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Critical Mass
Jocelyn "Joss" Cole, a burned-out public defender from L.A., has opted for a quieter life in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Joss has no significant clients other than a group of commercial fisherman suffering from a strange and serious illness, a condition that doctors cannot diagnose, and which Joss believes has an industrial cause. Then into her office comes Dean Belden, a well-heeled client in search of a lawyer to help him set up a business in the islands. Within days Belden is subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury. Less than an hour after testifying, and before Joss can discover what happened in the secrecy of the grand jury room, Belden dies in a fiery explosion of his float plane on Seattle's Lake Union. Gideon Van Ry is a nuclear fission expert and a scholar in residence at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. One of his duties is to update the Center's database, an extensive catalog listing fissionable materials and weapons of mass destruction. Gideon is troubled by the apparent failure to account for two small tactical nuclear devices missing from a storage facility in the former Soviet Union.The two weapons were last seen in packing crates, to be shipped to an American company called Belden Electronics. Gideon has been unable to locate this firm, and now he is left with only one possible lead, the lawyer who incorporated the company-Jocelyn Cole. Fraught with tension and suspense, Critical Mass is Steve Martini at his electrifying best. It is the story of what can happen in a world where private hate and public apathy combine to uncork the sleeping but deadly genie of nuclear terror.
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False Memory
Martie Rhodes, a happily married, successful video games designer, takes an agoraphobic friend to therapy sessions twice a week. Each trip is a grim ordeal, but the experience has brought the two friends even closer together. Then, one morning, Martie experiences a brief, irrational but disquieting fear of... her shadow. When autophobia - one of the rarest and most intriguing phobias known to psychology - is diagnosed, suddenly, radically her life changes, and her future looks dark. Martie's husband, Dusty, loves her profoundly, and is desperate to understand the cause of her autophobia. But as he comes closer to the terrible truth, Dusty himself starts showing signs of a psychological disorder even more frightening than that afflicting Martie... A thriller that plays terrifying tricks with your mind. Dean Koontz is an international household name whose novels have sold many millions of copies worldwide and have appeared on national and international bestseller lists, selling millions of copies each year. He lives with his wife Gerda, their dog Anna and the enduring spirit of their dog Trixie in southern California.
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THE JURY
Paul Madriani has ample reason to suspect that he's representing a guilty man. Dr. David Crone, a respected medical researcher and principal in mapping the human genome, is charged with the murder of a young colleague: twenty-six-year-old Kalista Jordan, an African American research physician whose dismembered body was found in a nearby bay. Forensic evidence links her murder with items discovered in Crone's garage. Madriani takes Crone's case, but his defense is hindered by the secrecy surrounding Crone's current research. As the trial unfolds, a scandal from Crone's past, involving his controversial use of genetic racial profiling, is revived. The murdered woman had filed charges of sexual harassment against Crone, and taken secret documents from his files. Paul is left to try to piece together a defense while Crone and his colleagues are hiding parts of the puzzle. When a key witness for the prosecution ends up dead, leaving an incriminating note behind, Crone's acquittal at trial is all but assured. Yet Paul is left with nagging questions concerning his client, doubts that are answered with a stunning revelation and a shattering climax.