Cassiopeia Vitt takes center stage in this exciting novella from New York Times bestsellers M.J. Rose and Steve Berry. In the French mountain village of Eze, Cassiopeia visits an old friend who owns and operates the fabled Museum of Mysteries, a secretive place of the odd and arcane. When a robbery occurs at the museum, Cassiopeia gives chase to the thief and is plunged into a firestorm. Through a mix of modern day intrigue and ancient alchemy, Cassiopeia is propelled back and forth through time, the inexplicable journeys leading her into a hotly contested French presidential election. Both candidates harbor secrets they would prefer to keep quiet, but an ancient potion could make that impossible. With intrigue that begins in southern France and ends in a chase across the streets of Paris, this magical, fast-paced, hold-your-breath thriller is all you’ve come to expect from M.J. Rose and Steve Berry.

The first case of New York Times* bestseller Steve Berry’s iconic hero, Cotton Malone.* History notes that the ugly feud between J. Edgar Hoover and Martin Luther King, Jr., marked by years of illegal surveillance and the accumulation of secret files, ended on April 4, 1968 when King was assassinated by James Earl Ray. But that may not have been the case. Now, fifty years later, former Justice Department agent, Cotton Malone, must reckon with the truth of what really happened that fateful day in Memphis. It all turns on an incident from eighteen years ago, when Malone, as a young Navy lawyer, is trying hard not to live up to his burgeoning reputation as a maverick. When Stephanie Nelle, a high-level Justice Department lawyer, enlists him to help with an investigation, he jumps at the opportunity. But he soon discovers that two opposing forces―the Justice Department and the FBI―are at war over a rare coin and a cadre of secret files containing explosive revelations about the King assassination, information that could ruin innocent lives and threaten the legacy of the civil rights movement’s greatest martyr. Malone’s decision to see it through to the end ― from the raucous bars of Mexico, to the clear waters of the Dry Tortugas, and ultimately into the halls of power within Washington D.C. itself ― not only changes his own life, but the course of history. Steve Berry always mines the lost riches of history — in The Bishop's Pawn* he imagines a gripping, provocative thriller about an American icon.*

In this original eBook novella by the New York Times bestselling author of The King’s Deception, globetrotting intelligence agent Cotton Malone is lured into dangerous intrigue surrounding the world’s most famous royals—and uncovers a murderous conspiracy of terrorists and traitors, all born from an ancient tale of Saxon history. “In Malone, [Steve] Berry has created a classic, complex hero.”—*USA Today  * In England to participate in the trial of suspected international terrorists, Justice Department agent Cotton Malone is mysteriously summoned to an audience with the Queen of England. A cryptic call has warned of looming danger to the ailing queen’s son and grandson—the next two heirs in line for the throne. And when the source of that ominous information, a notorious tabloid publisher, dies mysteriously, the royal family has reason to fear a genuine conspiracy. But they also suspect that the enemy lies within—and no one at Buckingham Palace, or even the nation’s own Secret Intelligence Service, can be trusted. Now it’s up to Malone to discover the truth. Matching wits with a power-mad politician and a vicious royal blue blood, he must race against time through the streets of London to the forbidden reaches of Iceland, all to stop a monstrous plot to seize the monarchy—one that stretches back to the time of Arthur. Praise for Steve Berry and his Cotton Malone series   “Malone, a hero with a personal stake in the proceedings, is a welcome respite from the cold, calculating superspies who litter the genre.”—Entertainment Weekly   “Steve Berry gets better and better with each new book.”—The Huffington Post “Savvy readers . . . cannot go wrong with Cotton Malone.”—Library Journal “Berry raises this genre’s stakes.”—The New York Times   “I love this guy.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child

