New Books by David Poyer

November 2008 . . . THE WEAPON

Iran has a deadly new weapon – and the only way to preserve the peace in the Persian Gulf is to steal it.

U.S. Navy Commander and Medal of Honor winner Dan Lenson has been handed another outside-the-box assignment.  TAG Charlie, an elite team of active duty sailors, SEALs, and civilian analysts, is tasked to investigate and defuse emerging naval threats around the globe.  When the Skhval-K – an unstoppable rocket torpedo designed to destroy U.S. aircraft carriers -- is demonstrated at a Moscow arms show, Dan tries to buy one, so the Navy can build countermeasures.  But he's lucky to escape with his life when he's set up by Russia's ruthless new counterespionage service. 

When the Russians sell the new weapon to Iran and China instead, Dan decides that if he can't buy one, he'll steal it.  But a daring nighttime penetration of Iran's largest naval base goes wrong too.  Now Dan finds himself captaining a submarine he barely knows how to submerge, pursued by Iranian destroyers and sub-hunting aircraft through the shallow, hazardous Persian Gulf.

Just another fine Navy day...but one not everyone on TAG Team Charlie will live through.

The Weapon David Poyer. St. Martin's, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-37493-8

"Poyer's fine military thriller, the 11th in his Dan Lenson series (after Korea Strait), provides what his fans have come to expect—tight structure, plenty of authentic technological detail and a hero who acts like a man rather than a cartoon superhero. When the Russians offer a powerful new rocket torpedo they've developed for sale to the world, the U.S. government sends Cdr. Dan Lenson, U.S.N., to purchase one. After the deal falls apart, Dan attempts to “liberate” one of the new weapons from a container ship headed for China. When that mission goes to hell, he and his team steal an Iranian submarine carrying one of the super torpedoes. From then on, we're submerged deep into Das Boot territory with Dan and his small crew playing cat and mouse with a deadly Iranian frigate." -- Publishers Weekly

August 2007 . . . THE THREAT in Mass market paper

From inside the White House, Navy commander and Medal of Honor winner Dan Lenson takes on threats to the President and the Nation in David Poyer's ninth gripping thriller about the men and women of today's U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

After narrowly bringing USS Horn through a nuclear attack off Israel, Lenson, on light duty while recovering from his injuries, is tapped to serve on the military staff of President Robert "Bad Bob" De Bari.  Is it an honor?  Or the death knell for his career?  He's not really sure.

But he'll do his duty nonetheless.  Never one to settle for pushing paper, or for following accepted procedure, Lenson plunges into his job as Director of Counternarcotics Interdiction on the National Security Council Staff.  His first challege is  the Cartel's assassination of the son of the new president of Colombia -- a death the Cartel hopes to pin on the US Air Force.  He's barely gotten a lid on this when his staff uncovers a frightening terrorist plot: a dirty bomb, smuggled into America via clandestine drug channels and loaded onto an air freight flight.  Meanwhile, an even greater threat is building inside the United States government itself.  When Dan becomes the aide carrying the codes to unleash nuclear war, and a deeply unpopular De Bari enrages both the Cartel and nakedly ambitious elements in the US government, Dan himself becomes an unwitting accomplice in a plot to kill the President -- and the only one who can possibly halt it.

Packed with vivid looks inside the White House, the Situation Room, Air Force One, counternarcotics operations, and the military aides and staff who actually exercise the powers of the Presidency in the 21st Century, THE THREAT is a spellbinding yet all too realistic thriller from first page to last. 

David Poyer’s novels are ranked among the finest military fiction of our time.   Not only for their vividness and authenticity, but for their unflinching probing of the deepest dilemmas of military and personal ethics.  Bristling with intrigue, action, and a wealth of inside detail about how the White House actually works, THE THREAT is Dave Poyer at his very best.

ISBN... 0-312-33961-5 Price 24.95 US  
STORES...ORDER FROM ST. MARTIN’S PRESS...(888) 330-8477 toll free, or from your wholesaler
READERS...ORDER NOW FROM YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE!

