As a Secret Service agent, Nick Averose spent a decade protecting the most powerful men and women in America and developed a unique gift: the ability to think like an assassin. Now, he uses that skill in a little-known but crucial job. As a “red teamer,” he poses as a threat, testing the security around our highest officials to find vulnerabilities—before our enemies can. He is a mock killer, capable of slipping past even the best defenses.

His latest assignment is to assess the security surrounding the former CIA director at his DC area home. When Nick enters the man’s study, the home’s inner sanctum, he finds the man alone and unconscious. Someone else has been here—someone who attacked the chief and left him for dead, just moments before. Desperately attempting to save the man’s life, he contaminates the crime scene. Now, investigators believe Nick is somehow involved.

Nick knows he’s the perfect scapegoat. But who is framing him, and why? To clear his name, he must find the truth—a search that leads to a nefarious conspiracy whose roots stretch back decades. The prize is the most powerful position in the world: the Oval Office.

To save himself and the people he loves, Nick must stop the men who rule Washington before they bury him along with their secrets.

I don’t know if you noticed… but we feature a lot of thrillers around here. It’s a popular genre—in our office and with readers in general—and we feature at least one every month. In other words, you could be a BOTM member going back for years and have ordered nothing from us but books about murder, secrets, and lies.

That said, we generally stick to thrillers of the endangered wife/missing girl/runaway woman variety. We still love those, but this month we’re switching it up in favor of something less personal and more political. Check out this premise: a shadowy deep state organization frames former Secret Service agent Nick Averose for the killing of a state official, prompting a chase across Washington, D.C. To prove his innocence, Nick—with the help of his genius sidekick, Delia—must uncover a sinister plot perpetrated by a bunch of villainous politicians seeking to control the government.

This is the kind of book you read in one sitting because the stakes contained therein feel really high. With an injection of espionage and politics, it’s fast and addictive—and still manages to be full of murder, secrets, and lies!