In Donor, the latest paperback from wizard plotter Charles Wilson, the author delivers another voyage inside the world of medicine that reads more like today’s headlines than fiction.

Wilson returns again to Biloxi on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in this spine-tingling book. Donor is a mixture of thriller, action-adventure, and mystery, which is only one of the many reasons why Wilson’s readership is growing rapidly across genre lines.

Too many patients are dying inside the huge public hospital where the idealistic young doctor Michael Sims works as an emergency room doctor. When Sims watches a little girl’s life ebb away despite the best that modern medicine can deliver, he becomes depressed about his choice of careers.

Across town, a popular and prominent Congressman dies, his skull shattered, but police investigators determine the death to be a suicide. Despite what they say, the Congressman’s beautiful young daughter, Shannon Donnelly, stubbornly refuses to believe that her father took his own life.

With the stage set, Wilson skillfully plots to bring Donnelly and Dr. Sims together to uncover the truth about a medical experiment that utilizes nerve regeneration and organ transplants.

Along the way, Dr. Sims becomes the top contender for the dead Congressman’s seat, thanks to a computer billionaire who wants to organize a group of national politicians to back his dream of a nationwide chain of medical research centers. And Shannon Donnelly finds herself on a path not only to find her father’s killer but to save Dr. Sims as well. That path takes them into the deepest and darkest secrets of government and medicine where there are no volunteers, no donors, and where the pair discovers that death isn’t the worst thing they have to fear. Being chosen is.

Wilson’s next hardback book, Game Plan, will be released in January. ¦ Alice Jackson Baughn is a freelance writer in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

One hallmark of a good writer is the ability to follow a very successful first work with one that surpasses it. April Smith has done just that with her latest suspense thriller, Be The One. This new book reflects the same originality and thorough research as her North of Montana, which was widely praised by critics and readers. This time, Smith reveals her life-long fascination with baseball when she takes the reader behind the front office of the Los Angeles Dodgers to meet the club’s fiercely competitive scouts, who are charged with finding and signing the league’s future all-stars.

Cassidy Sanderson is the daughter of legendary pitcher Smokey Sanderson and the only female scout in major league baseball. Like her male counterparts, Cassidy is a hard-living, hard-drinking, passionate follower of the game; her life revolves around the young men who struggle to make it to the minors in the hope of a shot at the big time. She is constantly on the lookout for that rarest of diamonds, The One, a player who will carry the day and lead his team to victory.

A well tended network of friends and coaches alerts Cassidy to promising prospects. Although nominally assigned an area in the United States, she is drawn to a call from Pedro Padrillo, her father’s teammate and a close family friend, who reports observing Alberto Cruz, a young player in the Dominican Republic. While in Santo Domingo observing Cruz’s play, Cassidy begins a torrid affair with Joe Galinis, a flamboyant Greek developer from Los Angeles, who owns one of the city’s plushest casinos.

Cassidy confirms Pedro’s instinct that Cruz has the talent to reach the majors and convinces her bosses to fly him to L.

A. for a closer look. Soon after he arrives at the Dodgers’s training camp, Alberto begins receiving blackmail letters, voodoo warnings, and a gruesome video all threatening to reveal the details of a fatal hit and run accident in Santo Domingo that might have involved him, Cassidy, and Joe Galinis. The blackmail threats evolve into violence when Cassidy advises Alberto not to pay; she is attacked in a nightclub parking lot and survives only because of the timely arrival of other customers.

Cassidy turns to Joe Galinis in an effort to sort out the pressures that seem to be crashing in on her usually hectic life pressures that jeopardize Alberto’s chances. The police suspect an underlying drug connection behind the violent intimidation.

Cassidy herself becomes a suspect and feels her declining influence with the club as she pushes to elevate Alberto in the upcoming player draft.

Only a true insider could include the details that flesh out Smith’s absorbing yarn as she brings all these strands to a stunning ending certain not only to make readers ask for more, but also help them appreciate the rocky climb from barrio sandlots to the majors.

John Messer is a writer in Michigan.

It is not unusual for a political thriller to possess a far-fetched plot, with America’s military and diplomatic power laid low through some foreign threat against the President or the Congress. What is different with Vince Flynn’s latest effort, Transfer of Power, emerges in its sense of authenticity, depth of research, and almost seamless dramatic scenario. In this post-Cold War environment, every nation with an intelligence operation poses a menace to the more powerful military nations. A group of Middle Eastern terrorists put together a sinister plan to seize the White House and the President, and demand the return of the vast amounts of money confiscated from Iran during the Shah’s overthrow.

While President Robert Hayes, a former U.

S. Senator and political bridgebuilder between the warring parties, is alerted to the possibility of an armed terrorist act against the Executive Mansion, there is almost nothing that can be done to stop it. At the same time that this plan is underway, a covert mission by an elite counter-terrorist team pushes ahead to snare a major Iranian figure involved in terrorism throughout the region. The snatch of the terrorist is accomplished without a hitch but the clock is ticking at the White House as the siege is about to commence.

One of Flynn’s finest skills as an up-and-coming young master in the genre of political thrillers is his ability to create a cast of compelling characters, from President Hayes to super operative Mitch Rapp to the resourceful Rafique Aziz. Each one is drawn in a few eloquent strokes, giving readers just enough substance to make them full-bodied.

The battle to capture the White House gets a top rating for its intensity and realism. The combat, like the plan to infiltrate the White House, reveals the wealth of research used in constructing the novel. None of the events leading to the entrapment of the President rings false. As the President waits nervously for the resolution of the crisis, the true nature of Beltway politics rears its ugly head, with both his allies and enemies suddenly jockeying for positions of power and advantage. Alternating views of the action from both captors and captives raise the heat. And through its unforgiving depiction of lawmakers, cabinet personnel, and government agencies, Transfer of Power says much about the take-no-prisoners attitude of American politics.

It’s still a dangerous world out there. Despite the breakup of the Soviet Union, or perhaps because of it, there are plenty of powder kegs across the globe, waiting to be lit. Some of them are due to the dispersal of the weapons of a cash-poor U.S.

S.

R.; some, like the Middle East, the horn of Africa, and Northern Ireland, will be with us always. Without doubt, the biggest threat to freedom worldwide is Communist China, a country seemingly capable of doing anything to further its aims, from stealing secrets to brutally repressing dissent within its borders.

It is into this mix that writer Patrick Robinson sends his latest protagonists over 100 of them the crew of the nuclear submarine U.S.

S. Seawolf. Assigned to a covert reconnaissance mission in the South China Sea, routine quickly becomes deadly, and following a tragic mishap, the Seawolf and its crew fall into the hands of the Chinese. It quickly becomes apparent that their captors have no intention of letting them go ever. What’s worse, a member of their crew harbors a secret that, if discovered, would make the sub’s capture pale in comparison.

The Seawolf’s command crew knows they must hold their crew together until help arrives if it ever does but with personnel dying at the hands of the Chinese, they don’t know how long they can hold out. It’s up to a no-nonsense admiral, a disgraced colonel, and a crack team of Navy Seals to get the crew of the Seawolf out of their isolated prison before they are tortured into giving up the Seawolf’s secrets. And what about the sub herself? Full of detail, U.S.

S. Seawolf will please the Tom Clancy/Technothriller crowd; its rousing climax coupled with a shocking ending will leave Robinson’s fans hungry for his next book.