Alan Jacobson - The Lost Codex is featured at the HBS Author's Spotlight Showcase

The Showcase is a special feature of the Author's Spotlight. It is designed to highlight Spotlight author's NEW releases and their soon to be released novels.

The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES Alan Jacobson's new Book: The Lost Codex

Author Alan Jacobson is the bestselling author of jaw-dropping thrillers.

The Lost Codex

OPSIG Team Black Series

Author: Alan Jacobson


AVAILABLE
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO
iTunes


In 930 CE, a revered group of scholars pen the first sanctioned Bible, planting the seed from which other major religions will grow. But in 1953, half the manuscript goes missing while being transported from Syria. Around the same time, in the foothills of the Dead Sea, an ancient scroll is discovered—and promptly stolen. Six decades later, both parchments stand at the heart of a geopolitical battle between foreign governments and radical extremists, threatening the lives of millions. With the American homeland under siege, the president turns to a team of uniquely trained covert operatives including FBI profiler Karen Vail, Special Forces veteran Hector DeSantos, and FBI terrorism expert Aaron Uziel. Their mission: Find the stolen documents and capture—or kill—those responsible for unleashing a coordinated and unprecedented attack on US soil.

Set in DC, New York, Paris, England, and Israel, The Lost Codex has been hailed by Douglas Preston as “a masterwork of international suspense” and “an outstanding novel."

Excerpt from The Lost Codex

PROLOGUE

Eylad Uziel walked carefully over the rough terrain of the Qumran caves. This was Bedouin territory in land governed by Jordan, but he was an Israeli—an unusual if not suicidal proposition. Then again, no one knew his true identity or nationality. Officially, he was the primary translator on the Catholic archaeological team led by Roland de Vaux, a French Dominican priest. Their sprawling, multiyear project was like no other in history: excavating the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Uziel, a soldier during Israel’s war of independence and a scholar before that, had been recruited into Mossad, the fledgling security service designed to gather information regarding threats to the state. Given Israel’s location, pinned in by hostile countries determined to wipe it off the face of the earth, Mossad’s charge was a vital asset during a time of unrest.

But Uziel’s assignment was extraordinary. In spring 1947 a Bedouin shepherd had stumbled onto a cave containing ancient scrolls on animal parchment that turned out to be a handwritten copy of the Old Testament, penned thousands of years ago under the threat of the advancing Romans and their conquering marauders. Uziel’s job was to blend in with the archaeologists working at the site, take stock of what was discovered, and perform a cursory accounting of its significance. Six years earlier, when the first cave had been discovered, the Bedouins who found the scrolls sold them to private antiquities dealers.

Israel, like the West Bank, was still under British rule at the time and powerless to stop the plundering of what its leaders felt was its legacy: the two-thousand-year-old documents were the earliest recorded portions of the Hebrew Bible ever discovered, copied by an ancient Jewish sect whose members likely believed that they were preparing an archive to preserve their religious and cultural traditions in the event the Romans sacked Jerusalem.

The scrolls belonged in a museum, not on the black market.

Uziel’s scholarly work, leading digs and excavating Israel’s hidden history in stone fragments, leather parchments, long-buried buildings, coins, and religious artifacts, also entailed providing analysis to the government and its burgeoning national museum, so that the ancient Jewish civilization that populated the Judean land over the centuries could be properly recorded, studied, and brought into historical perspective.

On November 29, 1947—the day of the historic United Nations vote in Queens, New York, that partitioned Palestine and led to the establishment of the state of Israel five months later—Uziel had purchased three scrolls from a Jordanian antiquities dealer.

Examining the manuscripts left him thirsty to see what other parchments had been holed away in that cave—and the adjacent caves that had been excavated in the subsequent years. Not far away sat the ruins of a complex that housed the Essenes, the Jewish sect whose community members were thought to be the scrolls’ primary scribes.

Despite Uziel’s efforts, and those of other Mossad and government agents, many of the ancient scrolls were still privately held—most notably, by a Palestinian family who had purchased them for a pittance from the Bedouin, who did not know the significance of what they had stumbled upon.

The Vatican had stepped in and taken custody of the rest, and despite requests from numerous Catholic and Jewish scholars, kept them under lock and key, sequestered for some as yet unstated reason.

