New Books

World War III is over… or is it? Superpowers race to fill the postwar power vacuum in this page-turning thriller, the next in the Dan Lenson series.

In the next installment of David Poyer’s critically-acclaimed series about war with China, mutual exhaustion after a massive nuclear exchange is giving way to a Violent Peace.

While Admiral Dan Lenson motorcycles across a post-Armageddon US in search of his missing daughter, his wife Blair Titus lands in a spookily deserted, riot-torn Beijing to negotiate the reunification of Taiwan with the rest of China, and try to create a democratic government.

But a CIA-sponsored Islamic insurgency in Xianjiang province is hurtling out of control. Andres Korzenowski, a young case officer, must decide whether ex-SEAL Master Chief Teddy Oberg—now the leader of a ruthless jihad—should be extracted, left in place, or terminated.

Meanwhile, Captain Cheryl Staurulakis and USS Savo Island are recalled to sea, to forestall a Russian fleet intent on grabbing a resource-rich Manchuria.

The violent and equivocal termination of the war between China and the Allies has brought not peace, but dangerous realignments in the endless game of great power chess. Will the end of one world war simply be the signal for the beginning of another?

David Poyer is a Naval Academy graduate, retired naval officer, and former Distinguished Visiting Writer at USNA. His novels have been required reading in the Literature of the Sea course there, along with those of Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville. Poyer has spent thousands of hours researching articles for Shipmate, the U.S. Naval Academy’s magazine, of which he is the contributing editor. Extensively footnoted, these extraordinary stories of adventure and courage span American history from the Civil War to the War on Terror. This book sheds light on corners of history that still affect us today. For example, our huge prison population can be traced to Richmond P. Hobson, the force behind today’s draconian drug sentences. Merian C. Cooper was both an air ace in World War One and the director of the classic film KING KONG. Philo McGiffin, a prankster at the Academy, became a high-ranking officer in the Imperial Chinese Navy, surveying many of the islands China claims today. Other graduates held bridges under fire, sacrificed their lives to save shipmates, shot down snipers with pistols, rescued fellow aviators on enemy territory, advised presidents, led Iraqi militias . . . and much, much more. But Poyer tries not to engage in hero worship. Some of his subjects weren’t good fathers, sons, or family men. Others didn’t always act as nobly later in life as they once had. Still, for at least one shining moment, each of the men and women profiled stood on the mountaintop, and made the difficult choice: To risk it all, for flag, country, honor, and those they led into battle.