A modern day thriller pitching the ultimate terror against the United States of America. CIA agent, Remo Francesini has deep concerns when he talks to a man dying of radiation sickness in the naval hospital at Guantanamo. He is under pressure from his boss, Admiral Starling, and knows the American public rely on people like him to keep them safe. But those concerns and worried deepen when he learns about Harry Marsham, an underwater oceanographer who survives when his yacht is rammed by a freighter in the dead of night, on a becalmed sea. Unwittingly, the two men are drawn into a battle to expose the world famous explorer, Hakeem Khan and his plan to attack the soft underbelly of...

Marcus Blake's security agency is a ramshackle operation with no clients—until Susan Ellis walks into his office, asking for help in finding her brother who has gone missing in Afghanistan. In that moment, Marcus' world is turned upside down and he is plunged into a covert war where arms and drugs are traded by renegades within the CIA. In this world, powerful men who hold high office are tracked by the mysterious Sir Giles Cavendish and sudden, violent death is the certain price of failure. Now, in his quest to find Susan's brother, Marcus faces terror and betrayal in a murky world where one cannot easily tell a friend from a foe.

Usually, this is where the rhapsody would begin; strings would swell; breasts would be clasped with great feeling: The short story isn't dead; it lives! I will abstain. If you're interested in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005 at all, you're already an adherent of short prose, and know that it's alive and flourishing (as long as you can track it down on the smaller and smaller presses to which it's often relegated). If the short story's cachet has evinced some decline over the course of the past century, it's a decline in public exposure and lucrative potential, not in quality. In terms of sales and public profile, the short story collection can't keep apace with the novel or pop nonfiction,...