Uziel made a case to the young Israeli government and national museum that they needed a set of eyes at the dig, overseeing any new discoveries.

Bolstering Uziel’s argument, intelligence analysts had heard rumors that Roland de Vaux’s deputy, Alberi Michel, was a bigoted, vindictive sort who was a fascist sympathizer and displayed flashes of anti-Semitism. Although Mossad could not verify such allegations, Uziel’s mission was approved and conceived in a way that the Israeli government could have eyes on the ground, ensuring that whatever remained of its cultural and historical treasures were not defaced, destroyed, stolen, or sold on the black market.

Uziel wore a straw hat with a wide brim and a white linen shirt, his skin brown from months in the intense sun. Standing on a precipice and looking out at the Qumran landscape, he drew a cotton rag across his brow. There was no breeze and the air was desert dry, despite the proximity of the Dead Sea, which sat off to his left, in plain view on this clear day. Directly in front of him were the undulating burnt sienna and cinnamon colored rocky outcroppings of the hills that sported small openings to the caves which had served as hiding areas for the clay jars that bore the scrolls.

A loud whistle echoed across the divide a few meters away, in the vicinity of Cave 11. Uziel made his way over, navigating the rough terrain and using rope ladders stretched across the stony surfaces.

“I’ve got something!” one of the men said in French. “Another scroll, a big one.”

Uziel quickened his pace. Finds of any magnitude were now few and far between, and witnessing the moment of its unveiling was a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Uziel climbed the rope ladder, slipping twice and nearly taking a header when his toe missed the rung and instead hit a protrusion in the rock face. “What do you got?” he asked in Arabic.

“Look, look!” Michel said. He tossed his whisker brush aside and squared his body in front of the excavated find. “Give me a hand.”

There were now three men in the mouth of the cave behind Uziel. He knelt beside Michel and helped him lift the clay vessel from the loosened dirt.

“How do you know there’s a scroll in here?”

“There’s always a scroll in these pots.”

Uziel gave him a look.

“And I peeked.”

Uziel laughed—-more giddy with excitement than from the comment. The two men carried the container carefully, the other workers standing aside as if in reverence of its contents. Twenty minutes later, they had the receptacle open and the scroll sitting on a work table that was shielded from the elements.

They put on clean work gloves, then Michel glanced at Uziel. “It’s big, like I told you.”

“I can see that.”

They held their breath as they began to slowly unroll it. After exposing three feet, they paused and Uziel hunched over the parchment. This was why he was here: to read, and translate, the Hebrew or Aramaic.

“Remarkably well preserved,” Uziel said. His eyes moved from right to left, line to line, when Michel nudged his left shoulder.

“What is it?” Michel asked. “What’s it say?”

Uziel kept reading. “This is … it’s different.”

“Different? How so?”

He carefully unrolled another foot and continued moving across the document. “Extraordinary.” He stopped and looked up. “Clear the table, give me more to read.”

“Tell me,” Michel said, staring at the black ink block letters. “What does it say?”

Uziel soldiered on, his lips moving as he spoke the Hebrew aloud. Ten minutes later, having reached the end, he reached for the chair behind him and sat down heavily.

“I swear it,” Michel said. “By the hand of Christ, I will strike you with my walking stick if you don’t tell me what it says.”

“Christ is an interesting choice of words.” He made eye contact and his elation turned to concern. “This could change history, my friend.”

Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers

Website: Alan Jacobson
Author's Blog: Alan Jacobson
Blog: Alan Jacobson Newsletter
Twitter: @JacobsonAlan
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Post with Profile + Interview: HBS Author's Spotlight

Amazon Author Profile




Author Description: My literary career has been marked by a number of events, but none more significant than an accidental meeting nearly 20 years ago. While researching "False Accusations" at the Department of Justice's crime lab, I met FBI agent Mark Safarik, who was awaiting promotion to the FBI's Behavioral Analysis (profiling) Unit--the one popularized by TV's Criminal Minds. We hit it off, stayed in touch, and Agent Safarik invited me out to Quantico to tour the FBI Academy and profiling unit. Thus began my immersion in the world of serial killers, rapists, bombers and arsonists.

