro bono to New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of unexpected and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments later during the same telecast, she receives a startling call-in from a former psychiatric patient of Benton Wesley's. When she returns after the show to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds an ominous package-possibly a bomb-waiting for her at the front desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her embroiled in a surreal plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionairess with whom Lucy seems to have shared a secret past.

Scarpetta's CNN producer wants her to launch a TV show called The Scarpetta Factor. Given the bizarre events already in play, she fears that her growing fame will generate the illusion that she has a "special factor," a mythical ability to solve all her cases. She wonders if she will end up like other TV personalities: her own stereotype.

 Brad Cutler, twenty-eight, is a rising star at his New York ad agency, about to marry the girl of his dreams. Anyone would agree he has it all … a great career, a beautiful and loving fiancée, and a fairy tale life ahead of him—when memories of a high school girlfriend begin to torment him. Lost innocence and one very difficult choice flood his conscience, and he is no longer sure what the future will bring except for this: He must find his old love and make amends. Haunted by the past and confused about the future, he turns to God seeking forgiveness and redemption.