Stephen Hunter – författare

Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Hunter, “a true master at the pinnacle of his craft” (Jack Carr), returns with a classic Western—gunfights, horses, saloons, and looming above, the ominous presence of the railroad—about a Civil War veteran investigating the dark reality of a prosperous ranch.In the frying pan of a drought-scorched 1890s Southwest, an old man shows up at the region’s only prosperous spread, the Callahan ranch, seeking work. Jack is flinty, shrewd, tough, and a natural with a gun. As an incentive to be taken on at his age, he shows the foreman an uncanny skill with one of Mr. Winchester’s latest models. He knows a sharpshooter would be valuable to Colonel Callahan and head gun man Tom Voth. But he has his own mission. Aware that a young cowboy on the ranch has died mysteriously, Jack begins to investigate. He soon realizes that the death and the source of the Callahan wealth are dangerously entwined and that many of the dark forces of the American West are at play on the ranch. Soon enough, it’s the season of the six-gun and its fastest shootist.

In the jungles of Vietnam, Bob Lee Swagger was known as 'Bob the Nailer' for his high-scoring target rate at killing. Today the master sniper lives in a trailer in the Arkansas mountains, and just wants to be left alone. But he knows too much- about killing. The mission is top secret. Dangerous, patriotic, and rigged from the start. One thing goes wrong: double-crossed Bob has come out alive. Now he is on the run. His only allies: an FBI agent in disgrace and a beautiful woman. His only hope: find the elusive mastermind who set him up. Multi-layered with non-stop action, this hot-shot torcher of a thriller is addictive, exciting and right on target. A high-tech, high-ride reading experience.

Bob Lee Swagger, one of the deadliest snipers the US has ever produced, has put most of the demons of his past behind him, but not the forty-year-old killing of his father in a sensational shoot out. He returns to his roots, to find out exactly what happened that night in 1955 in Blue Eye, Arkansas. Against him is a shadowy enemy, corrupted by the secret of the older Swagger's death. As the two circle each other they close, inevitably, to a final explosive confrontation that will blast the secrets of two generations wide open.

Twenty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, Bob, 'the Nailer' Swagger is back in the warzone. The Russian sniper with whom he duelled in the jungle and who killed his friend, Donny Fenn, has tracked him down to the remote mountains of Idaho. Soon one man is dead and Swagger's family is under threat. Why has the Russian resumed the conflict? Is it simply revenge, or does it go back further, to a dirty secret buried buried in the extraordinary times of the late sixties when ideologies clashed and America's bitter war was reaching its height?

Paramilitary terrorists who have taken over a top-secret nuclear complex kidnap Maryland welder Jack Hummel and force him to cut through a half-ton titanium block that conceals the launch button.

He is the most dangerous man alive.  He only wants to live in peace with his family, and forget the war that nearly killed him... It''s not going to happen.Stephen Hunter''s epic national bestsellers, Point of Impact and Black Light, introduced millions of readers to Bob Lee Swagger, called "Bob the Nailer," a heroic but flawed Vietnam War veteran forced twice to use his skills as a master sniper to defend his life and his honor.  Now, in his grandest, most intensely thrilling adventure yet, Bob the Nailer must face his deadliest foe from Vietnam--and his own demons--to save his wife and daughter.During the latter days of the Vietnam War, deep in-country, a young idealistic Marine named Donny Fenn was cut down by a sniper''s bullet as he set out on patrol with Swagger, who himself received a grievous wound.  Years later Swagger married Donny''s widow, Julie, and together they raise their daughter, Nikki, on a ranch in the isolated Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho.  Although he struggles with the painful legacy of Vietnam, Swagger''s greatest wish--to leave his violent past behind and live quietly with his family--seems to have come true.Then one idyllic day, a man, a woman, and a girl set out from the ranch on horseback.  High on a ridge above a mountain pass, a thousand yards distant, a calm, cold-eyed shooter, one of the world''s greatest marksmen, peers through a telescopic sight at the three approaching figures.Out of his tortured past, a mortal enemy has once again found Bob the Nailer.  Time to Hunt proves anew why so many consider Stephen Hunter to be our best living thriller writer.  With a plot that sweeps from the killing fields of Vietnam to the corridors of power in Washington to the shadowy plots of the new world order, Hunter delivers all the complex, stay-up-all-night action his fans demand in a masterful tale of family heartbreak and international intrigue--and shows why, for Bob Lee Swagger, it''s once again time to hunt.From the Hardcover edition.

Only one thing stands between a son and his father''s killer: forty years of lies..On a remote Arizona ranch, a man who has known loss, fear, and war weeps for the first time since he was a child.  His tears are for the father taken from him four decades before in a deadly shoot-out.  And his grief will lead him back to the place where he was born, where his father died, and where a brutal conspiracy is about to explode.For Bob Lee Swagger, the world changed on that hot day in Blue Eye, Arkansas, when two local boys rode armed and wild in a ''55 Fairlane convertible. Swagger''s father, Earl, a state trooper, was investigating the brutal murder of a young woman that day.  By midnight Earl Swagger lay dead in a deserted cornfield.Now Bob Lee wants answers.  He wants to know the truth behind the shoot -out that took his father''s life, a mystery buried in forty years of lies.  Because for Bob Lee Swagger, the killing didn''t end that day in Blue Eye, Arkansas. The killing had just begun...Weaving together characters from his national bestsellers Point of Impact and Dirty White Boys, Stephen Hunter''s gripping thriller builds to an exhilarating climax--and an explosion of gunfire that blasts open the secrets of two generations.