Seven years later, my education had reached critical mass: I'd made numerous trips to the Behavioral Analysis Unit, had countless hours of conversations with Agent Safarik and his partner, Agent Mary Ellen O'Toole; I'd edited four published FBI research papers on serial offenders and attended numerous FBI training courses; I'd shot submachine guns with the head firearms instructor at the Academy; and I'd parsed serial killer interviews with Agent Safarik. I felt that I owned the material well enough to use this knowledge and experience in writing my third novel, the first featuring FBI Profiler Karen Vail.

Vail had an explosive debut, bursting onto the scene in the national bestseller "The 7th Victim." Sporting a vibrant personality oozing sharp wit and sarcasm, Vail is a woman bucking the odds in a unit geared toward men, someone who always means well but, like you and me, makes mistakes. She has fears, loves, and vulnerabilities--and despite being very good at what she does--suffers perpetual unease about the decisions she makes. Because lives are on the line. Errors prove costly.





Author's Book List
Spectrum - The Karen Vail Series, Book 6
New York City: home to world-renowned museums, theater, restaurants, iconic sports franchises. Central Park. Wall Street. And an infamous serial killer who’s terrorized the Big Apple for decades.

The year is 1995 and the NYPD has just graduated a promising new patrol officer named Karen Vail. The rookie’s first day on the job is anything but easy when she finds herself at the crime scene of a young woman murdered in an unusual manner. Vail is unsure of what she’s looking at or what it means—but it’s a case that will weigh on her mind for nearly twenty years.

As the years pass, Vail’s career takes unexpected twists and turns—as does the case that’s come to be known as Hades. Now a skilled FBI profiler, will Vail be in a better position to catch the killer? Or will Hades prove to be Karen Vail’s hell on earth?

The character who has captivated readers worldwide—and who won the praise of literary giants Michael Connelly, James Patterson, and Nelson DeMille—returns in a story that captures the experiences that shaped the revered profiler and made her the top cop she is today.


Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO
iTunes
Audible



No Way Out - Karen Vail Series
When a potent firebomb destroys part of an art gallery in an exclusive London district, FBI Profiler Karen Vail is dispatched to England to work with Scotland Yard on drafting a threat assessment to head off future attacks. But Vail soon discovers that at the heart of the bombing lies a 440-year-old manuscript that holds clues to England's past—with dramatic political and social implications. The manuscript’s content is so explosive that a group of political radicals is bent on destroying it at all costs.

Or is it the work of someone else? The trail leads Vail to a notorious fugitive who has escaped law enforcement for decades, and who appears to be planning a major attack on London and the United States. When Hector DeSantos, banished from the US Department of Defense and now a rogue covert operative, turns up in England and takes actions that threaten Vail’s life, she finds herself on the run from the British security service, Scotland Yard, and a group of internationally-trained assassins—all determined to silence her…all tightening the net to ensure that she’s got no way out.

With his trademark spirited dialogue, page-turning scenes, and well-drawn characters, National Bestselling author Alan Jacobson (“My kind of writer,” per Michael Connelly) has once again crafted an intelligent, twisting thriller destined to be talked about long after the last page is turned.


Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO
iTunes
Audible



Crush - Karen Vail Novel #2
Fresh off the most challenging case of her career, The 7th Victim heroine and renowned FBI profiler Karen Vail returns in an explosive thriller set against the backdrop of California’s wine country.

Hoping to find solace from the demons that haunt her, Vail makes her first trip to the Napa Valley. But shortly after arriving, a victim is found in the deepest reaches of the exclusive wine cave, the work of an extraordinary unpredictable serial killer. From the outset, Vail is frustrated by her inability to profile the offender-until she realizes why: the Behavioral Analysis Unit has not previously encountered a killer like him.

As Vail and the task force work around the clock to identify and locate him, they’re caught in a web of knotted with secretive organizations, a decades-long feud between prominent wine families, and widespread corruption that leads Vail to wonder whom, if anyone, she can trust. Meanwhile, as the victim count rises, Vail can’t shake the gnawing sense that something isn’t right.

With the killer’s actions threatening the Napa Valley’s multi-billion dollar industry, the stakes have never been greater, and the race to find the killer never more urgent. And through it all, a surprise lurks… one that Karen Vail never sees coming.