A Cotton Malone adventure involving a flaw in the United States Constitution, a mystery about Abraham Lincoln, and a political issue that’s as explosive as it is timely—not only in Malone’s world, but in ours. September 1861: All is not as it seems.With these cryptic words, a shocking secret passed down from president to president comes to rest in the hands of Abraham Lincoln. And as the first bloody clashes of the Civil War unfold, Lincoln alone must decide how best to use this volatile knowledge: save thousands of American lives, or keep the young nation from being torn apart forever? The present: In Utah, the fabled remains of Mormon pioneers whose nineteenth-century expedition across the desert met with a murderous end have been uncovered. In Washington, D.C., the official investigation of an international entrepreneur, an elder in the Mormon church, has sparked a political battle between the White House and a powerful United States senator. In Denmark, a Justice Department agent, missing in action, has fallen into the hands of a dangerous zealot—a man driven by divine visions to make a prophet’s words reality. And in a matter of a few short hours, Cotton Malone has gone from quietly selling books at his shop in Denmark to dodging bullets in a high-speed boat chase. All it takes is a phone call from his former boss in Washington, and suddenly the ex-agent is racing to rescue an informant carrying critical intelligence. It’s just the kind of perilous business that Malone has been trying to leave behind, ever since he retired from the Justice Department. But once he draws enemy blood, Malone is plunged into a deadly conflict—a constitutional war secretly set in motion more than two hundred years ago by America’s Founding Fathers. From the streets of Copenhagen to the catacombs of Salzburg to the rugged mountains of Utah, the grim specter of the Civil War looms as a dangerous conspiracy gathers power. Malone risks life, liberty, and his greatest love in a race for the truth about Abraham Lincoln—while the fate of the United States of America hangs in the balance.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Jefferson Key brings you a short story that takes readers on a perilous hunt for . . . *The Devil's Gold* Once he was called the Sphinx, a man so inscrutable that neither his adversaries nor fellow intelligence operatives could predict his next move. Now a contract agent with a secret mission, Jonathan Wyatt has gone rogue. For eight years he’s been plotting. Waiting. Scheming to kill Federal agents Christopher Combs and Cotton Malone, whom he blames for the loss of his career. But as Wyatt prepares for a final confrontation in a remote South American village, he makes a discovery that stretches back to the horrors of World War II, to the astounding secret of a child’s birth, to Martin Bormann and Eva Braun—and to a fortune in lost gold. BONUS: Includes excerpts from Steve Berry's The Jefferson Key and The Columbus Affair.

The tomb of China’s First Emperor, guarded by an underground army of terra-cotta warriors, has remained sealed for more than 2,000 years. Though it’s regarded as one of the greatest archaeological sites in the world, the Chinese government won’t allow anyone to open it. Why? That question is at the heart of a dilemma faced by former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone, whose life is shattered when he receives an anonymous note carrying an unfamiliar Web address. Logging on, he sees Cassiopeia Vitt, a woman who’s saved his life more than once, being tortured at the hands of a mysterious man who has a single demand: Bring me the artifact she’s asked you to keep safe. The only problem is, Malone doesn’t have a clue what the man is talking about, since Cassiopeia has left nothing with him. So begins Malone’s most harrowing adventure to date; one that offers up astounding historical revelations, pits him against a ruthless ancient brotherhood, and sends him from Denmark to Belgium to Vietnam then on to China, a vast and mysterious land where danger lurks at every turn.

Eight years ago Cotton Malone was an agent for the Justice Department, handling the toughest and most sensitive international investigations. But sometimes things became intensely personal. In his latest eBook original short story, New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry lays out just such a tale—one with shocking historical implications. Cotton Malone never cared for the shady dealings of his brother-in-law, Scott Brown. But when Scott dies while scuba diving, Cotton’s wife and her grieving sister demand more than just a secondhand police report. So Malone heads to Haiti. There, beneath crystal clear waters, he learns that Scott found the sunken wreckage of the Santa Maria, the fabled flagship of Christopher Columbus, and he paid for the discovery with his life. Setting out to piece together what happened, Malone quickly realizes that he’s not the only man there with questions. An Israeli intelligence agent is in top secret pursuit of what Scott died trying to protect. And a sinister Austrian with a hidden agenda has no qualms about killing for the mysterious prize. On the hunt for something that has been lost for 500 years, Malone is suddenly enmeshed in a deadly cat and mouse game being played across the north shore of Haiti and beneath the Caribbean Sea—and he’ll have to fight just to get out of there alive. Features an exciting preview of Steve Berry’s much-anticipated new thriller, *The Columbus Affair*

The first case of New York Times bestseller Steve Berry's iconic hero, Cotton Malone.History notes that the ugly feud between J. Edgar Hoover and Martin Luther King, Jr., marked by years of illegal surveillance and the accumulation of secret files, ended on April 4, 1968 when King was assassinated by James Earl Ray. But that may not have been the case. Now, fifty years later, former Justice Department agent, Cotton Malone, must reckon with the truth of what really happened that fateful day in Memphis.It all turns on an incident from eighteen years ago, when Malone, as a young Navy lawyer, is trying hard not to live up to his burgeoning reputation as a maverick. When Stephanie Nelle, a high-level Justice Department lawyer, enlists him to help with an investigation, he jumps at the opportunity. But he soon discovers that two opposing forces—the Justice Department and the FBI—are at war over a rare coin and a cadre of secret files...