It is the spring of 1945, and the Nazis are  eliminating all the witnesses to their horrible crimes,  including Jews and foreigners remaining in the  prison camps. Kommandant Repp, who is known as a  master sniper, decides to hone his sniping abilities  by taking a little target practice at the  remaining laborers in his own prison camp. But one man  escapes and becomes the key to solving the mystery  of the cold, calculating Kommandmant Repp and his  plans for ending the war.Repp was  the master sniper whose deadly talent had come to  the notice of British Intelligence as the linchpin  of a desperate Nazi plot to reverse the fortunes  of the Third Reich at the eleventh hour. But what  was the nature of the weapon that Repp was to  aim--and who was to be his last target? Allied  Intelligence officers Leets, from the U.S., and  Outhwaite from England are dispatched to identify and  abort his lethal mission. And when they finally  learn the truth, the Second World War''s deadliest  race against time is on....

A second chance...In the windswept sands of the Middle East, Paul Chardy fought side by side with Ulu Beg: one, a charismatic, high-strung CIA covert warrior, the other a ferocious freedom fighter.  Then Chardy fell into the hands of the enemy, and Beg was betrayed.  Now the two men are about to meet again.A second gun...Beg has come over the Mexican border under a hail of bullets--determined to assassinate a leading American political figure and avenge his people''s betrayal.  The CIA wants Chardy to stop the hit.  Chardy wants to save Beg''s life.Between the two men is a tragic past, a failed mission, and a woman who knew them in war--and who knows their secrets now.  Around both men is a conspiracy of lies and violence that reaches back to the Cold War.  But as Beg moves in for his kill and as Chardy breaks loose from his handlers, a terrible truth begins to emerge: somewhere, someone wants both men to die.From the Paperback edition.

Stephen Hunter has chosen the backdrop of the chaotic and cruel Spanish Civil War to weave a classic tale of espionage and counterespionage. Julian Raines was one of the first Englishmen to volunteer for the international brigade in Spain. The British Secret Service suspect that the flamboyant Raines was recruited for the KGB by the Bolsheviks during his student days at Oxford and send Robert Florry, a struggling young writer to Spain after Raines with orders to eliminate him. Florry was an old school chum to Raines and had every reason to hate him. The British are not alone on Raines'' trail. The ruthless Communist leader in Barcelona believes that the identity of the double agent conceals a powerful and profitable secret. It is a novel that constantly surprises.From the Paperback edition.

They busted out of McAlester State Penitentiary--three escaped convicts going to ground in a world unprepared for anything like them....Lamar Pye is prince of the Dirty White Boys.  With a lion in his soul, he roars--for he is the meanest, deadliest animal on the loose....Odell is Lamar''s cousin, a hulking manchild with unfeeling eyes.  He lives for daddy Lamar.  Surely he will die for him....Richard''s survival hangs on a sketch: a crude drawing of a lion and a half-naked woman.  For this Lamar has let Richard live...Armed to the teeth, Lamar and his boys have cut a path of terror across the Southwest, and pushed one good cop into a crisis of honor and conscience.  Trooper Bud Pewtie should have died once at Lamar''s hands.  Now they''re about to meet again.  And this time, only one of them will walk away....From the Paperback edition.

“A roaring good read.”—FORBES.com   Master sniper Bob Lee Swagger returns in this riveting novel by bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Hunter.   Ryan Philippe currently stars as Bob Lee Swagger on the hit USA Network series Shooter. The Great Depression was marked by an epidemic of bank robberies and Tommy-gun-toting outlaws who became household names. Hunting them down was the new U.S. Division of Investigation—soon to become the FBI—which was determined to nab the most dangerous gangster this country has ever produced: Baby Face Nelson. To stop him, the Bureau recruited talented gunman Charles Swagger, World War I hero and sheriff of Polk County, Arkansas. Eighty years later, Charles’s grandson Bob Lee Swagger uncovers a strongbox containing an array of memorabilia dating back to 1934—a federal lawman’s badge, a .45 automatic preserved in cosmoline, a mysterious gun part, and a cryptic diagram—all belonging to Charles Swagger. Bob becomes determined to find out what happened to his grandfather— and why his own father never spoke of Charles. But as he investigates, Bob learns that someone is following him—and shares his obsession. Told in alternating timeframes, G-Man is a thrilling addition to Stephen Hunter’s bestselling Bob Lee Swagger series.

