This month we return to my favorite genre- Military Fiction. Stephen Coonts is another one of my favorite authors. The majority of his books are centered on the character of Jake Grafton. Those of you that have read these novels have followed Jake’s career starting as a carrier pilot in Vietnam to his rise to an Admiral, navigating the power halls of the Pentagon and the White House. Each of these novels have at the center, realistic situations and a shadowy character that also seems to come alive as you read deeper into the novel. These villains have changed from devious Russian spies to terrorist masterminds over the years to reflect the changes in the real world. As the bad guys have change, so have the good guys, in the earlier books we have Jake fighting the bad guys with a core group of fellow naval aviators and now Jake and Toad Tarkington have joined forces with a former thief turned CIA agent named Tommy Carmellini. The one thing that never has changed is that Jake Grafton, no matter the cost personally, he always does the right thing.

 

I can understand the need to bring in a younger character, Jake Grafton, if you follow the timeline is getting a little too old to do some of the actual “Dirty Work”, the fact that Stephen Coonts has slowly worked in Tommy to a more interracial role in the last three or four books in can appreciate. This makes each of his books to come a part of the same series and allows Jake Grafton to remain a strong character with more of a man in charge feel to him. Much the same way that Clive Cussler has done in the Dirk Pitt novels, bringing his son and daughter into the NUMA Agency he know controls. 

 

Stephen Coonts is the author of 15 New York Times bestsellers, the first of which was the classic flying tale, FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER.

 

Born in 1946, Stephen Paul Coonts grew up in Buckhannon, West Virginia, a coal-mining town of 6,000 population on the western slope of the Appalachian Mountains. He majored in political science at West Virginia University, graduating in 1968 with an A.B. degree. Upon graduation he was commissioned an Ensign in the U.S. Navy and began flight training in Pensacola, Florida.

 

He received his Navy wings in August, 1969. After completion of fleet replacement training in the A-6 Intruder aircraft, Mr. Coonts reported to Attack Squadron 196 at NAS Whidbey Island, Washington. He made two combat cruises aboard USS Enterprise during the final years of the Vietnam War as a member of this squadron. After the war he served as a flight instructor on A-6 aircraft for two years, and then did a tour as an assistant catapult and arresting gear officer aboard USS Nimitz. He left active duty in 1977 and moved to Colorado. After short stints as a taxi driver and police officer, he entered the University Of Colorado School Of Law in the fall of 1977.

 

Mr. Coonts received his law degree in December, 1979, and moved to West Virginia to practice. He returned to Colorado in 1981 as a staff attorney specializing in oil and gas law for a large independent oil company.

 

His first novel, FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER, published in September 1986 by the Naval Institute Press, spent 28 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists in hardcover. A motion picture based on this novel, with the same title, was released nationwide in January 1991.

 

The success of his first novel allowed Mr. Coonts to devote himself full time to writing; he has been at it ever since. He and his wife, Deborah, enjoy flying and try to do as much of it as possible.

 

Mr. Coonts' books have been widely translated and republished in the British Commonwealth, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, China, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Latvia, and Israel.

 

Mr. Coonts was a trustee of West Virginia Wesleyan College from 1990-1998. He was inducted into the West Virginia University Academy of Distinguished Alumni in 1992. The U.S. Naval Institute honored him with its Author of the Year Award for the year 1986 for his novel, FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER. Mr. Coonts and his wife, Deborah, reside in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

 

In what order should the Jake Grafton books be read?

The ten (so far) Jake Grafton novels follow, more or less, the naval career of the hero, Jake Grafton. THE INTRUDERS was written "out of order" as a direct sequel to FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER. The sequence is:

 

In this riveting story of naval aviators at war over Vietnam, veteran A-6 Intruder pilot Stephen Coonts captures as never before the full drama of modern aerial warfare.

 

With extraordinary realism he straps the reader into the cockpit of an A-6 to experience the fear and exhilaration of life at full throttle: thrilling cat shots off a carrier...treetop-level races against pursuing MIGs...treacherous night landings in crippled planes.

