STEPHEN HUNTER

Bob Lee Swagger has seen enough of war and fighting for any man: his past as a Marine Corps sniper and later as a self-appointed avenger has been a bloody one. But the hope that he is finished with combat are dashed with a visit from Colonel Philip Yano. Yano has come to America to find a samurai sword that Bob's father took from Yano's dying father in the desperate battle for Iwo Jima in 1945. Yano believes the sword to be a national treasure, of huge political significance to whoever can get hold of it. Bob agrees to help and delivers the sword to Yano in Tokyo, but soon afterwards the Yano family are murdered, their house burned to the ground and the sword stolen. Dark forces are at work. With the aid of Yano's old comrades , Bob enters not only Tokyo's criminal underbelly, but also the violent, obsessive world of the Samurai. Once more he is on a mission of vengeance.

When four famous 1960s radicals are gunned down, including the wife of an international media mogul, it would appear to be an open-and-shut case.

Ryan Philippe currently stars as Bob Lee Swagger on the hit USA Network series Shooter.1934. The depths of the Depression were marked by an epidemic of bank robberies and the swashbuckling, Tommy-gun-toting outlaws who became household names. John Dillinger. Bonnie and Clyde. Pretty Boy Floyd. 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, a man so violent he scared Al Capone and was booted from the Chicago Mob--Lester Gillis, better known as Baby Face Nelson. To stop him, the Bureau recruited the most talented gunman of the time--Charles Swagger, World War I hero and sheriff of Polk County, Arkansas.Eighty years later, Charles''s grandson Bob Lee Swagger has finally decided to sell the family homestead, but when the developers begin to tear down the house, they uncover a strongbox hidden in the foundation. Enclosed is an array of memorabilia dating back to 1934--a much-corroded federal lawman''s badge, a .45 automatic preserved in cosmoline, a mysterious gun part, and a cryptic diagram--all belonging to Charles Swagger. Fascinated and puzzled by these newly discovered artifacts, Bob is determined to find out what happened to his grandfather, who died before Bob was born, and why his own father, whom he worshipped, never spoke of Charles. But as he investigates further, Bob learns that someone is following him, that someone is sharing his obsession with finding out what Charles Swagger really left behind.Alternating between Bob''s present-day search to uncover his grandfather''s legacy and Charles''s relentless pursuit for the nation''s most notorious outlaw in the Midwest of the 1930s,

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. 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. 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 Americas bitter war was reaching its height?

The Year is 1951. A smooth-talking Chicago lawyer has come to chat with Sam Vincent, a former prosecutor, about a dangerous unknown - a prison for violent black convicts in Thebes, Mississippi, a place of many questions but no answers. Would Sam, a white man and a Southerner, be willing to investigate? When Sam vanishes in the mists and swamps, his old friend Earl Swagger packs his gun and heads to Thebes where he discovers sinister secrets that go far beyond the prison walls. The whole town guards itself from nosy strangers with a private army of brutal, gun-toting, Klan-type thugs and rednecks. After barely escaping, Earl vows to right things and reclaim Thebes from the throes of a sinister conspiracy. But first, he enlists just a little help from his friends. Featuring the same fast-paced action and page-turning thrills that made Hot Springs a heart-stopping bestseller, Pale Horse Coming is a triumphant successor.

High summer in Cuba, 1953, and Havana gleams with possibility. Flush with booming casinos, sex, and drugs, Havana is a lucrative paradise for everyone from the Mafia and United Fruit to pimps, porn-makers, and anyone looking to grab a piece of the action - including the Cuban government, which naturally honours the interests of its old ally, the United States of America. Of course, where there's paradise, trouble can't be far behind. Trouble, in this case, makes its entrance in the terrifically charismatic and silver-tongued form of a young revolutionary named Fidel Castro. The Caribbean is fast becoming a strategic Cold War hub, and Soviet intelligence has taken Castro under its wing. The CIA's response is to send the one man capable of eliminating Castro: the legendary gunfighter and ex-Marine hero Earl Swagger, who proved his lethal talent in Stephen Hunter's previous bestsellers Hot Springs and Pale Horse Coming. In Cuba, Earl finds himself up to his neck in treacherous ambiguity, where the old rules about honour and duty don't apply, and where Earl's target seems to have more guts and good luck than anyone else in Cuba. Blending real-world figures into a lightning-paced narrative, Stephen Hunter once again proves himself the master of literary adventure and suspense.

