This was the first book to come out on this subject. Frank Bolz is one of the founding fathers of hostage negotiation in the New York City Police Department. His book tells the story about how negotiations got started in New York and what the basic concepts were. It focuses on the classic bargaining interactions where someone is holding a hostage and a negotiator shows up and says, for example, ‘Hey listen, I want to help you but my boss wants to get something for this, so before I can give you what you want, you need to do something for me.’ FBI agent Arthur Potter is flown in to negotiate. But he has competition: local police, state troopers, politicians and the media are swarming. Not everyone has the same agenda. The poignant - and at times very funny - novel from the author of The Dutch House and Commonwealth. The undead Emperor has ruled his mighty interstellar empire of 80 human worlds for 1600 years. Because he can grant a form of eternal life-after-death, creating an elite known as the Risen, his power is absolute. He and his sister, the Child Empress, who is eternally a little girl, are worshipped as living gods. No one can touch them. No until the Rix, machine-augmented humans who worship planetary Al compound minds. The Rix are cool, relentless fanatics, and their only goal I to propagate such Als throughout the galaxy. They seek to end, by any means necessary, the Emperor's prolonged…

Teresa Fava Thomas, Ph.D. is a professor of history at Fitchburg State University and author of American Arabists in the Cold War Middle East, 1946-75: From Orientalism to Professionalism for Anthem Press. I became interested in people who became area experts for the US State Department and how their study of hard languages like Arabic shaped their interactions with people in the region. Most people know that the Waco Siege ended badly, but your work there was one of the more successful parts of the operation. I think it is a very good book on articulating many of the problems that authorities have, and by authorities I mean not just police but governments, in dealing with organised radical terrorists who are willing to die. And I think it is probably the best book out there on that topic. I think its only weakness is that it draws conclusions based only on Chechnyan terrorists and we may see other terrorists act in different ways around the world. My great-grand aunt Blanche Ames was a co-founder of the Birth Control League of Massachusetts. My grandmother marched in birth control parades with Blanche. My mother stood in the Planned Parenthood booth at the Minnesota State Fair and responded calmly to those who shouted and spit at her. As the lead author and associate editor of the monumental reference work Women’s History Sources: A Guide to Archives and Manuscript Collections in the United States , which helped to launch the field of women’s history in the 1970s, I learned to love American women’s history, and I’ve always loved writing. Lemons in the Garden of Love is my third award-winning historical novel. Well, it is very challenging. It is like the suicidal individuals that the police deal with all the time. If someone really is convinced that they are going to kill themselves and they are determined to do that then you are going to be unsuccessful in stopping them. But we try to find a level of ambivalence and that gives us an opportunity to insert our efforts to try to stop them from doing that. And I think the same is true for terrorists.I love stories about everyday people ripped out of their normal lives and forced to face the craziest situations head-on. I mean, can you even imagine? Could you find a way to survive and win? To face down life-threatening danger and evil people and rise from the ashes stronger and smarter? I’m pretty sure I’d kill if it meant protecting my children…but strand me in the wilderness and I’d likely perish from eating the wrong berries. I hate to be hungry, but I love to bring edgy romantic suspense and twisty psychological suspense to readers. Enjoy! This is the one and only book I have read by this author but based on this I'm not sure I would be prepared to offer a second chance. I found it took me a long time to read despite me usually finishing a book in a day or two. I just couldn't get into it at all! I found it boring, dragged out and a bit of an anti climax none of it really made a great deal of sense! There isn’t a lot of room for character building in a story like this, but Talley works OK as the classic hero-haunted-by-a-tragedy. The hostage takers are well done as being a mixed bag of scared, stupid and crazy, and the various mob guys make serviceable villains. Much like with Demolition Angel, I have to admit that I was skeptical about Hostage, one of Robert Crais' standalone books. Like with Demolition Angel, I had nothing to worry about. Ann Patchett’s writing is always sublime but her characters in this book are unforgettable. She stages a hostage situation in an undisclosed South American country. Over time, the young terrorists and the group of international strangers find a way to live and even thrive together.

And these kinds of techniques are relatively new. The old way of doing it was to go in and take down the bad guys whatever the cost. I am an optimist. I jump out of bed in the morning ready to read and write. With my dog and cat by my side and a cup of coffee in hand, I lose myself in whatever I am working on. I am deeply curious about a gamut of subjects and constantly challenge myself to learn more. I am persistent and not afraid of hard work. Nature and animals are my bottomless well of inspiration and joy. I very much believe life is a journey and I try to enjoy each step.This book was fast-paced with something new happening in every chapter. I enjoyed that the storyline was straightforward making it easy to follow. I enjoyed Crais’ writing. It is high quality without being overly descriptive. As a reader and a writer, I am drawn to the darker side of human nature. Dysfunctional families, toxic relationships, liars, murderers, bring on the bad. An avid reader of horror and thrillers, I love a jaw-dropping twist. I aim for that feeling in my own novels, opening up reader questions and slowly delivering satisfying answers until the final big reveal. While inside my head is very dark and murdery, outside I live a very normal, law-abiding life, in Tampa with my husband, our four kids, and two dogs. I actually met Adam Dolnik at a conference in Turkey and he asked me to review his book and write a foreword for it, which I ended up doing. And I think it is a very interesting book because they examine primarily terrorist hostage sieges that occurred in Russia. For example, they looked at the Beslan school and Moscow theatre situations. Their premise is that the authorities are under-prepared to deal with the new terrorist, who is a bit more sophisticated in understanding how to manipulate law enforcement’s response. When Vonita opened the doors of the Center that morning, she had no idea that it would be for the last time.