 

With unfailing honesty he puts the reader inside the hearts and minds of the pilots who "drive" these powerful, hi-tech machines to reveal a world unknown to those outside the naval aviators' fraternity. From the good-natured raillery of the ready room to the shared dangers in the air to the manic release from combat stress in the bars of the Philippines, the airmen's special brand of camaraderie--the one stabilizing force in their otherwise precarious lives--is described here as only an insider could.

 

More than an exciting adventure story, FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER probes beneath the glamorous surface to examine the psychological tolls of war. Through the memorable characters of Jake Grafton and his squadron buddies Tiger Cole, The Boxman, Sammy Lundeen, and New Guy, Coonts explores the ways in which naval aviators attempt to cope with the intense pressures of their profession.

 

For Jake, a once-innocent love of flying has given way to guilt and frustration--and an urgent need to give meaning to the deaths he feels responsible for. the consequences of his conduct lead up to a final, gut-wrenching scene that will leave readers thinking about this moving novel long after turning the last page.

 

Jake Grafton storms back in THE INTRUDERS, the sequel to Stephen Coonts' Flight of the Intruder--the finest combat aviation novel to emerge from Vietnam. Flight of the Intruder became one of the top twenty bestselling first novels of all time, spending and astonishing twenty-eight weeks on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. Jeremiah O'Leary of the Washington Times hailed it as "a superbly written story." Now, Flight of the Intruder's crack fighter-pilot hero Jake Grafton returns in a gripping, all-new novel that takes the gritty realism and heart pounding excitement of military flying to a thrilling new height.

 

1973. The skies over Vietnam have finally gone silent. America has pulled out, the war is over. But for Lt. Jake Grafton, USN, fresh from two combat cruises and a harrowing shoot-down over Laos, the personal battle is just beginning....

 

His country has not welcomed him home with open arms, but with closed minds and closed fists. When his girlfriend's father called him a murderer, Jake walked away. But when a stranger in a bar challenged his honor, the man was not so lucky--the guy landed in the hospital. Jake landed in jail. And Grafton's shore-duty commander, who bailed him out, has devised the perfect punishment for his ace flight instructor: an eight month cruise on the aircraft carrier Columbia teaching jarheads--Marines--the nuances of carrier aviation. Flying missions over Vietnam was a living hell; now, as a Navy man working side-by-side with Marines who have no carrier aviation experience, Grafton's about to discover another world of fresh hell.

 

The Marines may be made of tempered steel and brass balls, but taking off and landing from a slippery flight deck, on a choppy sea, in a pitch-black night, there is no margin for error--or for animosity. And men like Marine Captain Flap Le Beau, Grafton's bombardier/navigator, have a real gift for pushing Jake's buttons. But he's going to have to learn to live with him...or die trying. They belong to the same society of warriors, they fought in the same war, and they drink the same whiskey to toast fallen comrades. Now they must fly together in the same cockpit, must lock into each other and into their multi-million-dollar machine, and make the split-second decisions which will insure that, tonight, their fellow pilots don't raise a glass to them.

 

THE INTRUDERS captures as never before the raw fear and exhilaration of military aviation. It is the extraordinary story of peacetime warriors who are never truly at peace: men who run on instinct and adrenaline, whose only target is the horizon and whose goals are excellence--and survival.

 

Stephen Coonts' first novel, Flight of the Intruder, told the story of Jake "Cool Hand" Grafton and his fellow A-6 Intruder pilots flying bombing missions over Vietnam from the deck of the carrier USS Shiloh. Now, in FINAL FLIGHT, Jake Grafton returns, this time as commander of an air wing on the super carrier USS United States, on patrol in the tension-ridden present-day Mediterranean.

