Anna Renner

A research vessel vanishes without a trace in the North Atlantic. Its final recording ends with the words: “Atlantis is awake.” Military commands receive alarming reports, communications fail, and supposedly independent sources point to preparations for an attack. NATO analyst Anna Renner notices how quickly the evidence is falling into place. Someone knows what the commanders will see, what will frighten national leaders, and which orders they will give once they believe they have no other choice.

Anna searches for the people shaping those decisions long before they are made. Bribery and direct orders are not always necessary. One person makes a concession to ensure their mother continues receiving treatment. Another fights to open long-hidden archives, convinced they are righting a wrong. Each sees a personal goal and only a small part of the larger operation. The person who has built a plan around those choices is counting on love, conviction, and professional pride to prove more reliable than threats.

The consequences reach people who never had a seat at any negotiating table. A missile launched from Pakistan crosses India toward the Andaman Islands, putting the British royal family at risk and threatening to trigger an international conflict. For a family on a coastal research expedition, a fragment falling from the sky shatters their lives in seconds. Anna must discover who is steering events while military commanders prepare a response and politicians struggle to decide whose account to believe. Her own errors of judgment will have consequences, too.

The people threatened by her investigation know how to make sure no one listens to her. Her access to evidence is revoked. Her security pass stops working. Her personal connections and secrets about her origins are used to cast doubt on everything she has uncovered. Anna is forced to prove her integrity just as every hour becomes critical. She is used to demanding evidence from others; now she must examine her own choices—whether she has settled on a convenient explanation or followed a path someone has already laid out for her.

Even a new job at a foundation outside NATO offers no escape from these questions. The foundation’s founder is found murdered at a villa on Lake Geneva. An old electronic key and a cryptic code are left beside his body. An old photograph shows him alongside Anna’s father, David Klein. The two worked together on a secret project, but the man who recruited Anna concealed that connection. The name of a third researcher has been erased from the records. Now, following a trail of old agreements, money transfers, and missing records, Anna seeks an answer she needs for herself: what happened to her father, and how much of her own family’s history has been kept from her?

ANNA RENNER is a series of three standalone novels by Sam Nyxon about international conspiracies that take shape through human decisions. Her cases and adversaries change, but Anna faces the same danger: accepting a carefully planted account of events as a conclusion she has reached on her own.

Each novel can be read independently. To get to know Anna, start with The Atlantis Protocol.