REVIEWS FROM THE CURRENT PRESS:

From Kirkus Reviews:
Dan Lenson becomes the man with the "football"—that ever-present briefcase containing presidential  nuclear codes.
    Still recovering from the nuclear attack that sank his destroyer (The Command, 2004), Commander Lenson faces formidable challenges as he tries to find his balance in Washington, working closely with a Clintonesque president thoroughly detested by the military establishment. The Navy has assigned Dan to the small anti-drug task force working directly under the National Security Advisor. It's a thankless job, far from the work the officer expected to do—identifying and neutralizing the looming threat of nuclear terrorism. Setting aside his reservations, Lenson steers his motley handful of aides into the narcoturbulence and quickly counters a move by a drug lord that would have undermined a reasonable Colombian administration. But as usual, Lenson's decisive action seems only to have increased the suspicion with which his higher-ups regard him. Things are equally cloudy on the home front. Lenson's beautiful, higher-ranking wife, Blair, spends as much time as Lenson does away from their suburban home. Then Dan is abruptly assigned to the spooky duty of guarding the nuclear football for President De Bari. The shallow, sneaky president, the first Italian-American in the Oval Office, has been cutting deep into the military budget, spending the peace bonus rendered by the collapse of the Soviet Union on domestic priorities. He's also been carrying on his infamous extramarital affairs, and evidence suggests that Lenson's wife may be in presidential target range. Throughout, Poyer inserts cryptic electronic conversations among unknown parties who are steering someone toward an assassination job.
    A gloomy story, but Poyer remains the most thoughtful of the military-thriller set and a master of authentic detail. 

Praise for Poyer's Previous Dan Lenson Novels

"No one writes gritty, realistic military fiction better than David Poyer.  No one."
 
                                                                                                   --Stephen Coonts, author of America

“Not since James Jones' The Thin Red Line have readers experienced the gripping fear of what it's like to fight an enemy at close quarters. Far beyond that, Poyer's research is impeccable, his characterization compelling, and the Iraqi Desert Storm scenario, all too believable when we
see how the United States Marine Corp's finest deals with the worst of what mankind has to offer. A must read for all students of military history."

                                                                             --John J. Gobbell, author of When Duty Whispers Low

"I've been a David Poyer fan for over a decade and his storytelling abilities – always first-rate – just get better and better."

                                                                    --Ralph Peters, author of Beyond Terror and The War in 2020

"Black Storm is a gripping, gritty novel that reads like the real thing.  You're with the Marines every step of the way, on a search and destroy mission into the heart of Iraq. David Poyer knows his stuff."

                                                               --Vince  Flynn, author of Separation of Power and The Third Option
 

“ABSOLUTELY RIVETING. David Poyer has captured the essence of what it is like on long range patrols, and what Marine Force Reconnaissance and Special Operations Forces could face in the ongoing war on terrorism...distinguished by quick actions and continuing suspense that will keep the reader on edge until the very end.”
                                                                                          – Maj Gen. HarryW. Jenkins, USMC (Ret),
                                                                        Former commander, 4th Marine Amphibious   Brigade in Desert Storm.
 

May 2006:

THAT ANVIL OF OUR SOULS in Trade Paperback

A Novel of the Modern US Navy at War against Terror

Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 0312318367    Retail: $6.99 US

In the tradition of Patrick O'Brian and C. S. Forester, Poyer offers the second volume of his novel-cycle titled The Civil War At Sea.  A story of brother against brother, in the campaign across the waters of the world that decided the outcome of the most bitter struggle America has ever waged.

We first met Lt. Ker Custis Claiborne, formerly of the United States Navy, in Fire on the Waters.  By his own admission, Claiborne is "no admirer of the institution of Hamitic slavery."  Its horrors struck home on antislavery patrol along the Coromandel Coast in the 1850's.  But he's also a Virginian.  When the North decides to preserve an outworn Union by force, his course is clear.  In A Country of Our Own,  he "goes South", joining first the Virginia Navy, then the fledgling Confederate States Navy in April, 1861.

After defending the shores of the Potomac alongside the hastily mustered troops of the Army of Virginia, Ker runs the blockade out of New Orleans aboard a converted sidewheeler turned Confederate raider.  He and his saturnine  mentor Captain Parker Trezevant burn, sink, and destroy across the Caribbean, to undermine the Union's financial might and force a truce favorable to the Confederacy.

But when that first cruiser proves unstable, under-armed, and short-legged, Ker joins Commander James Bulloch in England, to buy or build a ship of war that can sweep Union commerce from the seas.  When a daring coup puts Ker in command of the fastest, most dangerous raider ever to range from Brazil to Boston -- the ex-opium clipper C.S.S. Maryland -- he'll set Yankee seamen a-tremble wherever the water's salt and seagulls scream.  And maybe even, decide the issue of the war.  

A Country of Our Own is historical sea fiction at its best -- authentic, engrossing, vivid, and masterfully paced, from the master sea-yarner whose tales some critics have ranked with those of Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville.

ISBN... 0-684-87134-3   

From the bestselling author of The Med, The Circle, The Gulf, The Passage, Tomahawk, and China Sea comes a novel of Marine Corps special operations – the men whose bravery and sacrifice brought victory in the desert.