 

After a particularly long cruise, the USS United States is in port in Naples and her crew is enjoying its first liberty in months. But something's not right. Several crew members have not reported back from their leave and a beautiful American reporter who boarded the United States in Tangiers may not be a reporter, or even an American. When one of Jake's men, in a hotel in Naples, witnesses an assassination attempt led by this woman, Grafton realizes the situation is much more serious than he suspected. What he doesn't know is that Colonel Qazi, an international terrorist, plans to board the United States and steal six nuclear weapons from her heavily guarded arsenal. Nor does he know that the plot is being financed by El Hakim, the power-hungry leader of an oil-rich Arab state. And most important, he doesn't know he, Jake, past forty and recently grounded by night blindness, is the only one who can stop Qazi, in one man-to-man aerial dogfight, one "final flight."

 

Stephen Coonts' first novel, Flight of the Intruder, was hailed as one of the best novels ever written about flying and the camaraderie of men at war and it became an immediate national bestseller. His second novel, Final Flight, was an even bigger sensation and demonstrated that Coonts can write classic page-turning suspense with the best of them. Now, in THE MINOTAUR, he has written his best novel yet, a riveting story of a top secret new Advanced Tactical Aircraft and the hunt for a Soviet mole.

 

Jake Grafton is back! After flying A-6 Intruders in Vietnam and, seventeen years later, commanding an air wing aboard a super carrier in the Mediterranean, Jake--now grounded--is assigned to the Pentagon where he is in charge of developing the navy's new top secret stealth attack plane, the A-l2.

 

Faced with political and technical problems at every turn, Jake soon finds himself drawn into the hunt for the Minotaur, a mole hidden in the Pentagon who is giving America's most precious defense secrets to the Russians. The FBI's chief spy-catcher is hot on the Minotaur's trail, or is he? Just who are the traitors in this Byzantine world of technocrats, politicians, and multi-billion dollar defense programs? Four people are dead and a test pilot is near death before Grafton hones in on the shocking identity of the Minotaur--and his even more chilling motive.

 

Stephen Coonts' books have been widely hailed for their technical accuracy, heart-stopping suspense, and well-drawn characters. Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman said, "Coonts' books have a unique power because his yarn is spun of real policy dilemmas, personal crises, and human failings drawn from the world and worthy of high drama."

 

Stephen Coonts' most exciting, fast-paced novel yet marks the return of Jake Grafton, the unforgettable hero of his three previous New York Times bestsellers, Flight of the Intruder, Final Flight, and The Minotaur.

 

UNDER SIEGE captures a chilling nightmare scenario, one that has already devastated Columbia and sent shock waves around the world. In a novel as immediate and gripping as tomorrow's headlines, the war against drug lords is exploding within the borders of the United States--striking at the very center of American government.

 

When the kingpin of the Medellin drug cartel is extradited to Washington, D.C. to start trial, President George Bush is severely wounded by a hired assassin. Vice President Dan Quayle assumes the responsibility for directing the fight against a criminal army that now rules the streets.

 

Captain Jake Grafton, working for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the battle to regain control of our nation's capital, faces the dual threat of a determined assassin and an equally determined, vicious drug lord--both intent on plunging the United States into chaos.

 

Filled with a cast of vivid, compelling characters, and charged with the drama of the U.S. military's most deadly challenge by an enemy on our own soil, UNDER SIEGE is vintage Stephen Coonts and will resonate long in our imaginations.

The forces at work in a collapsed super-power are the strands that Stephen Coonts weaves into his latest block-buster novel, THE RED HORSEMAN. Greed, hatred, patriotism and blind ambition run riot in a society on the brink of chaos--a society that has been ruled for centuries by terror, murder and naked force.

 

As the infrastructure of the Soviet Union crumbles before the world's eyes, twenty thousand tactical nuclear weapons, once under the command of the Soviet military, are now up for grabs--and US intelligence believes they may soon appear on the open market, available to the highest bidder.

 

Rear Admiral Jake Grafton, attached to the Defense Intelligence Agency, is dispatched to Moscow. His assignment: ensure that the weapons are destroyed before they disappear into a terrorist pipeline pointed south, toward the Middle East. Unofficially, however, Grafton has learned there are those in his own government who would prefer to see his mission fail--and who will go to any lengths to stop it.

