Joe Ledger: Special Ops

The Joe Ledger Series Novels and Short Stories in Chronological Order

COUNTDOWN

(A teaser prequel to PATIENT ZERO)

“I didn’t plan to kill anyone. I wasn’t totally against the idea, either. Sometimes things just fall that way, and either you roll with it or it rolls over you. Letting the bad guys win isn’t how I roll.” Meet Joe Ledger, Baltimore PD, attached to a Homeland task force…who’s about to get a serious promotion.

PATIENT ZERO

NOVEL #1/Published in 2009 by St. Martin’s Griffin

When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there’s either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills… and there’s nothing wrong with Joe Ledger’s skills. And that’s both a good, and a bad thing. It’s good because he’s a Baltimore detective that has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new taskforce created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can’t handle. This rapid response group is called the Department of Military Sciences or the DMS. It’s bad because his first mission is to help stop a group of terrorists from releasing a dreadful bio-weapon that can turn ordinary people into zombies. The fate of the world hangs in the balance.

ZERO TOLERANCE

Short Story

This sequel to PATIENT ZERO brings Joe Ledger back into action, hunting for zombies in the deadly mountains of Afghanistan.

DEEP, DARK

Short Story

In an underground bioweapons lab a team of scientists working to develop super soldiers instead create something that is far deadlier and infinitely stranger. Joe Ledger and Echo Team must hunt — and be hunted — deep down in the dark.

MATERIAL WITNESS

Short Story

A stand-alone short story that takes place in the early days of Joe Ledger’s service in the Department of Military Sciences, a top secret division of Homeland Security. Joe Ledger and the DMS must protect a Pine Deep spook and author who is in over his head with the wrong people and may know more than he is letting on.

THE DRAGON FACTORY

NOVEL #2/Published in 2010 by St. Martin’s Griffin

Joe and the DMS go up against two competing groups of geneticists. One side is creating exotic transgenic monsters and genetically enhanced mercenary armies; the other is using 21st century technology to continue the Nazi Master Race program begun by Josef Mengele. Both sides want to see the DMS destroyed, and they’ve drawn first blood. Neither side is prepared for Joe Ledger as he leads Echo Team to war under a black flag.

DOG DAYS

Short Story

Joe Ledger returns in this tale that follows the tragic conclusion of THE DRAGON FACTORY. In the wake of a devastating personal loss, Joe Ledger and his new canine partner, Ghost, go hunting for the world’s deadliest assassin.

***An audio exclusive story available from Blackstone, read by Ray Porter.

CHANGELING

Short Story

Joe Ledger teams with a mysterious British agent named Felicity to investigate a dangerous bioweapons factory.

Originally published in Midnight Echo Magazine (Australia), June 2013.

THE KING OF PLAGUES

NOVEL #3/Published in 2011 by St. Martin’s Griffin

Saturday 09:11 Hours: A blast rocks a London hospital and thousands are dead or injured…. 10:09 Hours: Joe Ledger arrives on scene to investigate. The horror is unlike anything he has ever seen. Compelled by grief and rage, Joe rejoins the DMS and within hours is attacked by a hit-team of assassins and sent on a suicide mission into a viral hot zone during an Ebola outbreak. Soon Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences begin tearing down the veils of deception to uncover a vast and powerful secret society using weaponized versions of the Ten Plagues of Egypt to destabilize world economies and profit from the resulting chaos. Millions will die unless Joe Ledger meets this powerful new enemy on their own terms as he fights terror with terror.

ASSASSIN’S CODE

NOVEL #4/Published in 2012 by St. Martin’s Griffin

When Joe Ledger and Echo Team rescue a group of American college kids held hostage in Iran, the Iranian government then asks them to help find six nuclear bombs planted in the Mideast oil fields. These stolen WMDs will lead Joe and Echo Team into hidden vaults of forbidden knowledge, mass murder, betrayal, and a brotherhood of genetically engineered killers with a thirst for blood. Accompanied by the beautiful assassin called Violin, Joe follows a series of clues to find the Book of Shadows, which contains a horrifying truth that threatens to shatter his entire world view. They say the truth will set you free…. Not this time. The secrets of the Assassin’s Code will set the world ablaze.

