Carsten Stroud

#2

A prophetic thriller from the author of Cuba Strait, Cobraville follows a covert CIA mission deep in the jungles of the Philippines during a savage civil war. Cole Langan's five-man unit -- in country to repair what they have been led to believe is a vital NSA surveillance monitor -- instead finds itself caught up in a spiraling vortex of lies, spies, and traitors. When the unit collides -- disastrously -- with UN peacekeepers, the surviving CIA agents may face war-crimes trial at the International Criminal Court. On the other side of the Earth, Cole's father, Senator Drew Langan, tries desperately to identify a shadowy group behind the betrayal of his son's CIA unit. An elusive German businessman leads Drew and his femme fatale bodyguard down a rabbit hole of intrigue and corruption that leads all the way to the highest levels of the United Nations. Shot through with Stroud's grimly mordant sense of humor and painstakingly researched, Cobraville cuts deep into the harrowing reality of America's secret wars, in a cautionary book that ought to be read by every spymaster in D.C. and every apparatchik at the UN.

#3

Miss Bryna Cassidy's journey to the New World holds anything but promise. Orphaned during the ocean crossing, Bryna is forced to travel alone through unsettled lands to reach her uncle's homestead in New Eden, Pennsylvania. She arrives to discover her relatives have been slain in an Indian uprising, and the only man civilized enough to offer help is the very land baron who seized her uncle's farm before the embers of the massacre's fires had died.... Dominick Crown has carved a palatial estate out of this savage land; he is ready to spawn his American dynasty. But for this he must wed, a difficult task for an English gentleman who avoids all contact with high society, fearing someone will recognize his handsome face and, worse, reveal his haunting past. The well-bred Bryna is the perfect answer -- until he discovers her temper is as fiery as her radiant hair, and she brazenly uses him to achieve her ends. As war with the natives looms dangerously close, Bryna and Dominick are swept into a whirlwind of adventure -- and an ever-intensifying passion they never dreamed possible. NOTE: This copy appears to be missing pages. I had flipped to the back cover to read the blurb when I noticed there was a preview for the second book in this series at the end of the book. Not wanting to have the book end more quickly than I expected, I flipped backwards past this preview to bookmark where the end of the actual story would be. When I got past that preview text, however, I noticed the last page of text prior to this preview abruptly cuts off mid-sentence. Since that should have been the last page of the story, I look a whole lot closer. It does appear that this copy is missing the last several pages of the book. In the downloaded copy I borrowed from openlibrary, the book ends on page 323 with the line "Philip Crown sat in the study, his feet propped on his" - and that is it! After that, there is a blank page and then the title page for the preview section I mentioned before (and, as far as I can tell, the preview is all included, so it is very strange that only the last pages of the actual story are missing!). The page numbering jumps from 323 to page 337 (using the numbering in Adobe reader - not on the actual pages as the preview text pages are not numbered). I cannot state that there are actually 14 pages missing, however, due to the way Adobe's numbering of the pages does not always line up with the actual page numbers. I downloaded the pdf copy to read in Adobe (my usual preferred format for openlibrary). I cannot attest to whether these missing pages are in all versions available or just the pdf download. Since this is the end of the story that is omitted, I felt it important to warn others (I am ever-so-grateful that I happened to need to read the blurb and caught this before I read the whole book and was left with no ending!).