Lethal Sky by Greg Barron (HarperCollins Australia)

Action, explosions, adventure, terrorist plots and conspiracies combine for a compelling thriller in the vein of Clancy, MacLean and Ludlum.

A light aircraft flies over Sydney Harbour carrying the spores of a deadly microbe, enough to kill the people below and render the city uninhabitable for decades. Intelligence agent Marika Hartmann races to the scene aboard a taipan helicopter packed with Australian commandos, unable to shoot the plane down for fear of releasing the lethal cargo. Can she save her city?

In Western Europe and America millions of ordinary people start their day, unaware that a swarm of powerful new weapons, armed with the same biological agent, gather in the skies. In London PJ Johnson leads a team of Special Forces soldiers to find the terrorists' base of operations as biologist Jan Sloven works furiously to decode the conundrum left by a deranged scientific genius - but time is against them all.

Action and adventure, plots and conspiracies all combine for a breakneck thriller that feels terrifyingly real.

Praise for Greg Barron's novels:

'A superlative political thriller' Rob Minshull, ABC

'A high-octane thriller ... the pace is excellent, the writing is sharp and Barron has a real talent for the evocation of place ... sufficiently gripping to keep you up at night' The Australian

'Barron echoes the work of authors such as MacLean, Clancy and Ludlum' Canberra Times

'Barron has written a thriller that entertains but also for those wanting more, a thought-provoking polemic' Courier-Mail

'A darkly imaginative page-turner' Bookseller+ Publisher

'Entertaining, provocative' Daily Telegraph

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Crime, terrorism, history, international politics and the wide open spaces of outback Australia are all passionate interests of author Greg Barron. He has lived in North America, New South Wales and lived in and around Katherine, Northern Territory, for almost a decade. He once crossed Arnhem Land on foot, and has a passion for the Top End landscape.

His books, published by HarperCollins Australia and Stories of Oz Publishing, are gutsy pageturners that tell the truth about the world as it is now. Rotten Gods was long listed for the prestigious Ned Kelly awards, and has been lauded as "one of the most sophisticated geopolitical thrillers ever written." Savage Tide was described by ABC Radio reviewer Rob Minshull as; "Both supremely intelligent and written at breathtaking pace."

Camp Leichhardt is the first of his Australian stories to see print, and was serialised in 2016 to wide acclaim. Rotten Gods, Savage Tide, Voodoo Dawn and Lethal Sky all feature Marika Hartmann, the Australian intelligence agent who has won the hearts of readers all over the world.