Vatican Thrillers

September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. The war's outcome is far from certain. An Irish priest, Hugh O'Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, the world's smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. Here Hugh brings together an unlikely band of friends to hide the vulnerable under the noses of the enemy. But Hauptmann's net begins closing in on the Escape Line and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical.

His name is Joseph Turner, a brave young construction worker, who rescues an imperiled co-worker trapped on a swaying iron girder twenty-four stories high-only to slip and plummet to the pavement below. Horrified onlookers are astonished and the world is stunned by what happens next...Suddenly, miraculously, Joseph Turner is granted a rematch with life. Only this time with a beautiful unusual power. An astounding adventure, a romance of tenderness and passion, a spiritual thriller that spans time and the world-THE SECOND SON is all these, and above all, gripping edge-of-the-seat entertainment.

In her long career as America's most beloved suspense writer, Mary Higgins Clark's The Lost Years is her most astonishing and dramatic work to date. At its center is a discovery that, if authenticated, may be the most revered document in human history - the holiest of the holy - and certainly the most coveted and valuable object in the world.

When the papal apartments are burgled in 1901, Sherlock Holmes is summoned to Rome by Pope Leo XII. After learning from the pontiff that several priceless cameos that could prove compromising to the church, and perhaps determine the future of the newly unified Italy, have been stolen, Holmes is asked to recover them. In a parallel story, Michelangelo, the toast of Rome in 1501 after the unveiling of his Pieta, is commissioned by Pope Alexander VI, the last of the Borgia pontiffs, with creating the cameos that will bedevil Holmes and the papacy four centuries later.

There is a nuclear weapon in the hands of the Vatican City’s deadliest enemy. And time is running out to stop an attack... Marco Venetti, the only man the Pope trusts, is on the hunt for a traitor. He is willing to do anything to protect the church, and the man at its heart. Even if it means getting blood on his hands... But when Marco finds him, the traitor reveals terrifying new information: the name of a Russian mafioso with a grudge against the Vatican and possession of a nuclear bomb. If Marco doesn’t work with him, the consequences will be deadly.

In the days following the Pope's death, a cardinal is found brutally murdered in a chapel in Rome, his eyes gouged and his hands cut off. Called in for the grisly case, police inspector Paola Dicanti learns that another cardinal was recently found dead; he had also been tortured.

Conspiracy, intrigue, deceit, and murder in the holiest of sanctuaries result from man's ultimate fall – thou shall not covet. It's based on religious and historical events that portray the fierce enmity within the Catholic Church emanating from the challenge of modernity versus tradition. The novel traces an early nineteenth-century secret Italian document, The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, that maps out a generational blueprint to overthrow the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

When the Vatican Knights are called upon to seek the Holy Grail of the dark messiahs that is the tome of the Baal Manifesto, Kimball Hayden and his team must go against their most lethal enemy that surrounds himself with tier-one mercenaries. With the manifesto having been mythicized as being created by the master of the Unholy Trinity, the Vatican Knights soon find themselves in a battle against a man who might have the power of Satan behind him.

In Mindanao, Philippines, a terrorist faction holding members of the clergy hostage is summarily liquidated. On the same night in Manila, a separate team of sophisticated thieves with a considerable amount of military training enter a high-tech security facility to steal the coveted Scepter of Light, a staff once used by Saint Peter as he spread the Gospel of Jesus. In Greece, the buyer of the relic learns that the item he purchased for one hundred million in American funds had hit a hurdle, galvanizing his team to aid in the scepter’s recovery in the Philippines.

Before Kimball Hayden became a Vatican Knight, he was the commander of the Pieces of Eight, a kill squad that worked as part of a black-arm force of the CIA. He kills with impunity and acts with the cold fortitude of a machine. But when he begins to question the morality of his actions and the motives of his superiors, he is placed within the crosshairs by high-end principals who want to see him dead.

Growing up with a sheltering mother and a belligerent father, Kimball Hayden's young life goes from one of innocence to the depths of chaos. When a vicious syndicate of murderers and extortionists begin to run the streets, Kimball soon becomes the focal point of their attention. His family is placed within the crosshairs, friends go missing or are found dead, all messages from the Gangster Prince. But when Kimball's world shatters and he grieves a great loss, the sleeping giant within him awakens.

In central Syria, villages are razed as young men are conscripted to join the ISIS faction. In a Doctors Without Borders camp which is overrun by members of the Islamic State, people are abducted along with a priest Father Savino. He also happens to be the brother of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. From the green zone in Iraq, Shari Cohen, now a CIA consultant and operator, learns that she must appropriate intel from the resurging ISIS force to stop them from striking international targets.

Thirty years ago, the world was in the exploratory stages of creating a technology capable of artificial intelligence. Thirty years later, that technology has been perfected. In a lab somewhere in a remote mountain region in Iran, nanoparticles, or micro-bots, have been created to be self-sustaining and self-reproducing, each day evolving and learning from experience. They have been programmed to be the ultimate predator, devouring everything in their path and leaving nothing behind.

When the Vatican receives a third necrology report that outlines the impending time and death of the top-tier abductee, the Vatican Knights are forced to operate within a small window of opportunity to locate and extract the hostage before the final obituary comes to completion.

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), or Vatican II, is arguably the most significant event in the life of the Catholic Church since the Reformation. The Council initiated, intentionally or not, profound changes not simply within Catholic theology, but in the religious, social, and moral lives of the world's billion Catholics. It also reconfigured, intellectually and practically, the Church's engagements with those outside of it—most obviously with regard to other religions.

While traveling across the United States during the Papal Symposium, the papal plane, Shepherd One, is commandeered by a terrorist cell calling itself the Muslim Revolutionary Front. On board: a nuclear payload with half the yield that destroyed Hiroshima. Their demand to the US government: assassinate the five leading principals of Mossad.

In Los Angeles, the niece of an esteemed cardinal of the Vatican is abducted by the Albanian mob. Kimball Hayden, a man without a country or the support of the church, soon finds himself in the crosshairs of an indigenous black-op unit that is trying to terminate him for secrets that could set off a political firestorm. Lacking in numbers, Kimball must prove himself to the Vatican by overcoming an Albanian team of precision assassins and a sanctioned kill team from the United States government.

Quel est le secret des sœurs-servantes de Saint-Michel, société secrète liée aux toutes premières heures du christianisme ? 1209, Sud-Ouest de la France. En charge de la croisade contre l'hérésie cathare, les Dominicains poursuivent dans l'ombre un autre objectif : en finir avec une société secrète, les sœurs-servantes de Saint-Michel, dépositaire depuis plusieurs siècles de mystérieuses reliques liées aux premières heures du christianisme. 1428, Pyrénées. L'Espagne est occupée par les musulmans.

Robert Langdon, le célèbre professeur en symbologie, arrive au musée Guggenheim de Bilbao pour assister à la conférence d'un de ses anciens élèves, Edmond Kirsch, un éminent futurologue spécialiste des nouvelles technologies. La cérémonie s'annonce historique car Kirsch s'apprête à livrer les résultats de ses recherches qui apportent une réponse stupéfiante aux questions fondamentales sur l'origine et le futur de l'humanité. Mais la soirée va brusquement virer au cauchemar.

In Egypt, those within the Saint Catherine Monastery are brutally attacked and a secret that has been hidden for more than 3,500 years is stolen. In Zurich, an arms dealer makes an agreement with a band of elite terrorists for one-of-a-kind weapons of mass destruction, for a treasure that was presumed destroyed during the Exodus. When a conversation between two men is covertly videotaped by an operator of the CIA, Vatican Intelligence and the Mossad realize that the partial message received was filled with enigmas.