 

A hemisphere away, off the coast of the Canary Islands, the body of the British billionaire and media magnate Nigel Keren has been found floating in the sea near his yacht. Although Keren apparently died of natural causes, Grafton's contacts in Israeli intelligence--the Mossad--have evidence that he was the victim of a hit squad from within the CIA. It's the kind of knowledge that could prove fatal to Grafton--as well as to his wife and daughter. But he cannot back off: if the freelance operation succeeds, it could fan the flames of Middle East hostility into an international conflagration.

 

In a world of shifting loyalties and shifting allegiances, the rules Grafton used to live by no longer apply. The countdown to Armageddon may already have begun, and the only thing Grafton knows for sure is--as a soldier among spies--his rear flank is dangerously exposed. He has been targeted for assassination, and the conspiracy is clearly stamped: Made in America.

 

A succession struggle ignited by the impending death of Fidel Castro is the catalyst for Stephen Coonts' latest suspense thriller, CUBA, in hardcover from St. Martin's Press.

 

As Havana heats up, the CIA learns that one of the presidential contenders, secret police Chief Alejo Vargas, has developed biological weapons and installed them on half-dozen intermediate-range ballistic missiles delivered by the Soviets during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Vargas' plan: foment a crisis with the U.S. and cow the Americans with biological weapons, thereby uniting the Cuban people behind his leadership.

 

Meanwhile, the hijacking of a freighter transporting chemical and biological warheads to the United States from the warehouses of Guantanamo Bay sets off alarms all over the hemisphere. While searching for the stolen warheads, Rear Admiral Jake Grafton is drawn into the growing Cuban crisis.

 

HONG KONG is Stephen Coonts' ninth published novel, his eighth novel starring Jake Grafton, today's most popular action-adventure hero.

 

Jake Grafton takes his wife, Callie, along when the U.S. government sends him to Hong Kong to find out how deeply the U.S. consul-general is embedded in a political money-raising scandal. And why not? Jake and Callie met and fell in love in Hong Kong during the Vietnam War, and the consul-general is an old friend from his Vietnam days, Tiger Cole.

 

A lot has changed since those days, as the Grafton’s quickly discover. They find Hong Kong is a powder keg, ready to explode. The closure of a foreign bank by the communist government is the spark that lights the fuse... and Tiger Cole is right in the middle of the action.

 

When Callie is kidnapped by a rebel faction, Jake finds himself drawn into the vortex of a high-tech civil war. Drawing on the skills of CIA burglar Tommy Carmellini, in order to save his wife Jake Grafton must figure out who is wearing the white hats among the Chinese patriots fighting for the future of China... and make sure the right side wins.

 

USS AMERICA, the most technologically advanced nuclear-powered submarine ever built, is hijacked in front of hundreds of people gathered to watch its departure on its first operational cruise. As the sub disappears into the North Atlantic, the joint chiefs realize that AMERICA carries the United States' newest weapon: cruise missiles with electromagnetic pulse warheads designed to fry every electronic device within a ten-mile radius. Within hours, missiles from the sub rain down on Washington, D.C., starting a massive fire in the White House, bringing down jet-liners, and destroying nearly all the electronic devices in the nation's capital. Called upon to find the rogue sub, Jake Grafton must determine who is behind the carnage, what they want, and most importantly, how to stop them.

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, spymaster Janos Ilin delivers a chilling message to Jake Grafton--a rogue Russian general has sold four nuclear warheads to a radical Islamic terrorist group, the Sword of Islam, which intends to detonate them in America in the ultimate terror strike, the apocalypse that will trigger a holy war between western civilization and the Muslim world. After passing Ilin's message to his superiors, Grafton is charged by the President with assembling a secret team to find the warheads before America's population centers are consumed by nuclear holocaust.

 

Grafton soon finds himself up to his neck in power politics, techno-billionaires, money-grubbing traitors, anarchists, and spies as he hunts for the terrorists, who, as he quickly discovers, don't all come from the Middle East.

 

At stake is the survival of western civilization, so Grafton pulls out all the stops. With the help of the indomitable Toad Tarkington and CIA burglar Tommy Carmellini, he raids the prisons to assemble his team while the clock ticks toward Armageddon.

