Fourth Day: A Charlie Fox Thriller

In Sharp's adrenaline-packed follow-up to Third Strike, Brit Charlie Fox, a close-protection specialist (or bodyguard) now working for a Manhattan company, seeks to extricate schoolteacher Thomas Witney from Fourth Day, a cult in the desert near Los Angeles. Thomas infiltrated the cult five years earlier because he believed that Fourth Day's charismatic leader, Randall Bane, was responsible for the death of Thomas's college-age son, Liam, who perished during an ecoterrorism protest. While Charlie and her lover, Sean Meyer, manage to get Thomas out, they're unprepared for either his complete about-face on Bane or the intense interest that Homeland Security suddenly has in the cult and Thomas's insider knowledge. The relationship between Charlie and Sean has always been fraught with tension, but a startling personal revelation and Charlie's decision whether to keep this information to herself as she prepares to go undercover into Fourth Day considerably raises the emotional stakes. (Feb.)