Meticulously researched during years of work wit the FBI profiling unit and extensive interviews with wine industry professionals, bestselling author Alan Jacobson delivers a high velocity thriller featuring the kind of edge-of-your-seat ending that inspired Nelson DeMille to call him “a hell of a writer.”


Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO
iTunes
Audible



Hard Target - OPSIG Team Black Series
An enigmatic covert operative. A skilled FBI agent with a dark past. And a terror plot unlike any in history... An explosion pulverizes the president-elect's helicopter on Election Night. It soon becomes clear that the group behind the assassination possesses far greater reach than anything the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has yet encountered—and a plot so deeply interwoven in the country’s fabric that it threatens to upend America's political system. But as Department of Defense covert operative Hector DeSantos and FBI Agent Aaron “Uzi” Uziel sort out who is behind the bombings, Uzi’s personal demons not only jeopardize the investigation but may sit at the heart of a tangle of lies that threaten to trigger an international terrorist attack. Hailed by political thriller master Vince Flynn as “a smart, complex novel that explodes from the page,” and by Lee Child as “a great thriller” that’s “fast, hard, and intelligent,” Hard Target is a ticking time bomb that keeps you clinging to the edge of your seat...and turning the pages. Note: Hard Target also features Jacobson's famed FBI Profiler, Karen Vail, in a key role affecting national security.


Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO
iTunes
Audible



Inmate 1577 - Karen Vail Novel #4
When an elderly woman is found raped and murdered, famed FBI Profiler Karen Vail heads west to team up with Inspector Lance Burden and Detective Roxxann Dixon. As they follow the killer’s trail in and around San Francisco, the offender leaves behind clues that ultimately lead them to the most unlikely of places, a mysterious island ripped from city lore whose long-buried, decades-old secrets hold the key to their case: Alcatraz. The Rock. It’s a case that has more twists and turns than the famed Lombard Street. The legendary Clive Cussler calls Inmate 1577 “a powerful thriller, brilliantly conceived and written.” Inmate 1577 is already a national bestseller--with some readers calling it one of the best novels they have read in years. "A mystery masterpiece...this one will be tough to top." —New York Journal of Books "Jacobson's latest Vail novel continues his streak of terrific mind-bending thrillers. The story line seems straightforward at first, but when the twists come, even the most hard-core thriller fans will not figure everything out. Jacobson should be mandatory reading for the James Patterson crowd; this is an essential addition to any fiction collection." —Library Journal "Jacobson manages to tantalize…and pull off a stunning surprise ending."

—Publishers Weekly "More than mere entertainment…INMATE 1577 is a first-rate page-turner [and] a wonderful addition to the series that will satisfy loyal readers and provide those new to these thrillers with an excellent place to climb aboard." —Book Reporter


Book Trailer: Inmate 1577



Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO
iTunes
Audible



False Accusations
“One of the brightest stars in the publishing industry.” –CNN

False Accusations is a twisting psychological thriller, a tale of deadly revenge where the assurance of "innocent until proven guilty" is not what it seems.

Dr. Phillip Madison has everything: wealth, power, and an impeccable reputation. But in the pre-dawn hours of a quiet California suburb, the revered orthopedic surgeon is charged with double homicide—a cold blooded hit-and-run that has left an innocent young couple dead. Blood evidence has brought the police to his door. An eyewitness has placed him at the crime scene...and Madison has no alibi. With his family torn apart, his career forever damaged, no way to prove his innocence and facing life in prison, Madison hires an investigator to find the person who has engineered the case against him.

As his privileged world is brought crashing down by a psychotic seductress, as family and friends abandon him, Madison's only hope for vindication rests in revealing a truth at the heart of a lie. It's a disclosure that could cost him more than he ever imagined.

False Accusations is a psychological thriller that instantly became a National Bestseller and launched Alan Jacobson’s career, a novel that spurred CNN to call him, “One of the brightest stars in the publishing industry.”


Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO
iTunes
Audible



The Hunted - OPSIG Team Black Series
“Jacobson keeps readers guessing right up until the last page, so trying to put this book down is like trying not to eat the last chocolate chip cookie: most of us will just give in.” –Booklist

How well do you really know the person you love? How far would you go to find out? If there was one person in the world Dr. Lauren Chambers was sure she could rely on, it was her beloved husband, Michael. Recovering from an agoraphobic depression and prone to episodes of blinding anxiety, Lauren is a gifted psychologist for whom her husband's love and support mean everything. So when Michael suddenly and mysteriously vanishes, Lauren once again finds herself balancing on a knife's edge, haunted more than ever by an all-too-familiar paranoia.

Is there more to it than paranoia, though? Private investigator Nick Bradley believes so. As the pair takes off on a cross-country journey in search of answers -- a search that yields a series of unsettling truths about the husband Lauren believed she knew so well -- bestselling author Alan Jacobson sets into motion a page-turning tale of concealed identities, an assassin's vendetta, and murderous revenge. Once again proving his mastery of the shocking twist and the ingenious turn, Jacobson leads readers on an exhilarating road thriller built for hairpin turns and unexpected detours as Lauren heads for a face-off with the most dangerous secret of all: the truth.

From Alan Jacobson, "one of the brightest stars of the publishing world" (CNN), comes a chilling follow-up to his breakthrough bestseller False Accusations: a high-velocity thriller of deadly revenge and psychological mayhem.

Lightly edited and newly updated, The Hunted introduces a number of characters that figure prominently in Alan Jacobson’s later novels, including Department of Defense covert operative Hector DeSantos and FBI Director Douglas Knox, along with others who will be returning in future Alan Jacobson novels.

The Hunted is not just a thrilling read, but it’s an adventure that lays a solid foundation for many characters and stories slated to come in the Alan Jacobson universe.


Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO
iTunes
Audible



Velocity - Karen Vail Novel #3
Renowned FBI profiler Karen Vail returns in Velocity, national bestselling author Alan Jacobson’s most explosive thriller to date. Detective Robby Hernandez, Vail’s boyfriend, has vanished into the dense air of a Napa Valley evening. There are no clues to his whereabouts, other than blood stain and tenuous connections to a vicious serial killer operating it the wine country.

As the task force struggles with Robby’s disappearance, the killer challenges Vail by boldly leaving his high profile victims in public places. Is this offender somehow responsible for Robby’s disappearance? Evidence suggests that he is-but just when Vail and the task force begin to make progress, the FBI orders Vail to return to Quantico to handle a case of vital importance.

Back in Washington, Vail engages convert government operative Hector DeSantos to determine what happened to Robby. It’s a move that backfires when DeSantos’s confidential informants lead them into unforeseen dangers, forcing Vail to face off against powerful foes unlike any she’s ever encountered, threatening her life, her career…all that she holds dear. In a frantic race against time that takes them from the monuments of Washington D.C. to the wealthy beach enclaves of San Diego and the bright excesses of Las Vegas, shocking truths emerge-truths that will forever change Karen Vail.


Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO
iTunes
Audible



The 7th Victim - Karen Vail Series
The Dead Eyes Killer lurks in the backyard of the famed FBI Profiling Unit. His brutal murders, unlike any others previously seen, confound the local task force, despite the gifted profiling skills of Special Agent Karen Vail. But along with Vail‘s insight and expertise comes considerable personal and professional baggage.

On leave pending a review of her assault on her abusive ex-husband, Vail must battle forces determined to bring her down, as she fights to find Dead Eyes before he murders more young women. But the seventh victim is the key to all that stirs this killer...the key that will unlock secrets perhaps too painful for Vail to bear. These are secrets that threaten to destroy her, secrets that will bring down her storied and promising career. For Karen Vail, the truth rests at the heart of a lie. And uncovering it could get her killed...

With material meticulously researched during seven years of study with the Bureau’s vaunted profiling unit, Alan Jacobson brings refreshing realism and unprecedented accuracy to his pages, as he takes readers behind the scenes of the FBI Academy, where he worked with the actual profilers who have studied and interviewed twenty years’ worth of serial killers.


Book Trailer: The 7th Victim



Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO
iTunes
Audible



Author Recommended by: HBSystems Publications
Publisher of ebooks, writing industry blogger and the sponsor of the following blogs:
eBook Author’s Corner
Mystery Reader’s Circle

Check out the index of other Spotlight authors. Spotlight Index.