Presents a collection of tales of suspense in all its guises by five critically-acclaimed authors. James Penney’s New Identity by Lee Child --- Lee Child's debut novel was Killing Floor, a first- person narrative introducing his series character Jack Reacher. Child’s second book, Die Trying featured third-person narration and a classic high-stakes, multi-strand thriller structure. But, in its first draft, that structure went one strand too far. There was a character—James Penney—who had an appealing introduction and back story, but who clearly didn't have any valid place to go. So the strand wound up on the metaphorical cutting room floor—until now... The Other Side of the Mirror --- Eric Van Lustbader Lustbader wrote the story after one day re-discovering The Outsider by philosopher/novelist Colin Wilson, in his library. The Outsider had been a seminal book for Lustbader, reading it again he found new meaning in his own work, which is reflected in The Other Side of the Mirror, a story about a spy— an outsider, if ever there was one—and the terrible toll secrecy and lies take on him. The Hunt for Dmitri by Gayle Lynds --- Gayle Lynds wrote her first novel, a modern espionage thriller, Masquerade, in the mid- 1990s. The heroine, Sarah Walker, was a magazine journalist who had the misfortune of having an uncle who was the notorious assassin called the Carnivore, although she did not know this at the time. The Coil, is novel about the Carnivore's only child, Liz Sansborough. A former CIA operative, Liz had played a pivotal role in Masquerade. At the Drop of a Hat by Denise Hamilton --- In 1993, Hamilton was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to teach journalism in Macedonia. Hamilton widely toured the South Balkans and fell in love with the small, quirky nation of Albania, which at that time was just emerging from fifty years of communist isolation. As Hamilton writes in At the Drop of a Hat, there were few ways in and out of Albania but she managed to hitchhike into Tirana with some Albanian journalists she met at a conference on beautiful Lake Ohrid, at the Macedonia-Albania border. Diplomatic Constraints by Raelynn Hillhouse --- While researching her second novel, Outsourced, Hillhouse came across a little-known event that kept nagging at her. She knew her main character, Stella, had somehow been involved in an incident that marked the first time the United States was targeted by fundamental Islamic terrorists. Two weeks after American hostages were seized in Iran in 1979, the U.S. embassy in Pakistan was over-run by Islamic extremists, razed, and two Americans and two foreign nationals lost their lives. This all-but-forgotten incident was actually a key event in the origins of modern terrorism, and was pivotal for Stella, whose life would become entangled in the complex struggle.