 

Peopled with the rich, vivid characters that have made Stephen Coonts famous world-wide, LIBERTY is action and suspense from the very first page. And it poses the unanswerable question, how far should civilization go to defend itself from its mortal enemies?

 

Jake is also a character in the Tommy Carmellini novels, and the sequence of those is

Note: This book was published as LIARS & THIEVES in the U.S. and Canada by St. Martin's Press, which didn't like the original title, WAGES OF SIN.  The British publisher, Orion, stayed with the original title.  Buyers should beware if they buy books over the internet... LIARS & THIEVES and WAGES OF SIN are the same book as published by two different publishers.

 

Stephen Coonts first introduced ex-burglar, now CIA agent Tommy Carmellini in the bestselling Jake Grafton novel, CUBA. Now Tommy takes center stage as Stephen Coonts brings his trademark edge-of-the-seat thrills and explosive writing to LIARS AND THIEVES—and tackles Washington like never before.

 

The defection of the archivist for the KGB, who escapes Russia with seven suitcases full of notes purloined from the files of his former employer, and a massacre at a government safe house put Tommy Carmellini on the trail of a dark conspiracy.

 

After he barely escapes with his life, he realizes someone in the United States government is behind it all. Which begs the question, who can Carmellini trust?

 

Abu Qasim was the perfect spy. He was the man who could bring down Bin Laden, the man who could smash Al Queda. Surrounded by fanatics in the heart of the beast, he believed in himself beyond any shadow of a doubt, believed in what he knew to be right with a faith that could withstand all adversity. He lived by his wits and played the double game to the last drop of blood. Or did he?

 

Assigned to Paris, CIA officer Tommy Carmellini finds himself working for his old boss, Jake Grafton, who is the new CIA operations officer in charge of Europe. Grafton has a mission: He believes that the director of French Intelligence has a secret agent among the leaders of Al Queda and the Americans want access to that intelligence. Yet the director denies it!

 

Trying to ferret out the truth, Grafton and Carmellini are quickly entangled in a mare’s nest of espionage, deception and murder. The director has secret investments in the Bank of Palestine and a killer is on the loose. If that weren’t enough, the leaders of the G-8 industrialized nations are soon to meet in Paris, an event that would make a tempting terrorist target. Throw into the mix the very beautiful and clever daughter of the French Ambassador to Washington, an Israeli spy or two, and the stage is set for a tour de force of deception and drama in the world’s most beautiful city, graceful, ageless Paris

When an old friend asks the President of the United States to name a warrior to lead a private war on the masterminds of terror, the president sends Jake Grafton, who takes along his loyal lieutenant, Tommy Carmellini. Al Queda general Abu Qasim soon learns what is afoot, and decides to terrorize the bankers and industrialists who are making war on him.

Tommy is up to his eyes in beautiful women and corpses as he tries to piece together the puzzle and keep Grafton’s friends alive. But who is killing whom? With bombs ticking, bullets flying, and blood flowing, Tommy and Jake close in on Abu Qasim, who has one last nasty trick up his sleeve, one he’s been planning for years

 

 

The Iranian effort to develop nuclear weapons was the inspiration for this tale of spies, assassination, skullduggery, military action and political intrigue.   

 

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the Devil’s Disciple, and he has a plan.  With twelve nuclear warheads mounted on twelve missiles, he will make Iran a martyr nation; then he will lead the world’s Muslims in a holy war against western civilization.  It is up to Jake Grafton and Tommy Carmellini to save the world as we know it from the clutches of Islamic fascist fanatics.

 

As hot as today’s headlines, The Disciple is Stephen Coonts at the top of his game.  Spies, soldiers, scholars, fighter pilots, patriots, traitors, presidents and ayatollahs are all here within the pages of The Disciple.  Not since Cuba has Coonts written a novel as big and bold as The Disciple, a novel that catches the dreams and aspirations of a nation.

 

THE CANNIBAL QUEEN

 

On a clear, sunny Saturday in June, Coonts and his fourteen-year-old son David take off from Boulder, Colorado, in a 1942 Stearman open cockpit biplane, "a noisy forty-nine-year-old wood and canvas crate with a naked floozy painted on the side."

 

The Queen started life as a World War II primary trainer then spent over thirty years as an agricultural spray plane before being lovingly restored. For Coonts, who's logged thousands of hours in the Navy's most sophisticated aircraft, the Queen is flying as he's never known it before--flying close the earth, the wind teasing his helmet, equipped with little more than a map and a compass.

 

First stop is a Stearman fly-in in St. Francis, Kansas. There amid the barbecues and barber-shop quartets, the tree lined streets with their modest homes, Coonts feels nostalgia for small-town America, for a way of life he felt was dying. Yet, by the end of the journey, having met the friendly, richly individual people in towns large and small across the land, he knows our nation has weathered her first two hundred years remarkably well, and he is filled with hope for the future of this vast and varied land....

 

Flying like the legendary barnstormers, Coonts swoops under storms and over mountains, across swamps, deserts, forests, and the monumental expanse of the Great Plains. At eighty-four knots he visits Mark Twain's Missouri, the volcanic wasteland of Mt. St. Helens, San Francisco's Golden Gate, and Zion’s red cliffs, the Painted Desert, the Shiloh battlefield and Mt. Rushmore. And he records it all with a novelist's keen eye. Whether taking friends and fans up for a spin...chatting with old-timers at small-town airports...visiting Warbird heaven in Chino, California, where former military aircraft are lovingly restored and flown...soaring in cold air at 11,500 feet over the Sierra Nevada’s or sweating over a scorching desert, Coonts conveys the incomparable thrill of flying...and brings our country to life in a vivid, unforgettable portrait.

 

SAUCER

 

When Rip Cantrell, a summer intern on a seismic survey crew in the Sahara Desert, discovers a flying saucer embedded in a sandstone ledge, the crew seeks help from an archeologist digging a nearby site. As the crew chips the saucer from the stone, one of the seismic workers places a satellite call to an Australian billionaire who invests in high tech, Roger Hedrick. Meanwhile the U.S. Air Force detects the saucer with satellite imagery and sends a team of UFO investigators. They are soon joined by a band of Australian thugs.

 

While the Air Force and Aussies squabble, Rip learns a few of the saucer's secrets and realizes there is a chance that it might still be airworthy. When the Libyan military arrives at the party, Rip and former Air Force test pilot Charlotte "Charley" Pine take their lives in their hands and fly the saucer away.

 

SAUCER is Stephen Coonts doing what he does best--action adventure with an aviation twist. Rip and Charley lead the world on a merry chase as they try to learn the saucer's secrets and keep it away from the U.S. Government, which would deny its existence, and rogue billionaire Roger Hedrick, who wants to sell it to the highest bidder.

 

Yet SAUCER is more than a chase book. How the saucer came to be in the stone and who put it there are questions at the core of the story; the answers will captivate readers worldwide.

 

 SAUCER: THE CONQUEST

 

Steve Coonts' SAUCER was a smash hit in the U.S. and the U.K. when it was published in 2002. It was also published in Germany as DAS IKARUS PROJEKT. Now the unlikely duo of Rip Cantrell and beautiful test pilot Charley Pine are back, so strap in and leave your passports behind as the fight for freedom on the new frontier begins.

 

After discovering the secrets of a 140,000-year-old spacecraft and delivering it to safety in the National Air and Space Museum, where it is displayed alongside Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, Rip and Charley think their days of high-flying extraterrestrial adventure are over. Bored with Rip's aimless wanderings, Charley accepts a job flying space planes to the moon for the French lunar base project. There she discovers a world-threatening anti-gravity beam that could only have been constructed using saucer technology.

 

She steals a space plane and flies back to earth to sound the warning. Meanwhile, the French kidnap Rip's uncle Egg—and force him to fly a saucer hidden in Area 51 to the moon.

