ExcerpTuesday: Jeremy Burns

That was part of the beauty of the whole operation: they didn’t exist. Not as individuals, not as an organization. They were naught but shadows glimpsed from the corner of one’s eye, ghosts that existed solely in dreamscapes. Dead men begetting more dead men.

Someday, the truth would come out, but not today. Not with the Cold War, as some were starting to call the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, escalating as it was. Just days earlier, the Soviets had launched a man-made satellite into space, broadcasting its ominous beeping as it traced a terrifying line across the night sky. No, the secret he guarded could not be revealed in this day. But by the same token, it would no longer be guarded by his hand. His story, his secret, a secret that even his superiors would kill for, was in a safe place, even if its caretaker was unaware of its importance and potential implications for the nation, for the world. All of his loose ends in this life were tied up. All of them save one. Roger gripped the cable in his hands, drawing the noose tight around his neck like a businessman tying his tie in the morning before going off to work. He was already dead, he told himself. He was just finishing what the Division had already done to him. What he had done to so many others in the name of freedom.

He took a deep breath, raised his eyes skyward in a last-minute plea for redemption, and, gripping the cable around his neck with both hands, stepped from the girder into nothingness. Three seconds and thirty-two feet later, the cord drew tight around his neck, lacerating the skin and muscle but leaving the head attached to its body. The eyes rolled back as the head lolled forward. A left shoe plummeting to the dark waters below, the body danced its brief fandango, a lifeless marionette held aloft by one fatal string. On display for the city to see, a man six years dead was just growing cold. The Division had claimed its latest victim. One of its own. Author Bio: A n avid reader since the age of three, Jeremy Burns was devouring novels by the time other children his age were still learning their ABCs. Blessed (and, at times, cursed) with a decidedly active imagination and an insatiable curiosity for nearly everything, Jeremy made learning and storytelling two of his chief passions. After earning his degree in History from Florida State University, Jeremy accepted a position teaching literature, creative writing, political science, and philosophy at an international school in Dubai. Like the characters in his books, Jeremy is an intrepid explorer whose own adventures have taken him from Mayan ruins in the Yucatan to the pyramids of Egypt, from medieval castles across Europe to the jungles of Bangladesh, and beyond. To date, Jeremy has traveled to more than twenty countries across four continents, seeking adventure, discovery, and ideas for future novels. When not exploring a new corner of the globe, Jeremy lives in Florida, where he is working on his next thrilling novel.

Blurb: Graduate students Jonathan and Michael Rickner, sons of eminent archeologist Sir William Rickner, are no strangers to historical secrets and archeological adventures. But when Michael is discovered dead in his Washington, D.C. apartment, Jon refuses to believe the official ruling of suicide. Digging deeper into his brother’s work, he discovers evidence that Michael was murdered to keep his dissertation research buried. Joined by Michael’s fiancée Mara Ellison, Jon travels to New York where he uncovers the threads of a deadly Depression-era conspiracy – one entangling the Hoover Administration, the Rockefellers, and the rise of Nazi Germany – and the elite cadre of assassins that still guard its unspeakable secret. Finding themselves in the crosshairs of the same men who killed Michael, Jon and Mara must navigate a complex web of historical cover-ups and modern-day subterfuge, outwitting and outrunning their all-powerful pursuers as they race through a labyrinthine treasure hunt through the monuments and museums of Manhattan to discover the last secret of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., before their enemies can bury the truth – and them – forever. Links: Jeremy on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JeremyBurnsBooks Jeremy's Website: http://www.authorjeremyburns.com/ Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Ashes-Jeremy-Burns/dp/1936558327 Barnes And Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/from-the-ashes-jeremy-burns/1107870150 Publisher: http://www.fictionstudiobooks.com/Fiction_Studio_Books/Home.html