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Alex Berenson

Biography

Alex Berenson

Alex Berenson is a former New York Times reporter and award-winning novelist. He attended Yale University and joined the Times in 1999, where he covered everything from the drug industry to Hurricane Katrina and served as a correspondent in Iraq. In 2006, THE FAITHFUL SPY, his debut novel, won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel. He has since written 12 more novels and a nonfiction book, TELL YOUR CHILDREN. Currently, he lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife and children.

Photo Credit: Craig Geller

Alex Berenson

Books by Alex Berenson

by Alex Berenson - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Rebecca and Brian Unsworth appear to have it all: a nice house in the suburbs of Washington, DC, two well-behaved, healthy teenage children, and important government jobs. However, their marriage isn’t as perfect as it seems. After two decades together, they’ve drifted apart, talking little and having sex even less. Seeking to revive their strained relationship, they decide for their 20th wedding anniversary to take their two kids, Kira and Tony, on a European getaway. They have a blast…until one night in Barcelona when Kira doesn’t come home from a dance club. She’s gone. Abducted. Over the course of a single weekend, the Unsworths will do everything possible to find her --- as Kira herself discovers just how far she’ll go to break free of the trap that’s been set for her.

by Alex Berenson - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

The target was the American Airlines Center, the home of the Dallas Mavericks. The FBI had told Ahmed Shakir that his drug bust would go away if he helped them, and they'd supply all the weaponry, carefully removing the firing pins before the main event. It never occurred to Ahmed to doubt them, until it was too late. Vinnie Duto, the former CIA director and now president, wants John Wells to go to Colombia. An old asset there has information to share --- and it will lead Wells to the deadliest mission of his life, an extraordinary confluence of sleeper cells, sniper teams, false flag operations, double agents high in the U.S. government, and a Russian plot to take over the government itself. If it succeeds, what happened in Texas will be only a prelude.

by Alex Berenson - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Evidence is mounting that someone high up in the CIA is passing messages to ISIS, alerting them to planned operations. Finding out the mole’s identity without alerting him will be very hard, and to accomplish it, John Wells will have to do something he thought he’d left behind forever. He will have to reassume his former identity as an al Qaeda jihadi, get captured, and go undercover to befriend an ISIS prisoner in a secret Bulgarian prison. Many years before, Wells was the only American agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda, but times have changed drastically. He knows it may well be his death sentence. But there is no one else.

by Alex Berenson - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

John Wells has just barely managed to stop an operation designed to drive the United States and Iran into war, but the instigator himself disappeared behind an impenetrable war of security. Now it’s time for him to pay, and Wells has made it his personal mission. But the White House doesn’t want anybody stirring the pot; his old CIA bosses have their own agendas; and other countries are starting to sniff around, sensing something unusual. It is when Russia and China enter the mix, however, that the whole affair is set to combust. With alarming speed, Wells is once again on his own…and the wolves are closing in.

by Alex Berenson - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

John Wells, with his former CIA bosses Ellis Shafer and Vinnie Duto, has uncovered a staggering plot, a false-flag operation to convince the President to attack Iran. But they have no hard evidence. Now the President has set a deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear program, and the mullahs in Tehran --- furious and frightened --- have responded with a deadly terrorist attack. Wells, Shafer and Duto know they have only 12 days to find the proof they need.

by Alex Berenson - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

In an Istanbul hotel, a deep source warns a CIA agent that Iran intends to kill a CIA station chief. John Wells is called in to investigate, but before he can get far, the tip comes true. Which means that the next warning the source gives will be taken very seriously indeed. And it’s a big one. We’ve put a package on a ship from Dubai to the United States. A radioactive one. A bomb? Not yet. It’s a test run.

by Alex Berenson - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Four friends, recent college graduates, travel to Kenya to work at a giant refugee camp for Somalis. But after 12 weeks, they’re ready for a break and pile into a Land Cruiser for an adventure. They get more than they bargained for, though, when bandits hijack them. John Wells is asked to try to find them; when he arrives, he finds that the truth behind the kidnappings is far more complex than he imagined.

by Alex Berenson - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

In 2009, the CIA's Kabul Station fell for a source who promised to lead it to Bin Laden, but instead blew himself up. More than two years later, the station is still floundering, and the CIA's chiefs wonder if it somehow has been infiltrated by the Taliban.

by Alex Berenson - Fiction, Thriller

In Saudi Arabia, a series of terrorist attacks has put the Kingdom on edge. King Abdullah is losing his hold, and his own secret police cannot be trusted. With nowhere to turn, the king asks for ex-CIA agent John Wells's help.