The First Hostage: A J. B. Collins Novel
Book 2 in the bestselling 3-book international political thriller series that has sold over 475,000 copies!
The president of the United States is missing.
Three years before Clinton and Patterson, another New York Times bestselling author of thirteen international thrillers, Joel C. Rosenberg, posed this chilling scenario: What if the Islamic State captured the most valuable hostage in history?
Award-winning journalist J. B. Collins, reporting from the scene of a devastating attack by ISIS terrorists in Amman, Jordan, puts the entire world on high alert—the U.S. president is missing and presumed captured.
With Israeli and Palestinian leaders critically injured and Jordan’s king fighting for his life, the allies are reeling and hopes for the peace process are dashed. As the U.S. government faces a constitutional crisis and Jordan battles for its very existence, Collins must do his best to keep the world informed while working to convince the FBI that his stories are not responsible for the terror attack on the Jordanian capital. And ISIS still has chemical weapons.
Struggling to clear his name, Collins works frantically with the Secret Service to locate and rescue the leader of the free world before ISIS’s threats become a catastrophic reality.
BEST DEALS
About the Author
Joel C. Rosenberg (www.joelrosenberg.com) is a New York Times bestselling author of 13 novels and five nonfiction books, with nearly 5 million copies sold.
He has been interviewed on hundreds of radio and TV shows, including ABC's Nightline, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, Fox News, MSNBC, The History Channel, The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Sean Hannity Show, and The Glenn Beck Show. His articles and columns have been published by National Review,FoxNews.com, CNN.com, the Jerusalem Post, World magazine, and the Washington Times, among others. He has been profiled by the New York Times, the Washington Times, and the Jerusalem Post.
Joel has spoken to audiences and met with religious and government leaders all across the U.S. and Canada and around the world, including Israel, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, the UAE, Turkey, Afghanistan, Russia, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, India, South Korea, and the Philippines. He has also addressed audiences at the White House and the Pentagon, addressed members of Congress on Capitol Hill, members of the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa, and a conference held at the European Union Parliament in Brussels.
He is the founder and chairman of The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.com), a nonprofit educational and charitable organization he and his wife launched in 2006 to mobilize Christians to "bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, according to Genesis 12:1-3."
Joel's books, most of which are published in numerous languages, include:
FICTION
The Last Jihad (2002)
The Last Days (2003)
The Ezekiel Option (2005)
The Copper Scroll (2006)
Dead Heat (2008)
The Twelfth Imam (2010)
The Tehran Initiative (2011)
Damascus Countdown (2013)
The Auschwitz Escape (2014)
The Third Target (January 2015)
The First Hostage (December 2015)
Without Warning (March 2017)
The Kremlin Conspiracy (March 2018)
NONFICTION
Epicenter: Why the Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future (2006; revised version, Epicenter 2.0, released in 2008)
Inside The Revolution: How the Followers of Jihad, Jefferson & Jesus are Battling to Dominate the Middle East and Transform the World (2009)
Implosion: Can America Recover From Its Economic and Spiritual Challenges in Time? (2012)
Israel at War: Inside the Nuclear Showdown with Iran (2012)
The Invested Life: Making Disciples of All Nations One Person at a Time, written with Dr. T. E. Koshy (2012)
He has produced two documentary films, based on two of his nonfiction books, Epicenter and Inside the Revolution.
Several of his books have won national awards:
The Ezekiel Option—ECPA Gold Medallion Award for Best Novel of 2006.
Epicenter—Retailers' Choice Award for Christian Living (Christian Retailing magazine)
Dead Heat—Retailers' Choice Award for Fiction: Mystery & Suspense
Inside the Revolution—Retailers' Choice Award for Social Issues
The Twelfth Imam—Retailers' Choice Award for Fiction: Mystery & Suspense
The Tehran Initiative—Retailers' Choice Award for Fiction: Mystery & Suspense
The Auschwitz Escape—finalist in the 2014 GoodReads Choice Awards for Best Historical Fiction
Several of his books have reached the top or near the top of national bestseller lists.
The Last Jihad hit #1 on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Dead Heat reached #4 on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list. The Third Target hit #4 on the Publishers Weekly hardcover fiction bestseller list and spent two months as the #1 bestselling work of fiction in the Christian market in North America. The First Hostage was also the #1 bestselling work of fiction in the Christian market in North America.
Joel was born in Syracuse, New York. His father is a first-generation American from a Jewish background whose parents and grandparents emigrated from Russia and settled in Brooklyn, New York. His mother, a Gentile, was raised in Rome, New York. When Joel was two, his parents moved to a community just outside of Rochester. He grew up in the small town of Fairport and graduated from Fairport High School in 1985. He attended Syracuse University (1985–1989)—spending one semester of his junior year studying at Tel Aviv University (August 1987 to January 1988)—and graduated from SU with a BFA in film drama in May 1989.
Joel married his college sweetheart, Lynn, in June of 1990. Together, they made their home in the Washington, D.C., area for 24 years. They and their four sons—Caleb, Jacob, Jonah, and Noah—now live in Israel.
For more information on conferences Joel organizes, please visit www.epicenterconference.com.You can find his weblog at https://flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com/. You can follow him on Twitter @joelcrosenberg.