Two new novels, a thriller and a mystery, promise unusual excitement in diverse settings. Brendan Reilly’s An Unbeaten Man moves from a deceptively serene college campus in Brunswick, Maine, to a hidden laboratory in the United Arab Emirates, to a showdown at an isolated dacha outside Moscow. In Bryan E. Robinson’s Limestone Gumption, the plot leads readers from a small quiet Florida town into underwater caves in this fast-paced cozy mystery.

An Unbeaten Man: A Michael McKeon Book
Brendan Rielly
Down East Books Nov. 2015
334 pages
$24.95 hardcover

 

 

 

 

A microbe that instantly cleans up any oil spill, no matter how large, by devouring the oil should be the breakthrough that defines a career, but for Bowdoin College microbiologist Michael McKeon, it unleashes a nightmare.

In An Unbeaten Man, American, Russian and Saudi leaders fly to Moscow in a last ditch effort to defeat ISIS and its splinter groups and stop the Middle East from burning by creating a Middle East Marshall Plan. At the same time, The Global Group sabotages those efforts by capturing and threatening to kill Michael’s wife and daughter unless he uses his microbe to annihilate hundreds of billions of barrels of Saudi and Russian oil.

As Michael races against the clock, Deputy NSA Director Melissa Stark joins forces with Michael’s oldest friend, an NSA agent code-named Longfellow, to stop The Global Group and save Michael and his family. Framed for Michael’s kidnapping, she escapes.

With The Global Group, the NSA, the Secret Service and the FSB after them, Stark and Longfellow must stop the plot even if it means sacrificing Michael’s family. Just as he successfully contaminates the heart of Saudi oil production at Abqaiq, Michael is captured and tortured by Saudi security forces.

Forging a new alliance with a deadly Saudi agent, he agrees to save Saudi oil in order to save his family. When Global Group assassins nearly kill him, Michael faces the grim reality that his family may already be lost.

Brendan Rielly is an attorney who lives with his wife and three children in Westbrook, Maine. He’s the middle of three generations of Maine authors with his father and son (as a high school senior) also published. This is his first thriller.

 

Limestone Gumption: A Brad Pope and Sisterfriends Mystery
Bryan E. Robinson
Five Star Publishing  Jan. 2016
314 pages
$19.95 trade paper

 

 

 

 

When Brad Pope returns to his boyhood hometown to settle a debt with his long-lost father, the 35-year-old psychologist becomes a prime suspect in the murder of football legend turned cave diver, Big Jake Nunn. Perched high on the east bank of the Suwannee River, the sleepy town of Whitecross, Florida, is known for its natural crystal-clear springs and underwater caverns. Locals are online and computer savvy, but if asked about blackberries, they think cobbler, not wireless. And townsfolk die of natural causes, not murder.

Until now.

As if being accused of murder isn’t shock enough, the psychologist’s hopes of confronting his father and reconnecting with his cantankerous Grandma Gigi are hindered by the surprised horror surrounding his father’s whereabouts and sinister secrets of the Women’s Preservation Club (WPC).

The six quirky “sisterfriends” in the club founded by Grandma Gigi—whom Brad expects to jabber about preparing Sunday’s church bulletin or the next bake sale—start to look more like cold-bloodied killers than church ladies. As Brad learns of more dead bodies and that each sisterfriend has reason to kill Big Jake, his suspicions sour into the clabbered taste of fear.

Bryan Robinson is a novelist and licensed psychotherapist. His thriller received the 2014 Beverly Hills Book Award for best mystery. He is a veteran author of 35 nonfiction books, has appeared on 20/20, Good Morning America, World News Tonight, The Early Show, and NBC Nightly News. He maintains a psychotherapy practice in Asheville, N.C., where he is working on book 2 in the series.