Showing results by author "Rick Chesler" in All Categories

When a troubled young American couple leases a flat in Portugal, they hope to rekindle lost feelings for one another in an exotic new setting far removed from reminders of their past. But as the first hours in their new surroundings unfold, it quickly becomes apparent that their stay in the flat will be anything but relaxing. Something haunts the unit, and now it's haunting them, shutting them off from the outside world.

When newly licensed Honolulu private eye Nate Savidge hits the streets to track down the killer of a local college student, he soon discovers there's a dark side to paradise. With the help of criminal lawyer Jake Harper, Nate takes on a city teeming with violence and corruption to keep an innocent 17-year-old from a life behind bars.

For centuries, would-be explorers have examined a document written in 1753 rumored to hold the key to locating the so-called Lost City of Z, a fortified settlement containing many treasures and built entirely of gold. Thought to be buried somewhere within the Mato Grosso region of the Amazon rain forest, the lure of the vanished riches has long proven deadly to treasure seekers. Dr. Hunter Winslow, fired from a lucrative professorship for stealing rare documents in order to gain a competitive edge, thinks the key to Manuscript 512 lies not in its words, but in its paper itself.

Marine biologist Dr. Mason Rayman is experimenting with gigantism in sea creatures when he accidentally creates a monstrously large sawfish. When it grows so big he can no longer keep it in his Miami lab, he is preparing to have it destroyed when he learns he is being terminated from his position. By way of revenge, he dumps the oversized shark relative into the ocean, where it soon slaughters bathers at nearby trendy South Beach. Dr. Rayman doesn't let on that it's his fish responsible for the killings, but someone knows what he did, and she's blackmailing him.

Inmate Kane Brooks escapes from prison while participating in a program to train as a commercial deep sea diver. When he assumes a new identity in Florida as an alligator wrangler removing nuisance animals from homes and businesses, it looks like he’s found a way to settle down and lay low. But that all changes when a casual backyard gladiator racket turns into an underground empire staging man-versus beast spectacles in a cage-fighting style ring.

A biotechnology conference in Prague is the target of a terrorist attack, and in its aftermath a renowned geneticist lay dying. His last act is to inject a man he has never before met with an experimental substance - artificial DNA that has been encoded with the details of a plot to unleash mass terror on the United States. Enter OUTCAST (Operational Undertaking to Counteract Active Stateside Threats) - six ex-operatives from six of America's most powerful organizations.

When a rare plant living within the most remote reaches of the Amazon rain forest is discovered to contain a key ingredient for a promising COVID-19 cure, a high-powered pharmacologist teams up with a renegade botanist to locate and retrieve specimens of the elusive plant. But the unlikely pair soon learns they are not the only ones who seek the valuable biological resource.

When a ruthless and ambitious government official puts a plan in motion to topple the sitting president, the Outcast team members find themselves fighting not a foreign threat, but one from inside the US government itself.

In the jungle cities of the Amazon, thousands of tribal descendants suddenly drop dead at the exact same moment for no apparent reason. Strange truths start to emerge that lead respected ecologist, Antonio Medina, into the deepest reaches of the rain forest, to a tribe that has seen virtually zero contact with the outside world. On the other side of the planet, in the Indian Ocean, anthropologist Stel Foster is on a similar quest.

"The Most Dangerous Reality" is a short story inspired by Richard Connell's classic tale "The Most Dangerous Game." It originally appeared in anthology The Game. A newly minted M.D. confronted with massive student loan debts decides to put himself to the ultimate challenge: volunteer to be hunted for sport by a wealthy outdoorsman on a remote tropical island. If he is still alive after three days, his financial problems will be solved. What the doctor doesn't know is that the "sportsman" contracting him for the hunt is an actor as part of a reality TV show.

Matt Knox managed to reach middle age without ever breaking a law. So far as he is aware, he has never transcended the law, ever, no matter how trivial. He will not step outside the lines of a crosswalk. He refuses to take the "creative" tax write-offs suggested to him by professional advisers. He will not opt to get away with anything simply because he can. Until now.

When pirates hijack a container ship off the coast of Somalia, a plan to cripple the US presence in the Persian Gulf and precipitate a war is unleashed. Two North Korean nuclear warheads being smuggled to Iran are the centerpiece of an ISIS plot to distract the world's attention. If they succeed, thousands of people will die and the world will be at war. Enter OUTCAST (Operational Undertaking To Counteract Active Stateside Threats) - six ex-operatives from six of America's most powerful organizations.

A new street drug on American shores is already claiming victims up and down the West Coast. A potent new form of methamphetamine called Red Ice is being produced and used not by an ordinary criminal gang, but a unit of North Korean Special Forces soldiers with a plan to reignite the Korean War on American soil. Enter OUTCAST (Operational Undertaking to Counteract Active Stateside Threats) - six ex-operatives from six of America's most powerful organizations.

During a terrifying break-in at a marine laboratory, a European-North African terror group makes off with a large quantity of deadly nerve agent. Demands are made and large-scale attacks are launched in the United States from coast to coast. Enter OUTCAST (Operational Undertaking to Counteract Active Stateside Threats) - six ex-operatives from six of America's most powerful organizations.

When a highly sophisticated terror cell steals a contingent of deadly Reaper drones from a US military base, no one has to wonder for long what they'll be used for. As America's own top military technology is turned against its homeland, it looks as though, for the first time in history, the president will have no choice but to give in to terrorist demands.