The electrifying new thriller from New York Times bestseller Stephen Hunter takes you deep inside the mind of the most notorious serial killer of all time — Jack the Ripper.

Black Friday America's largest shopping mall Suburban Minneapolis 3:00 P.M. Ten thousand people jam the aisles, the corridors, the elevators, and the escalators of America, the Mall--a giant Rubik's Cube of a structure with its own amusement park located in the spacious center atrium. Of those people, nine thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight have come to shop. The other twelve have come to kill. Stephen Hunter's hyper-drive, eighth-gear new thriller, Soft Target, chronicles the day when the unthinkable happens: twelve gunmen open fire in the mall corridors, driving the pack before them. Those on the upper floors take cover or get out any way they can; but within a few minutes the gunmen have herded more than a thousand hostages into the amusement park. Ray Cruz, one of the heroes of Hunter's last bestseller, Dead Zero, is in the mall with his fiancee and her family. The retired Marine sniper thought he was done with stalking and killing — but among the trapped thousands, he's the only one with a plan and the guts to confront the self-proclaimed Brigade Mumbai. Now all he needs is a gun. FBI Sniper Dave McElroy has a gun. But positioned on the roof of the vast building, looking down through one of its thickly paned Great Lakes-shaped skylights, and without explosives or fuses — or the go-ahead from his superiors — he is effectively cut off from his targets and forced into the role of witness to the horror unfolding below. Set during the four hours of the terrifying event, the story follows both hostages and gunmen, detailing the complex strategic police response, the full-press media saturation coverage, even the politics of SWAT as both the Minnesota State Police and the FBI struggle to control, confront, and ultimately defuse the crisis. Having learned the lessons of Columbine, the feds believe that immediate action is the only solution. But Douglas Obobo, the charismatic and ambitious commandant of the state police, orders cooperation, tolerance, communication, and empathy for the gunmen. He feels that with his superior negotiating skills, he can make contact with the shooters and gently nudge them into surrender. But what if their goal all along has been unparalleled massacre — and they're only waiting for prime time? With unrelenting suspense and vivid scenes of violence and chaos in the center of a terror-crazed afternoon in Middle America, thriller master Stephen Hunter takes us into the belly of the softest of soft targets.

The undisputed master of the tough thriller, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Hunter delivers a masterpiece of crime fiction set in 1940s Arkansas, where law and corruption ricochet like slugs from a 45 automatic. Earl Swagger is tough as hell. But even tough guys have their secrets. Plagued by the memory of his abusive father, apprehensive about his own impending parenthood, Earl is a decorated ex-Marine of absolute integrity — and overwhelming melancholy. Now he's about to face his biggest, bloodiest challenge yet. It is the summer of 1946, organized crime's garish golden age, when American justice seems to have gone to seed for good. Nowhere is this more true than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the reigning capital of corruption. When the district attorney vows to bring down the mob, Earl is recruited to run the show. As casino raids erupt into nerve-shattering combat amid screaming prostitutes and fleeing johns, the body count mounts — along with the suspense.

«Bob Lee Swagger has seen — and delivered — dozens of deaths. As a United States Marine sniper in Vietnam, his astonishing accuracy with a rifle earned him the nickname Bob the Nailer; twenty years later he was forced to kill again to unravel a brutal conspiracy (in Stephen Hunter's classic Point of Impact). Now happily secluded with his wife and young daughter in the Arizona desert, Swagger believes all the killing is behind him. Until a young writer, Russ Pewtie, arrives at his door with troubling questions about the past. Forty years earlier, Swagger's father, a dedicated state trooper, was gunned down by two robbers in a sensational shoot-out just outside of Blue Eye, Arkansas. Faced with Russ's persistence and a desire to make peace with a father he never really knew, Swagger decides to discover what really happened that long-ago Arkansas night. But as soon becomes clear, powerful people don't want the truth uncovered — and Swagger must use all his combat skills and ruthless cunning to survive. Like the infrared «black light» that exposes a sniper's target in the dead of night, Swagger homes in on the shadowy figures desperate to keep the secret of his father's murder buried.»