Stephen Hunter

Three generations of Swagger family members, Charles, Earl and Bob Lee, tell their stories in three interconnected novellas that describe hunting for a notorious gangster in Chicago, uncovering municipal corruption in Maryland, and returning from the Vietnam War.

Sent by the CIA to 1950s Cuba to eliminate young revolutionary Fidel Castro, ex-Marine hero Earl Swagger finds himself confronting outdated ideals about honor and duty as the world around him erupts into early Cold War violence.

"Bob Lee Swagger is in love--with a woman who died 70 years ago. Ludmilla "Mili" Petrova was a great Russian sniper in World War II until she disappeared on a mission and was virtually erased from history. When Kathy Reilly of the Washington Post encounters a brief mention of Petrova in an old Russian propaganda magazine, she begins building a story around the legendary female sniper, who was once dubbed Die Weisse Hexe--The White Witch--and lauded...

Hunter is back with a breakneck thriller brimming with his trademark action and masterful plotting, as ex-Marine sniper Ray Cruz confronts a group of murderous terrorists that has laid siege to the Mall of America.

Swagger becomes interested in exploring JFK's assassination, asking questions few have asked before.

"After being accused of reckless endangerment and forced to answer to the U.S. Congress, master sniper Bob Lee Swagger must protect political hostages in a once-in-a-lifetime standoff"-- Summoned to court by the United States Congress, Swagger is accused of reckless endangerment by a hardheaded anti-gun congresswoman. What begins as political posturing soon turns deadly when the auditorium where the committee is being held is attacked. Swagger, the...

"July, 1944: The lush, rolling hills of Normandy are dotted with a new feature-German snipers. From their vantage points, they pick off hundreds of Allied soldiers every day, bringing the D-Day invasion to its knees. It's clear that someone is tipping off these snipers with the locations of American GIs, but who? And how? General Eisenhower demands his intelligence service to find the best shot in the Allied military to counter this deadly SS operation....

"They busted out of McAlester State Penitentiary- three escaped convicts going to ground in a world unprepared for anything like them... Lamar Pye is prince of the Dirty White Boys. With a lion in his soul, he roars- for he is the meanest, deadliest animal on the loose... Odell is Lamar's cousin, a hulking manchild with unfeeling eyes. He lives for daddy Lamar. Surely he will die for him... Richard's survival hangs on a sketch: a crude drawing of...

When Bob Lee Swagger, now in Idaho, finally sells the land he owned in Arkansas, the developers begin to tear down the old homestead and uncover a steel case hidden in the foundation. The case contains a batch of 1934 memorabilia a much-corroded FBI badge, a .45 automatic preserved in cosmoline, a gun clip, and a cryptic diagram, all belonging to Charles Swagger. Bob never knew his grandfather Charles, who died before he was he born, and his father...