A FOOTNOTE IN THE BLACK BUDGET

Short Story

Joe Ledger, Top and Bunny go to the bottom of the world all the way to the Mountains of Madness in this crossover with H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.

***This story is not yet released. It will be included in the anthology The Madness of Cthulhu, edited by S.T. Joshi.

MAD SCIENCE

Short Story

Joe Ledger and Violin go after a kill-squad of Red Knights in this sequel to ASSASSIN’S CODE.

BORROWED POWER

Short Story

Joe Ledger teams with a mysterious British agent named Felicity to investigate a dangerous bioweapons factory. A story told in two parts: A young Mr. Church teams with Lilith to hunt monsters in the sewers beneath Paris; and when that ancient evil rises again, Joe Ledger and Violin close in for the kill.

EXTINCTION MACHINE

NOVEL #5/Published in March 2013 by St. Martin’s Griffin

The President of the United States vanishes from the White House for five hours. Next morning he is found, apparently safe and sound. Except that he claims that during the night he was abducted by aliens. A top-secret prototype stealth fighter is destroyed during a test flight. Witnesses on the ground say that it was shot down by a craft that immediately vanished at impossible speeds. North Korea’s ultra top-secret weapons research lab is destroyed by a volcano — in an area where there has not been an eruption for forty millions years. All over the world reports of UFOs are increasing at an alarming rate. Key military personnel, politicians and scientists begin disappearing. And in a remote fossil dig in China, dinosaur hunters have found something that is definitely not of this earth. Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences rush headlong into the heat of the world’s strangest and deadliest arms race, because the global race to recover and retro-engineer alien technologies has just hit a snag. Someone — or something — wants that technology back.

ARTIFACT

Short Story

Joe Ledger goes after an enigmatic device that could hold the key to permanent sustainable energy — or could become the most dangerous weapon on earth.

THE HANDYMAN GETS OUT

Short Story

Joe Ledger is naked and unarmed and has to escape a high-security facility armed with whatever he can find. Expect Joe to get cranky.

CODE ZERO

NOVEL #6/Published in March 2014 by St. Martin’s Griffin

A direct sequel to PATIENT ZERO. A rogue scientist within the DMS takes the Seif al Din pathogen (and dozens of other deadly and exotic weapons) and begins selling them to the highest bidders. Bizarre science-based terrorist attacks tear the nation apart — and at the heart of it are new outbreaks of the zombie plague that first brought Joe Ledger into the DMS. Joe and his crew team up with Arklight (from Assassin’s Code) in a running battle that leaves a trail of bodies from Los Angeles to the steps of the White House.

THREE GUYS WALK INTO A BAR

Short Story

Joe Ledger teams with Malcolm Crow (from the Pine Deep Trilogy) and Sam Hunter (from Strip Search) to tackle a team experimenting with genetically engineered werewolves.

***This story will be included in the anthology, Limbus II, available in 2014 from JournalStone Publishing.

PREDATOR ONE

NOVEL #7/To be published in March 2014 by St. Martin’s Griffin.

Someone is turning airliners and fighter jets into murderous drones. Joe Ledger needs to discover if the enemy is a supercomputer hacker or an advanced Artificial Intelligence program gone rogue.

Also….JOE LEDGER makes cameo appearances in…

FLESH & BONE

Book #3 of the ROT & RUIN series from Simon & Schuster.

TOOTH & NAIL

Ebook tied to the ROT & RUIN series.

FIRE & ASH

Book #4 of the ROT & RUIN series from Simon & Schuster.

ROT & RUIN: THE COMIC

Coming in Fall 2014 from IDW Publishing.