 

Rip and Charley must steal the first saucer from its new home at the museum and hit the not-so-friendly skies again in order to save Uncle Egg and the world from a twisted modern-day Napoleon bent on conquest.

 

THE GARDEN OF EDEN by Eve Adams Publication Date May 2005

  

When banker Ed Harris comes home one Wednesday afternoon with a stomach-ache, he finds his wife, Anne, in bed with his best friend, Hayden Elkins. Ed loads his shotgun and orders Hayden to take Anne home with him. “But I already have a wife,” Hayden pleads. “Now you have two,” Ed declares, “and if I hear Anne isn't happy, this shotgun is going to go off.”

 

So begins the most unique tale Stephen Coonts has yet written, a story of love, understanding, forgiveness and redemption among the folks who populate the community of Eden, which is, as everyone knows, twelve miles south of Indian River in the shadow of the Blue Mountains and the Faraway Hills. You'll soon meet Hayden's wife, Matilda, whose world is about to come unglued, and son Billy Joe, a high school senior who is about to discover how badly one's parents can screw up their lives. Among others, you will also meet Junior Grimes, an affable giant who tries to help everyone he meets, his long-suffering girlfriend Diamond Ice, state Trooper Sam Neely, who falls in love with Diamond's sister, Crystal, novelist Richard Hudson, whom both the Ice sisters want to marry, Sheriff Arleigh Tate, who seems to know everyone's secrets, Judge Lester Storm, who is less interested in law enforcement than he is in the human condition, and the new minister of the Eden Chapel, Cecile Carcano, who came to Eden to get away from it all. Fat chance!

 

I wrote THE GARDEN OF EDEN in the winter of 1994-95. When my editor at Pocket Books, my publisher at the time, saw it, he was horrified. “This isn't a Jake Grafton thriller!” he said. “You got that right,” I agreed. Pocket Books rejected the tale, so the manuscript went into the bottom drawer of my desk.

 

Through the years I took it out occasionally and flipped through it to see if I still liked it as much as I did when I wrote it. I think a writer must like the stories he writes or he isn't true to the craft. Or himself. Yes, I decided: Despite the opinion of the folks at Pocket Books, I thought the tale a good one, one that had a commercial future if it were ever published. Finally, after I sent the manuscript of LIBERTY to my editor at St. Martin's, Charles Spicer, I stuffed the manuscript for THE GARDEN OF EDEN into an envelope and sent it along too. Charlie read it, liked the tale, and took it to his publisher, Sally Richardson, who also liked it. One day Charlie called me and said they wanted to publish it.

 

After much noodling, the folk at St. Martin’s decided to publish the tale under a pseudonym. The next question was which one? Mark Twain was taken; Tom Clancy might not be pleased if I borrowed his moniker, hmm.... So I became Eve Adams. I am a firm believer that if you switch genres, you might as well also switch genders. However, book signings will be a challenge. In the unlikely event I am asked, I have purchased a dress at a plus-size store and shaved my legs. I am ready.

 

I had a ton of fun writing GARDEN, and I honestly think you'll have a ton of fun reading it, regardless of your literary tastes. GARDEN is not a romance. It will need a different audience than the fine folks—God bless ‘em—who have kept me off the unemployment rolls by buying Jake Grafton, and now Tommy Carmellini, tales. Yet I hope my old fans will also take a chance on it. I think the tale will appeal to anyone who reads, male or female, from eight to eighty-eight. It's a cool, funny, funky book with some grit and mass to it. I have my fingers crossed.

 

In Addition he has also published in the following Anthologies and Co-Authored others listed below

 

War in the Air

Combat

Victory

On Glorious Wings

 

DEEP BLACK

Published - October 2003

DEEP BLACK: BIOWAR

Published - May 2004   

DEEP BLACK: DARK ZONE

Published - December 2004

DEEP BLACK: PAYBACK

Published - October 2005

DEEP BLACK: JIHAD

Published - January 2007

DEEP BLACK: CONSPIRACY

Published - June 2008

DEEP BLACK: ARCTIC GOLD

Published - February 2009