A Good Kill

An electrifying mystery featuring a troubled small-town police detective faced with three interwoven crimes that reveal sinister secrets about his community--and the deaths of his family, by the Edgar Award-and Thriller Award- short-listed author whose novels have been described by the New York Times Book Review as "pretty much perfect." In the years since the mysterious deaths of his wife and child, P.T. Marsh, a police detective in the small Georgia town of Mason Falls, has faced demons--both professional and personal. But when he is called to the scene of a school shooting, the professional and personal become intertwined, and he suspects that whoever is behind the crime may be connected to his own family tragedy. As Marsh and his partner Remy investigate the shooting, they discover that it is far from straightforward, and their search for answers leads them to a conspiracy at the highest levels of local government--including within the police force. The stakes in the case become increasingly high, culminating in a showdown that has Marsh questioning everything he knows, and wondering if some secrets are better left undiscovered.

"The Good Kill examines killing in war in its moral and normative dimension. It argues against the commonplace belief, often tacitly held if not consciously asserted, among academics, the general public, and even military professionals, that killing, including in a justified war, is always morally wrong even when necessary. In light of an increasingly sophisticated understanding of combat trauma, this belief is a crisis. Moral injury, a proposed subset of PTSD, occurs when one does something that goes against deeply held normative convictions. In a military context, the primary predictor of moral injury is having killed in combat. In turn, the primary predictor for suicide among combat veterans is moral injury. In this way, the assertion that killing is wrong but in war it is necessary becomes deadly, rendering the very business of the profession of arms morally injurious. It does not need to be this way. Beginning with the simple observation-recognized by both common sense and law-that killing comes in different kinds, this book equips warfighters-and those charged with their care and formation-with confidence in the rectitude of certain kinds of killing. Engaging with Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Ramsey, Nigel Biggar, and other leading Christian realists, crucial normative principles within the just war tradition are brought to bear on questions regarding just conduct in war, moral and non-moral evil, and enemy love. The Good Kill helps equip the just warrior to navigate the morally bruising field of battle without becoming irreparably morally injured"--

A scientist and a soldier must join forces when combat drones zero in on targets on American soil in this gripping technological thriller from New York Times bestselling author Daniel Suarez. Linda McKinney studies the social behavior of insects—which leaves her entirely unprepared for the day her research is conscripted to help run an unmanned and automated drone army. Odin is the secretive Special Ops soldier with a unique insight into a faceless enemy who has begun to attack the American homeland with drones programmed to seek, identify, and execute targets without human intervention. Together, McKinney and Odin must slow this advance long enough for the world to recognize its destructive power. But as enigmatic forces press the advantage, and death rains down from above, it may already be too late to save mankind from destruction.

War wounds the soul. It is not only the violence that warfighters suffer against them that harms, but also the violence that they do. These soul wounds have come to be known as moral injuries: psychic traumas that occur from having done or condoned that which goes against deeply held moral principles. It is not surprising that the committing of atrocities or the accidental killing of the innocent would hurt the soul of warfighters. The problem is that many warfighters at least tacitly follow the commonplace belief that killing another human being is always wrong--it's just that sometimes, as in war, it is necessary. This paradoxical commitment makes the very business of warfighting morally injurious. This problem is also a crisis. Clinical research among combat veterans has established a link between killing in combat and moral injury and between moral injury and suicide. Our warfighters, even those who have served honorably and with the right intentions, are dying by their own hands at devastating rates--casualties not of the physical threats of war, but of the moral ones. It does not have to be this way. The just war tradition, a moral framework for thinking about war that flows out of our Greco-Roman and Hebraic intellectual traditions, is grounded in the basic truth that killing comes in different kinds. While some kinds of killing, like murder, are always wrong, there are other kinds of killing that are morally neutral, such as unavoidable accidents, and still other kinds that are morally permitted--even, sometimes, obligatory. The Good Kill embraces this tradition to argue for the morality of killing in justified wars. Marc LiVecche does not deny the morally bruising realities of combat, but offers potential remedies to help our warfighters manage the bruising without becoming irreparably morally injured.

