Books with author Kirk Thomas

Hazelnuts are a family affair on this farm, going all the way back to great-grandpa Elmer. Each year the family produces 20,000 tons of hazelnuts sold in Oregon, California, and overseas. This is the sequel to Grandpa's Orchard. It is a love letter to the farm, to all farmers, to agriculture, and to the hazelnut. Understand her pride and humility in being part of such a tradition and heritage. There is a place where magic happens each year-a place where stories, music, good food, family, and friends come together year round. ... Grandpa and Dad are hardworking farmers who have learned and passed on the respect of the land, the hazelnut farm, and the place they call home. -Jennifer M. Martin, MSW Beautiful prose from a deep and thoughtful place that will appeal to all ages. Kirk is at once playful and sentimental; the recipe is just right as she conjures images of family and farms, Oregon and coffee, rain and autumn nights. I want to go to this magically hazelnut place. -Kelly Patrick Robbins, father, husband, and outdoor educator

Here is a truly original thriller, comparable to the very best of vintage Le Carré. It is set behind the Berlin Wall in the heart of the East German police state and it features one of the most unique and winning heroines since Lucy in Ken Follett's Eye of the Needle. Her name is Käte Frassek, a resistance fighter since the age of eighteen, who over the course of twenty years leads a double life in her courageous campaign to rouse her countrymen to revolt against their repressive regime. She is a wife, a mother, a scientist, a lover... and an assassin. Against a backdrop of the Cold War in the 1960s, an abiding love develops between Käte, while still the young wife of an East German official, and an American physician innocent of who she is and what she is doing. In the remarkable climax to her years of plotting against the head of the State's secret police, she finally must risk not only her own life but her son's and lover's as well. (From the original hardback edition) DEATH MATE To kill the man who had killed so many, Kate would do anything. She would use her brain to work herself to the top of her profession. She would yield her body to go even higher up the ladder of power. She would risk her own child as a pawn on a chessboard of cunning move and counter thrust. But now she was being asked to make a sacrifice she dreaded. Not her own life that would have been easy. But the life of the good and noble man she passionately loved — so that the beast she hated might die.... (From the original Signet paperback) REVIEWS "SOLID TENSION, SUDDEN DANGER, FIERCE ACTION ... CATCHES FIRE." — Kirkus Reviews "A moving love story as well as a novel filled with action and suspense ... strong and sympathetic characters ... LeCarré, Follett, Ludlum and others in this select group are going to have to step aside ... Thomas Kirkwood is a writer to get excited about." — Rocky Mountain News "NAIL-BITING … PERFECT!" — Norfolk Virginian Pilot "Powerful … Truly riveting!" — Chattanooga News-Free Press "A BUBBLING THRILLER … THE TENSION BUILDS." — Cleveland Plain Dealer "Suspense and intrigue … A classic adventure." — Mobile Press Register SELECTED BY BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB

Thomas Kirwan’s Soldiering in North Carolina is an account of the Civil War experiences of the 17th Massachusetts, which fought extensively in North Carolina during the war. As Kirwan explains in the opening: “The contents of the following pages are presented to the public as matters of fact. They embody some of the writer's experiences while serving his country in the "land of cotton." It is true his experiences are tame and unromantic when compared with those of some of the men of the Potomac or the Cumberland; but they are the best he can offer, and need no apology, as the style does, which is rough and unpolished. Besides giving an account of the 17th Mass. Reg't, and its participation in the engagements at Kinston, Whitehall, and Goldsboro, something is said of the other old regiments in the department, and the nine months' men,—also, an account of the contrabands, their habits and disposition—anecdotes…”

A lucky hit by an obscure Italian geneticist produces a virus lethal to the opium poppy. It's like winning the lottery, thinks Noto, who takes his dangerous creation to Tommaso Scalzone, the Italian Interior Minister and head of the national police. Lucky they're fellow Sicilians, Noto muses. Lucky they know each other from childhood. Scalzone, brilliant and unassailable, will know where to sell the virus that will wipe out heroin, do it safely, and make them both rich beyond measure. He has no idea that Scalzone's immense power comes from the Mafia as well as the police, that Scalzone is one of the great criminal minds of our time and that Noto will lose his lottery ticket and his life. In possession of the virus, Scalzone develops a diabolical plan. He will wipe out the world's opium crop, an anti-terrorist coup for which the US will receive credit - but not before he has genetically engineered an opium poppy both immune to the virus and sterile. Seeds to the sterile hybrid, easily transportable to any corner of the globe, will give him an airtight monopoly over opium and its derivatives for years to come. Al Qaeda, the Taliban and others, threatened by the loss their cash crop, will pay his exorbitant price. Another defeat for the US; another triumph for terrorism. And behind it all, on a stage that spans half of Europe, is Scalzone and his cast of thousands. But wait. There is still an obstacle. Scalzone does not have an opium plant resistant to the virus, let alone a sterile hybrid. There is, however, one scientist who can give him what he needs: a genetic engineer at the University of Paris named Claude Armand. To carry out the necessary kidnapping, he relies on the Mafia pezzonovante with whom he is closest, Don Pippo Greco. The Don farms out the job to his hotshot nephew, Gianni (pronounced Johnny). Scalzone, in a fine expression of his shrewd criminal mind and brutal methods, enlists the support of a terrified Swiss German, the owner of a near-bankrupt genetics lab that has done secret military work in the past. Blossoming simultaneously in France is a passionate clandestine love affair between a Bordeaux aristocrat and a famous actress: Chantal Armand, the beautiful married daughter of Claude Armand. Chantal, on a visit to her ancestral home, is swept up in the kidnapping of her father and lands with him in the underground lab in Switzerland. After exhaustive investigations by the police, they are pronounced dead - thanks to the ingenious planning and execution of the crime. Jean-François Duret returns to his life in the countryside outside Bordeaux, hopelessly bereft after losing the only woman he has ever loved. By the time he discovers a clue that Chantal might still be alive, she has become the object of Scalzone's perverse lust. But she has not lost her passion for Jean-François. Indeed, she has been working tirelessly on an escape, spinning a web for Gianni and her other guards with the delicacy and determination that have made her a master of the theater. She deceives for Jean-François; Jean-François deceives for her; Scalzone deceives for power and money; Lichtheim, the Swiss German, deceives . . . himself. The search, then the chase, for Chantal begins. Everything is movement and color, from Paris to the stark beauty of the Alps, from Milan to the incongruously lovely Sicilian estate of Tommaso Scalzone. As layers of deception fall away, the air trembles with unpredictable and often gruesome change. But one constant remains - love. Jean-François finds Chantal at last, but must then face Scalzone in a conclusion that is as terrifying as it is unforgettable. And the all-important clue that puts Jean-François on Chantal's trail? No, no, not here. For that luscious tidbit, one must read THE POPPY BROKER