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Steve Berry’s The Columbus Affair and a Cotton Malone dossier. When Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile in 1821, he took to the grave a powerful secret. As general and emperor, he had stolen immeasurable riches from palaces, national treasuries, and even the Knights of Malta and the Vatican. In his final days, his British captors hoped to learn where the loot lay hidden. But he told them nothing, and in his will he made no mention of the treasure. Or did he? Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone isn't looking for trouble when it comes knocking at his Copenhagen bookshop. Actually, it breaks and enters in the form of an American Secret Service agent with a pair of assassins on his heels. Malone has his doubts about the anxious young man, but narrowly surviving a ferocious firefight convinces him to follow his unexpected new ally. Their first stop is the secluded estate of Malone's good friend, Henrik Thorvaldsen. The wily Danish tycoon has uncovered the insidious plans of the Paris Club, a cabal of multimillionaires bent on manipulating the global economy. Only by matching wits with a terrorist-for-hire, foiling a catastrophic attack, and plunging into a desperate hunt for Napoleon's legendary lost treasure can Malone hope to avert international financial anarchy. But Thorvaldsen's real objective is much more personal: to avenge the murder of his son by the larcenous aristocrat at the heart of the conspiracy. Thorvaldsen's vendetta places Malone in an impossible quandary—one that forces him to choose between friend and country, past and present. Starting in Denmark, moving to England, and ending up in the storied streets and cathedrals of Paris, Malone plays a breathless game of duplicity and death, all to claim a prize of untold value. But at what cost?

For over a decade Cassiopeia Vitt has been building an authentic French castle, using only materials and techniques from the 13th century. But when a treasure is unearthed at the construction site—an ancient Book of Hours—a multitude of questions are raised, all pointing to an ancient and forgotten religious sect. Once the Cathars existed all across southern France, challenging Rome and attracting the faithful by the tens of thousands. Eventually, in 1208, the Pope declared them heretics and ordered a crusade—the first where Christians killed Christians—and thousands were slaughtered, the Cathars all but exterminated. Now a piece of that past has re-emerged, one that holds the key to the hiding place of the most precious object the Cathars possessed. And when more than one person becomes interested in that secret, in particular a thief and a billionaire, the race is on. From the medieval walled city of Carcassonne, to the crest of mysterious Montségur, to a forgotten cavern beneath the Pyrenees, Cassiopeia is drawn deeper and deeper into a civil war between two people obsessed with revenge and murder. **About the Author Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of fourteen Cotton Malone and four stand-alone novels. He has over twenty-three million books in print, translated into forty languages. He is an emeritus member of the Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board and a founding member of International Thriller Writers, formerly serving as its copresident. 

Explosive in both its pace and its revelations, The Third Secret is a remarkable international thriller. Bestselling author Steve Berry tackles some of the most controversial ideas of our time in a breakneck journey through the history of the Church and the future of religion. Fatima, Portugal, 1917: The Virgin Mary appears to three peasant children, sharing with them three secrets, two of which are soon revealed to the world. The third secret is sealed away in the Vatican, read only by popes, and not disclosed until the year 2000. When revealed, its quizzical tone and anticlimactic nature leave many faithful wondering if the Church has truly unveiled all of the Virgin Mary's words–or if a message far more important has been left in the shadows. Vatican City, present day: Papal secretary Father Colin Michener is concerned for the Pope. Night after restless night, Pope Clement XV enters the Vatican's Riserva, the special archive open only to popes, where the Church's most clandestine and controversial documents are stored. Though unsure of the details, Michener knows that the Pope's distress stems from the revelations of Fatima. Equally concerned, but not out of any sense of compassion, is Alberto Cardinal Valendrea, the Vatican's Secretary of State,. Valendrea desperately covets the papacy, having narrowly lost out to Clement at the last conclave. Now the Pope's interest in Fatima threatens to uncover a shocking ancient truth that Valendrea has kept to himself for many years. When Pope Clement sends Michener to the Romanian highlands, then to a Bosnian holy site, in search of a priest–possibly one of the last people on Earth who knows Mary's true message–a perilous set of events unfolds. Michener finds himself embroiled in murder, suspicion, suicide, deceit, and his forbidden passion for a beloved woman. In a desperate search for answers, he travels to Pope Clement's birthplace in Germany, where he learns that the third secret of Fatima may dictate the very fate of the Church–a fate now lying in Michener's own hands.