Pale Horse Coming, featuring Stephen Hunters beloved sniper heroes Earl and Bob Lee Swagger, the first Swagger thriller from the Pulitzer Prizewinning author.The time is 1951. A smooth-talking Chicago lawyer comes to chat with Sam Vincent, the former prosecutor of Polk County, Arkansas, about a dangerous subjecta big prison for violent black convicts near Thebes, Mississippi, up the Yaxahatchee River from Pasagoula. Thebes seems to have dropped out of the Unionletters and phone calls go unanswered, and the lawyer has questions that need answers. Would Saman ex-lawman, a white man and a Southerneragree to go up there and find out what he can?The ex-prosecutor takes on the job, but first he goes to see his old friend Earl Swagger, and tells him that if he isnt back in a week, Earl is to come looking for him. When Sam vanishes into the mists and swamps around Thebes, Mississippi, Earl packs his gun, explains to a distraught Junie that duty is duty and a promise is a promise, and sets off for Thebes, Mississippi to track his friend down.Soon enough, Earlwho approaches Thebes and its sinister prison with the stealth of a good Marine on a recon missionrealizes that something very strange indeed is going on there, that the prison is more than just a place that chills the blood of even the most hardened convict, that in fact the whole town of Thebes is hiding a secretand its a place where people disappear all too easily, particularly inquisitive strangers, for whom burial in the swamps follows torture.

Former marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger investigates one of the most enduring controversies of our timethe JFK assassinationin this New York Times bestselling terrific thriller (Booklist, starred review).Its not even a clue. Its a whisper, a trace, a ghost echo, drifting down through the decades via chance connections so fragile that they would disintegrate in the puff of a breath. But its enough to get legendary former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger interested in the events of November 22, 1963, and the third bullet that so decisively ended the life of John F. Kennedy and set the stage for one of the most enduring controversies of our time. Swagger begins his slow night stalk through a much-traveled landscape, unraveling government cover-ups and Cold War secrets. But hes asking questions that few have asked before: Why did the third bullet explode? Why did Lee Harvey Oswald, about to become the most hunted man on earth, risk it all by returning to his rooming house to secure a pistol he easily could have brought with him? How could a conspiracy that went unpenetrated for fifty years have been thrown together in the two and a half days between the announcement of the presidents route and the assassination itself? As Bob investigates, another voice enters the narrative: knowing, ironic, almost familiar, that of a gifted, Yale-educated veteran of the CIA Plans Division. Hugh Meachum has secrets and the means and the will to keep them buried. When weighed against his own legacy, Swaggers life is an insignificant expensebut to blunt the threat, hell first have to ambush the assassin. As each man hunts the other across todays globe and through the thickets of history, The Third Bullet builds to an explosive climax that will finally prove what Bob Lee Swagger has always known: its never too late for justice.

I, SniperRecruited by the FBI to examine the data, retired Marine sharpshooter Bob Lee Swagger penetrates the new technology of the secretive sniper world to unravel a sophisticated conspiracy run by his most ruthless adversary yeta marksman whose keen intellect and pinpoint accuracy rival his own. But when the enemy and his deadly henchmen mistake Bob for the hunted, its clear that some situations call for a good man with a gun . . . and the guts to use it.Night of ThunderWoe unto he who crosses Bob Lee Swagger, especially when his daughters life is at stake. Forced off the road and into a crash that leaves her in a coma, clinging to life, reporter Nikki Swagger had begun to peel back the onion of a Southernfried conspiracy bubbling with all the angst, resentment, and dysfunction that Dixie gangsters can muster. An ancient, violent crime clan, a possibly corrupt law enforcement structure, gunmen of all stripes and shapes, and deranged evangelicals rear their ugly heads and will live to rue the day they targeted the wrong mans daughter. Its what you call your big-time bad career move. All of it is set against the backdrop of excitement and insanity that only a weeklong NASCAR event can bring to the backwoods of a town as seemingly sleepy as Bristol, Tennessee.47th SamuraiBob Lee Swagger and Philip Yano are bound together by a single moment at Iwo Jima, 1945, when their fathers, two brave fighters on opposite sides, met in the bloody and chaotic battle for the island. Only Earl Swagger survived. More than sixty years later, Yano comes to America to honor the legacy of his heroic father by recovering the sword he used in the battle. Bob Lee finds the sword and delivers it to Yano in Tokyo. On inspection, they discover that it is not a standard WWII blade, but a legendary shin-shinto katana, an artifact of the nation. It is priceless but worth killing for. Suddenly Bob is at the center of a series of terrible crimes he barely understands but vows to avenge