Six days before America invades Iraq, Saddam Hussein issues an ultimatum: If Coalition forces cross the border, he’ll turn Israel into “a crematorium.”  U.S. intelligence agencies suspect he’s concealing either a crude nuclear device or missiles loaded with chemical or biological agents.   A quickly assembled Marine Reconnaissance team gets the assignment for Operation Signal Mirror.  In the four days left before the ground war begins, Gunnery Sergeant Marcus Gault and his Marine-Army-Navy team  must land in Iraq, locate Saddam’s ultimate deterrent, and target it for destruction.

David Poyer’s novels are ranked among the finest military fiction of our time.   Not only for their vividness and authenticity, but for their unflinching probing of the deepest questions of military and personal ethics.  How can some men send others to die?  Is it acceptable to kill the innocent, to accomplish your mission?  At what point does acting against an aggressor become more dangerous than the aggression itself?  Bristling with suspense, action, and intensely human characters, backed by an insider’s knowledge of Marine and Navy operations, Black Storm is Poyer at his best.

ISBN... 0-312-26969-2   
STORES...ORDER FROM ST. MARTIN’S PRESS...(888) 330-8477 toll free
OR YOUR WHOLESALER
READERS...ORDER NOW FROM YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE

Praise for BLACK STORM

"No one writes gritty, realistic military fiction better than David Poyer.  No one."
 
                                                                                                   --Stephen Coonts, author of America

“Not since James Jones' The Thin Red Line have readers experienced the gripping fear of what it's like to fight an enemy at close quarters. Far beyond that, Poyer's research is impeccable, his characterization compelling, and the Iraqi Desert Storm scenario, all too believable when we
see how the United States Marine Corp's finest deals with the worst of what mankind has to offer. A must read for all students of military history."

                                                                             --John J. Gobbell, author of When Duty Whispers Low

"I've been a David Poyer fan for over a decade and his storytelling abilities – always first-rate – just get better and better. Black Storm is a timely, gripping, compelling yarn told by a master."

                                                                    --Ralph Peters, author of Beyond Terror and The War in 2020

"Black Storm is a gripping, gritty novel that reads like the real thing.  You're with the Marines every step of the way, on a search and destroy mission into the heart of Iraq. David Poyer knows his stuff."

                                                               --Vince  Flynn, author of Separation of Power and The Third Option
 

“ABSOLUTELY RIVETING. David Poyer has captured the essence of what it is like on long range patrols, and what Marine Force Reconnaissance and Special Operations Forces could face in the ongoing war on terrorism...distinguished by quick actions and continuing suspense that will keep the reader on edge until the very end.”
                                                                                          – Maj Gen. HarryW. Jenkins, USMC (Ret),
                                                                        Former commander, 4th Marine Amphibious   Brigade in Desert Storm.
 

    Click here to read first chapter!

Cover Art by Tom Freeman
From GONE WITH THE WIND to COLD MOUNTAIN, no other theme has gripped the American imagination like the Civil War.  John Jakes, Bernard Cornwell, Shelby Foote, and others have crafted hugely popular works portraying the clash of the Northern and Southern armies.

At the same time, devoted fans devour the historical sea adventures of C. S. Forester, Alexander Kent, and Patrick O’Brian.

Yet till now no one has welded the two genres together, to produce a fictional saga woven around the events and characters of the American Civil War, at sea.

In FIRE ON THE WATERS, Elisha Eaker is twenty, the scion of a wealthy and politically connected mercantile family in Manhattan.  As war looms, Eli joins the sloop of war U.S.S. Owanee as a volunteer, as much to escape his impending marriage to his headstrong cousin Araminta as to defend the flag.  There he meets Lieutenant Ker Claiborne at his own moment of decision.

Claiborne,  an Annapolis graduate, has seen action in the West Indies and the Africa Station as part of the U.S. Navy’s Antislavery Patrol.  Cool and competent in storm or battle, Claiborne now faces an agonizing choice between his two loves -- the Navy, and his native state of Virginia, which is on the verge of declaring for the fledgling Confederacy.  He knows no matter which he chooses, he'll be called a traitor.  How can a man who values honor renounce his oath?  But how can a man who loves his family, and his state, fight against them?

These two men, the Yankee and the Southerner, the volunteer and the regular, will personify the two sides in the desperate conflict that begins in 1861.  Together with their rationalist shipmate, engineer and freethinker Theodorus Hubbard; Eaker’s cousin and fiancee, horsewoman, thespian, and eventual spy Araminta Van Velsor; and escaped Georgia slave turned Navy gunner Calpurnius Hanks, they will face storms, mechanical breakdowns, official blundering, treachery, and eventually the test of battle in the greatest war in American history.

Sign on for the adventure -- order at your local bookstore today.  ISBN 0-684-87133-5.   

Click here to read first chapter!

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