Rowena Aldus is a British scientist living in the Amazonian jungle of Venezuela, where she is studying spider venom, which may prove a cure for ED. She meets an angel investor and falls in love, only to have her dreams and her life shattered. Guy Westerphal, venture capitalist and startup consultant, has tracked down Rowena and arranges to meet her. His interest in her research and his stated desire to fund it seems a dream come true to Rowena. He...

Shrike has been invited to an international meeting of criminals on New Year's eve, but is her invitation part of a larger game? She's come with an agenda—and a target: the Heron, wife of the powerful dangerous Tiger. When the clock strikes midnight, will Shrike make it out alive?

"Truth be told, they were mostly in it for the money." On February 13, 2003, a plane carrying three American military contractors on a recon patrol crash-landed in the jungle-covered mountains of Colombia. Within minutes, FARC guerrillas swarmed the wreckage and killed the American pilot and a Colombian crew member as they tried to escape. The survivors--Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Thomas Howes--were marched at gunpoint into the rain forest....

"[The story of] Steven Donziger, a self-styled social activist and Harvard educated lawyer, [who] signed on to a budding class action lawsuit against multinational Texaco (which later merged with Chevron to become the third-largest corporation in America). The suit sought reparations for the Ecuadorian peasants and tribes people whose lives were affected by decades of oil production near their villages and fields. During twenty years of legal hostilities...