Havana

Outstripping anything he's ever done for knife-edge action and sheer heroism, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Hunter takes us back to 1950s Cuba in a new Earl Swagger novel featuring the real-life likes of Meyer Lansky, Hemingway - and an ambitious young man named Castro-

Hunter is in the front rank of thriller novelists

American hardboiled at its very best, full of taciturn and stoical characters and plotting in explosive overdrive

Stories of passion, guilt and redemption that jump right off the page and smack the reader clean between the eyes

Stephen Hunter, film critic for the Washington Post and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for criticism, is the author of twelve novels. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

High summer in Cuba, 1953, and Havana gleams with possibility. Flush with booming casinos, sex, and drugs, Havana is a lucrative paradise for everyone from the Mafia and United Fruit to pimps, porn-makers, and anyone looking to grab a piece of the action - including the Cuban government, which naturally honours the interests of its old ally, the United States of America. Of course, where there's paradise, trouble can't be far behind. Trouble, in this case, makes its entrance in the terrifically charismatic and silver-tongued form of a young revolutionary named Fidel Castro. The Caribbean is fast becoming a strategic Cold War hub, and Soviet intelligence has taken Castro under its wing. The CIA's response is to send the one man capable of eliminating Castro: the legendary gunfighter and ex-Marine hero Earl Swagger, who proved his lethal talent in Stephen Hunter's previous bestsellers Hot Springs and Pale Horse Coming. In Cuba, Earl finds himself up to his neck in treacherous ambiguity, where the old rules about honour and duty don't apply, and where Earl's target seems to have more guts and good luck than anyone else in Cuba. Blending real-world figures into a lightning-paced narrative, Stephen Hunter once again proves himself the master of literary adventure and suspense.

Black Light

'Hunter is in the front rank of thriller novelists'

Up there with the likes of James Lee Burke and Michael Connelly at the forefront of hard-boiled American crime fiction

Stephen Hunter is the author of eleven novels, including Hot Springs, Pale Horse Coming, Black Light, Time to Hunt and Dirty White Boys. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Bob Lee Swagger, one of the deadliest snipers the US has ever produced, has put most of the demons of his past behind him, but not the forty-year-old killing of his father in a sensational shoot out. He returns to his roots, to find out exactly what happened that night in 1955 in Blue Eye, Arkansas. Against him is a shadowy enemy, corrupted by the secret of the older Swagger's death. As the two circle each other they close, inevitably, to a final explosive confrontation that will blast the secrets of two generations wide open.

Point Of Impact

Stephen Hunter is the author of eleven novels, including Hot Springs, Time to Hunt, Black Light and Dirty White Boys. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

In the jungles of Vietnam, Bob Lee Swagger was known as 'Bob the Nailer' for his high-scoring target rate at killing. Today the master sniper lives in a trailer in the Arkansas mountains, and just wants to be left alone. But he knows too much- about killing. The mission is top secret. Dangerous, patriotic, and rigged from the start. One thing goes wrong: double-crossed Bob has come out alive. Now he is on the run. His only allies: an FBI agent in disgrace and a beautiful woman. His only hope: find the elusive mastermind who set him up. Multi-layered with non-stop action, this hot-shot torcher of a thriller is addictive, exciting and right on target. A high-tech, high-ride reading experience.

Time To Hunt

A truly gripping story which keeps you superglued to the page right up till the last explosive moment

Twenty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, Bob, 'the Nailer' Swagger is back in the warzone. The Russian sniper with whom he duelled in the jungle and who killed his friend, Donny Fenn, has tracked him down to the remote mountains of Idaho. Soon one man is dead and Swagger's family is under threat. Why has the Russian resumed the conflict? Is it simply revenge, or does it go back further, to a dirty secret buried buried in the extraordinary times of the late sixties when ideologies clashed and America's bitter war was reaching its height?

Stephen Hunter

This is the novel Hunter's fans have been waiting for....genius.

Hunter is a great entertainer, one of our finest practitioners of the classic blood-soaked and propulsive American thriller. With fluid, confident prose he writes big stories of a man, mostly alone, who must go forth for us all and slay the dragon.

Mr. Hunter writes [fight scenes] as well as, or better, than anyone in the business....I have only one major problem with Mr. Hunter: He doesn't write often enough.

Bob Lee Swagger, retired marine master sniper and hero of bestseller Hunter's 1993 thriller, Point of Impact...returns in this riveting homage to the myth of the samurai....While the action builds to the inevitable climax, the joy of the journey will keep readers turning the pages.

Moves with the unrelenting pace of a machine gun. The action sequences are written with military precision, and the mystery of the sword is compelling. Hunter keeps the action pumping, and the reader will have no problem turning pages.

Francis W. Decker, Richmond Times Dispatch

Hunter has a cinematic sense of story and combat and The 47th Samurai kept me glued to the screen until the final credits.

Delivers chills and thrills....Hunter, who has written such snapping books as Point of 
Impact and Hot Springs, is terrific with plot, action and attention to detail.

Hunter's a pro at research-in particular, of the gruesome aspects of killing. He brings that compulsion for detail to the samurai sword, its history and its place in Japanese society over the centuries.

Bob Lee Swagger has seen enough of war and fighting for any man: his past as a Marine Corps sniper and later as a self-appointed avenger has been a bloody one. But the hope that he is finished with combat are dashed with a visit from Colonel Philip Yano. 
 
Yano has come to America to find a samurai sword that Bob's father took from Yano's dying father in the desperate battle for Iwo Jima in 1945. Yano believes the sword to be a national treasure, of huge political significance to whoever can get hold of it. 
Bob agrees to help and delivers the sword to Yano in Tokyo, but soon afterwards the Yano family are murdered, their house burned to the ground and the sword stolen. Dark forces are at work. With the aid of Yano's old comrades , Bob enters not only Tokyo's criminal underbelly, but also the violent, obsessive world of the Samurai. Once more he is on a mission of vengeance.

The 47th Samurai

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Stephen Hunter

Praise for The 47th Samurai

This is the novel Hunter's fans have been waiting for....genius.

Compelling, exciting, and satisfying

Hunter is a great entertainer, one of our finest practitioners of the classic blood-soaked and propulsive American thriller. With fluid, confident prose he writes big stories of a man, mostly alone, who must go fort ...

This is the novel Hunter's fans have been waiting for....genius.

Compelling, exciting, and satisfying

Hunter is a great entertainer, one of our finest practitioners of the classic blood-soaked and propulsive American thriller. With fluid, confident prose he writes big stories of a man, mostly alone, who must go fort ...

This is the novel Hunter's fans have been waiting for....genius.

Compelling, exciting, and satisfying

Hunter is a great entertainer, one of our finest practitioners of the classic blood-soaked and propulsive American thriller. With fluid, confident prose he writes big stories of a man, mostly alone, who must go fort ...

Books by Stephen Hunter

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter