Military Deception

Mara Caldwell made a clean break from her old life, never imagining her secrets could come back to haunt her. When an old enemy surfaces and threatens the world she's created for herself Mara is prepared to give up everything, including the husband she loves if it will keep him safe. Harrison knew his wife had secrets when he married her, but when he discovers the truth, it's far worse than he imagined.

Stolen valor occurs when a person lies about receiving military decorations that he or she has in fact never earned. It has become a major societal problem that has been discussed numerous times in the news and, most recently, by the US Supreme Court. According to The New York Times, the Department of Veterans Affairs paid disability benefits to more than six hundred people falsely claiming to have been POWs in the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars.

When an imminent, mass-scale terrorist attack is uncovered, former DELTA Force officer Major Paul Jensen and the Joint Special Operations Command know that they are all that stand between the deadly attacks and innocent Americans. But what he doesn't know is the mission's cost, the terrorist's deception, and why he is haunted by love lost.

A US destroyer is torpedoed by an Iranian submarine and Captain Murray Wilson of the USS Michigan is flown to the Pentagon to meet with the Secretary of the Navy (SecNav). There, Wilson learns that the Iranian submarine is just a cover story. One of the United States' own fully automated unmanned underwater vehicles has gone rogue, its programing corrupted in some way. Murray is charged with hunting it down and taking it out before the virus that's infected its operating system can infect the rest of the fleet.

Russia's new ballistic missile submarine, Yuriy Dolgorukiy, is being deployed on its first patrol while America's newest fast-attack submarine, North Dakota, is assigned to trail it and collect intel. As the Russian submarine heads under the polar ice cap, its sonar readings reveal the trailing American sub and cause the Russians to begin a radical evasive maneuver. This, however, fails, and the submarines collide, resulting in damage that sends both to the bottom.

The US aircraft carrier patrolling the Western Pacific Ocean is severely damaged by a surprise salvo of cruise missiles. While the Russian government officially apologizes, claiming it was the result of fire control accident during a training exercise, it was instead a calculated provocation. With the US Pacific fleet already severely under strength, the Russian president decides that the US response is a clear indication of their weakness, militarily and politically, and initiates a bold plan.

On the face of it, the three characters in this book seem to have little in common—aside from the fact that each committed wartime acts that led some to see them as national heroes, and others as villains. All three were mythmakers, larger-than-life storytellers, for whom the truth was beside the point. Felix Kersten was a plump Finnish pleasure-seeker who became Heinrich Himmler’s indispensable personal masseur—Himmler calling him his “magic Buddha.”

A shoulder-launched missile attack on a convoy of vehicles leaving the UN headquarters in New York kills several diplomats, including the American ambassador. Security footage reveals that the killer behind the attack is a disgraced former special forces operative, Mark Alperi. But before US intelligence operatives can catch up with him, Alperi is already onto the next phase of his plan.

In Russia, the military is anxious to assert its military strength and regain its role as a superpower. The Russian president refuses to greenlight a bold plan to disable American strategic nuclear capability and retake Ukraine and the Baltic States, fearing the potential consequences of involving nuclear weapons. But the generals won't have it and at the first opportunity, they overthrow the president in a military coup. Then they use a narrow window to initiate their bold plan - the Zolotov option - which will render all of America's B2 bombers and ballistic missiles useless.

Her submission is his sweet revenge...until the truth detonates his plans. When Joe learns Hunter’s name, his inner Dom’s lust turns to black rage - he’s convinced it’s her fault a teammate committed combat suicide. He embarks on a plan to seduce her, but by the time her sweetness ensnares him, the truth threatens what could be the love of a lifetime.

In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit photographer", William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation.

Roman Steele learned a hard lesson about trusting others. While serving his country, he put his faith in the wrong person and lost a leg for his loyalty. So far, civilian life suits him - as long as he doesn't have to deal with anyone. But when he's called in to investigate a break-in at a high-security lab, he finds himself butting heads with the lead virologist, a woman as infuriating as she is beautiful.

Colonel Mitch Taylor is living on borrowed time, and so is the Alliance. Counting the days down until Bolormaa could return and kill him herself. The sole reason she had saved him from her ally Cakir. The Alliance needs to buy time until that final showdown. But Taylor is needed to do what he does best. They decide on a deception, and find a double who can pass as a wounded Taylor.

Deception is an American story of suffering, temporary redemption, and devastating betrayal. This mystery describes the meteoric rise and equally devastating fall of the author's father, Dr. Ken Judy, who struggled to overcome a horrific event in his childhood. Dr. Judy became a decorated Vietnam veteran and highly successful cardiovascular surgeon. A pillar in his community, Dr. Judy kept the secrets that haunted him and chased the nightmare away with his insatiable appetite for women. This addiction would ultimately destroy everything he loved.

Eli and the crew of the Boomerang think they finally have a handle on what they're up against. A surprising new revelation shows that things are about to get much worse.

Jack Steele survived the first Gulf War. As a captain and tank commander, he saw the dark side of human conflict. A linguist, he speaks Russian, German, French, and Bosnian; he is the perfect man to execute the deadly mission. Except that he is the last to know it, and death might ultimately be his only escape. War rages in former Yugoslavia. It’s a place few UN peacekeepers know or understand. But Steele must fulfill his promise to his brother and discover the true meaning and location behind the Sarajevo Protocol to save millions of lives and stop World War III in Europe.

Ex-MI5 operative Joe Mason is on a mission to stop a ruthless satanic group from obtaining a treasure of unimaginable power: the legendary Hellfire. If the cult succeeds, they will become more powerful than any government – unleashing chaos and destruction worldwide. Mason and his team must race against time, deciphering clues from relics scattered across Europe. From Scotland’s eerie mausoleums to Milan’s hidden crypts, Florence’s shadowy alleys, Berlin’s sinister underbelly, and even the Vatican’s most secretive corridors, Mason must navigate the continent to find the Hellfire first.

Right around D-Day of World War II, a small, unarmed American army unit deployed to Nazi-occupied France. Instead of artillery, this unit fought with stagecraft, artistry, and deception. Their “weapons” included inflatable rubber tanks and giant speakers broadcasting fake military maneuvers. The soldiers called themselves the Ghost Army.

In the summer of 1929, Weimar Germany's secret military agreement in the 1920s with the USSR to evade the Versailles Treaty and develop new weapon systems beyond the Ural Mountains is about to bear fruit. Aided by a shadowy international conspiracy of arms dealers, industrialists, and financiers, both countries are poised to dismember the newly independent Poland created in the aftermath of the Great War. To distract Britain from helping the Poles and risking a new world war, the conspiracy intends to foment a coup d'etat in the Irish Free State.

Mahl's account brings together bits and pieces of a story that has been told before together with the best research and documentation of the subject available on this crucial period of Western history between 1939 and 1944.