A fast-paced and breathtakingly suspenseful account of an extraordinary historical event—the attempted assassination of President Harry Truman in 1950 by two Puerto Rican Nationalists and the bloody shoot-out in the streets of Washington, DC, that saved the president’s life.November 1, 1950, was an unseasonably hot afternoon in the sleepy capital. At 2:00 PM in his temporary residence at Blair House, President Harry Truman took a nap. At 2:20 PM, two men approached Blair House from different directions. Oscar Collazo—a respected metal polisher and family man—and Griselio Torresola—an unemployed salesman—didn’t look dangerous, not in their new suits and hats, not in their calm, purposeful demeanor, not in their slow, unexcited approach. What the three White House policemen and one Secret Service agent could not guess is that under each man's coat was a 9mm automatic pistol and in each head, a dream of assassin’s glory. At point-blank range, Collazo and then Torresola drew and fired, then moved toward the president of the United States. Now, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Stephen Hunter and journalist John Bainbridge, Jr., have pieced together the story of the conspiracy that nearly doomed the president and how a few good men—ordinary guys who were willing to risk their lives in the line of duty—stopped it. They are the first to report on the inner workings of this conspiracy, examining the forces that led the perpetrators to conceive the plot. The authors also explore the story of the men themselves, from their youth and the worlds in which they grew up to the women they loved and who loved them to the moment the gunfire erupted. Vivid and meticulously researched, American Gunfight commemorates the heroism and quiet commitment to duty of the men who, in moments of crisis, saw people through an ordeal, even at the expense of their lives.

New York Times bestselling author Stephen Hunter takes beloved hero, Earl Swagger, into the lush world of 1950''s Cuba to fight the American mobsters who control the Havana casinos.Cuba 1953: The island is on fire. The Mafia-run casinos are rolling, and it''s just a 30-minute flight from Miami to a world of vice, gambling, sex, and drugs. The money is there for anyone who knows how to get it, including the Cuban government and the police, who want to keep their ally Uncle Sam happy. There''s only one threat to this corrupt utopia: a silver-tongued, daring young revolutionary named Fidel Castro. With the Cold War underway, the Soviet Union has sent a sophisticated veteran agent to find and support the young upstart. To counter, the CIA has summoned Medal of Honor-winning ex-marine Sergeant Earl Swagger, whose heroic exploits have earned him the reputation of a man who doesn''t know how to lose. But he''s not just going to find Castro... He''s going to kill him.

A fast-paced, definitive, and breathtakingly suspenseful account of an extraordinary historical event—the attempted assassination of President Harry Truman in 1950 by two Puerto Rican Nationalists and the bloody shoot-out in the streets of Washington, DC, that saved the president''s life.Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner and New York Times bestselling novelist Stephen Hunter, and John Bainbridge, Jr., an experienced journalist and lawyer, American Gunfight is at once a groundbreaking work of meticulous historical research and the vivid and dramatically told story of an act of terrorism that almost succeeded. They have pieced together, at last, the story of the conspiracy that nearly doomed the president and how a few good men—ordinary guys who were willing to risk their lives in the line of duty—stopped it. It begins on November 1, 1950, an unseasonably hot afternoon in the sleepy capital. At 2:00 P.M. in his temporary residence at Blair House, the president of the United States takes a nap. At 2:20 P.M., two men approach Blair House from different directions. Oscar Collazo, a respected metal polisher and family man, and Griselio Torresola, an unemployed salesman, don’t look dangerous, not in their new suits and hats, not in their calm, purposeful demeanor, not in their slow, unexcited approach. What the three White House policemen and one Secret Service agent cannot guess is that under each man''s coat is a 9mm automatic pistol and in each head, a dream of assassin''s glory. At point-blank range, Collazo and then Torresola draw and fire and move toward the president of the United States. Hunter and Bainbridge tell the story of that November day with narrative power and careful attention to detail. They are the first to report on the inner workings of this conspiracy; they examine the forces that led the perpetrators to conceive the plot. The authors also tell the story of the men themselves, from their youth and the worlds in which they grew up to the women they loved and who loved them to the moment the gunfire erupted. Their telling commemorates heroism—the quiet commitment to duty that in some moments of crisis sees some people through an ordeal, even at the expense of their lives.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic and New York Times bestselling author Stephen Hunter comes a brilliant, freewheeling, and witty look at the movies.Evanston, Illinois, was an idyllic 1950s paradise with stately homes, a beautiful lake, a world-class university, two premier movie houses, and one very seedy movie theater—the Valencia. This was the site of Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter’s misspent youth. Instead of going to school, picking up girls, or tossing a football, Hunter could be found sitting in the fifteenth row, right-hand aisle seat of the Valencia, sating himself on one B-list movie after another. The Valencia had a sticky floor, smelly bathrooms, ancient popcorn, and a screen set in a hideously tacky papier-mache castle wall. It was also the only place in town to see westerns, sci-fi pictures, cops ''n'' robbers flicks, slapstick comedy, and Godzilla. In Now Playing at the Valencia, the bestselling thriller author Stephen Hunter has compiled his favorite movie reviews written between 1997 and 2003, bringing to the discussion the passionate feelings for cinema he discovered in the ''50s, a time when genres were forming, mesmerizing stars played unforgettable characters, and enduring classics were made. While filmmaking has changed tremendously since Hunter first frequented the Valencia, the view from the fifteenth row, and the thrill of down and dirty entertainment, has remained the same.