A family’s secret, a ruthless fanatic, and a covert arm of the American government—all are linked by a single puzzling possibility: What if everything we know about the discovery of America was a lie? What if that lie was designed to hide the secret of why Columbus sailed in 1492? And what if that 500-year-old secret could violently reshape the modern political world? Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Tom Sagan has written hard-hitting articles from hot spots around the world. But when one of his stories from the Middle East is exposed as a fraud, his professional reputation crashes and burns. Now he lives in virtual exile—haunted by bad decisions and a shocking truth he can never prove:  that his downfall was a deliberate act of sabotage by an unknown enemy. But before Sagan can end his torment with the squeeze of a trigger, fate intervenes in the form of an enigmatic stranger.  This stranger forces Sagan to act—and his actions attract the attention of the Magellan Billet, a top-secret corps of the United States Justice Department that deals with America’s most sensitive investigations. Sagan suddenly finds himself caught in an international incident, the repercussions of which will shudder not only Washington, D.C., but also Jerusalem. Coaxed into a deadly cat-and-mouse game, unsure who’s friend and who’s foe, Sagan is forced to Vienna, Prague, then finally into the Blue Mountains of Jamaica—where his survival hinges on his rewriting everything we know about Christopher Columbus.

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Steve Berry’s The Emperor’s Tomb and a Cotton Malone dossier. Cotton Malone retired from the high-risk world of elite operatives for the U.S. Justice Department to lead the low-key life of a rare-book dealer. But his quiet existence is shattered when he receives an anonymous e-mail: “You have something I want. You’ re the only person on earth who knows where to find it. Go get it. You have 72 hours. If I don’t hear from you, you will be childless.” His horrified ex-wife confirms that the threat is real: Their teenage son has been kidnapped. When Malone’s Copenhagen bookshop is burned to the ground, it becomes brutally clear that those responsible will stop at nothing to get what they want. And what they want is nothing less than the lost Library of Alexandria. A cradle of ideas–historical, philosophical, literary, scientific, and religious–the Library of Alexandria was unparalleled in the world. But fifteen hundred years ago, it vanished into the mists of myth and legend–its vast bounty of wisdom coveted ever since by scholars, fortune hunters, and those who believe its untold secrets hold the key to ultimate power. Now a cartel of wealthy international moguls, bent on altering the course of history, is desperate to breach the library’s hallowed halls–and only Malone possesses the information they need to succeed. At stake is an explosive ancient document with the potential not only to change the destiny of the Middle East but to shake the world’s three major religions to their very foundations. Pursued by a lethal mercenary, Malone crosses the globe in search of answers. His quest will lead him to England and Portugal, even to the highest levels of American government–and the shattering outcome, deep in the Sinai desert, will have worldwide repercussions.

**Experience a heart-pumping and thrilling tale of suspense! Originally published in THRILLER (2006),edited by #1 * New York Times* bestselling author James Patterson. In this alternative-history-with-a-twist Thriller Short, New York Times bestselling writer Steve Berry explores one of Cotton Malone’s early missions, from a time when Malone was still employed as one of the Magellan Billet’s twelve agents. Malone is sent on a mission to a small, central Asian country run by an enigmatic dictator, Yossef Sharma, whose alliance with the United States must be kept under wraps. It’s not a mission Malone enjoys, since Sharma has a penchant for burning books. Things get even more interesting when Sharma connects Malone with the world’s most infamous criminal, a man who wants to surrender. Things are not always what they seem, and Malone will need Sharma’s help if he plans to set things right and give the devil his due. Don’t miss any of these exciting Thriller Shorts: James Penney’s New Identity by Lee Child Operation Northwoods by James Grippando Epitaph by J. A. Konrath The Face in the Window by Heather Graham Kowalski’s in Love by James Rollins *The Hunt for Dmitri * by Gayle Lynds Disfigured by Michael Palmer and Daniel Palmer The Abelard Sanction by David Morrell Falling by Chris Mooney Success of a Mission by Dennis Lynds The Portal by John Lescroart and M. J. Rose The Double Dealer by David Liss Dirty Weather by Gregg Hurwitz Spirit Walker by David Dun At the Drop of a Hat by Denise Hamilton The Other Side of the Mirror by Eric Van Lustbader Man Catch by Christopher Rice Goodnight, Sweet Mother by Alex Kava Sacrificial Lion by Grant Blackwood Interlude at Duane’s by F. Paul Wilson The Powder Monkey by Ted Bell Surviving Toronto by M. Diane Vogt Assassins by Christopher Reich The Athens Solution by Brad Thor Diplomatic Constraints by Raelynn Hillhouse Kill Zone by Robert Liparulo The Devils’ Due by Steve Berry The Tuesday Club by Katherine NevilleGone Fishing<