You're invited to the murder mystery party of the year! Fans of the hit series A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder will love Pip’s final detective case in this mystery novella from #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Jackson. Six suspects. Three hours. One murder… Pip is not in the mood for her friend’s murder mystery party. Especially one that involves 1920’s fancy dress and pretending that their town is an island called Joy. But when the game begins, Pip finds herself drawn into the make-believe world of intrigue, deception and murder. But as Pip plays detective, teasing out the identity of the killer clue-by-clue, the murder of the fictional Reginald Remy isn’t the only case on her mind …

‘I don’t like killing, but I’m good at it. Murder isn’t so bad from a distance, just shapes popping up in my scope. Close-up work though – a garrotte around a target’s neck or a knife in their heart – it’s not for me. Too much empathy, that’s my problem. Usually. But not today. Today is different . . . ‘ The year is 1955 and something is very wrong with the world. It is fourteen years since Churchill died and the Second World War ended. In occupied Europe, Britain fights a cold war against a nuclear-armed Nazi Germany. In Berlin the Gestapo is on the trail of a beautiful young resistance fighter, and the head of the SS is plotting to dispose of an ailing Adolf Hitler and restart the war against Britain and her empire. Meanwhile, in a secret bunker hidden deep beneath the German countryside, scientists are experimenting with a force far beyond their understanding. Into this arena steps a nameless British assassin, on the run from a sinister cabal within his own government, and planning a private war against the Nazis. And now the fate of the world rests on a single kill in the morning . . .

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold USA Today bestselling story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units. Surprise . . . your target. Kill . . . your enemy. Vanish . . . without a trace. When diplomacy fails, and war is unwise, the president calls on the CIA's Special Activities Division, a highly-classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world. Originally known as the president's guerrilla warfare corps, SAD conducts risky and ruthless operations that have evolved over time to defend America from its enemies. Almost every American president since World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion and, yes, assassination. With unprecedented access to forty-two men and women who proudly and secretly worked on CIA covert operations from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day, along with declassified documents and deep historical research, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen unveils -- like never before -- a complex world of individuals working in treacherous environments populated with killers, connivers, and saboteurs. Despite Hollywood notions of off-book operations and external secret hires, covert action is actually one piece in a colossal foreign policy machine. Written with the pacing of a thriller, Surprise, Kill, Vanish brings to vivid life the sheer pandemonium and chaos, as well as the unforgettable human will to survive and the intellectual challenge of not giving up hope that define paramilitary and intelligence work. Jacobsen's exclusive interviews -- with members of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service (equivalent to the Pentagon's generals), its counterterrorism chiefs, targeting officers, and Special Activities Division's Ground Branch operators who conduct today's close-quarters killing operations around the world -- reveal, for the first time, the enormity of this shocking, controversial, and morally complex terrain. Is the CIA's paramilitary army America's weaponized strength, or a liability to its principled standing in the world? Every operation reported in this book, however unsettling, is legal.

You've got a good idea. You know it could make a crucial difference for you, your organization, your community. You present it to the group, but get confounding questions, inane comments, and verbal bullets in return. Before you know what's happened, your idea is dead, shot down. You're furious. Everyone has lost: Those who would have benefited from your proposal. You. Your company. Perhaps even the country. It doesn't have to be this way, maintain John Kotter and Lorne Whitehead. In Buy-In, they reveal how to win the support your idea needs to deliver valuable results. The key? Understand the generic attack strategies that naysayers and obfuscators deploy time and time again. Then engage these adversaries with tactics tailored to each strategy. By "inviting in the lions" to critique your idea--and being prepared for them--you'll capture busy people's attention, help them grasp your proposal's value, and secure their commitment to implementing the solution. The book presents a fresh and amusing fictional narrative showing attack strategies in action. It then provides several specific counterstrategies for each basic category the authors have defined--including: · Death-by-delay: Your enemies push discussion of your idea so far into the future it's forgotten. · Confusion: They present so much data that confidence in your proposal dies. · Fearmongering: Critics catalyze irrational anxieties about your idea. · Character assassination: They slam your reputation and credibility. Smart, practical, and filled with useful advice, Buy-In equips you to anticipate and combat attacks--so your good idea makes it through to make a positive change.

Courtroom drama of an inhuman crime.

#1 New York Times bestselling author of American Assassin—now a major motion picture—and “the voice of today’s postmodern thriller generation” (The Providence Journal) delivers a pulse-pounding novel starring a young, hungry, and lethal operative named Mitch Rapp as he begins his career as a CIA superagent. In the year since the CIA fully trained and then unleashed him, Mitch Rapp has been steadily working his way through a list of men, bullet by bullet. His latest target takes him to Paris but in the split second it takes the bullet to leave Rapp’s silenced pistol, everything changes. The tables have turned, and Rapp finds himself brutally outnumbered. In the same instant, he has become a liability. Operating on his own and outside the control of his handlers, it soon becomes clear that nothing is more dangerous than a wounded and cornered man. Because if anyone can survive and come out on top, no matter whom he must kill to get there, it’s Mitch Rapp. The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been as Mitch Rapp embarks on the journey that will turn him into America’s most deadly asset. The non-stop and realistic action proves that “Flynn is a master—maybe the master—of writing thriller novels in which the pages seem to turn themselves” (Bookreporter).