Showing results by author "Franklin Horton" in All Categories

It was a hard-learned lesson but Jim Powell finally understood that isolating his group of friends and family was no longer the best idea. It was a strategy that had once kept them safe, but lately seemed to be doing exactly the opposite. Staying out of town and away from people had led to them missing critical intelligence—that there were people in their community actively plotting against Jim.

When newcomers arrive in Conor Maguire's territory, they bring word of an enemy approaching from the north. They wear military uniforms, carry military weapons, and drive military trucks. Like a plaque of locusts, they sweep through every town in their path and pick it clean. In their wake, they leave ashes and atrocity. When it appears this enemy is on a collision course with their community, Conor must build an army to intercept them. This is no easy task since his daughter's abrasive manner has divided the community. Their hasty alliance will be tested.

After nearly a year and a half without power, Jim Powell’s community has begun to stabilize. The Reset Roadhouse—Jim’s apocalyptic bar, restaurant, and trading post—gave his people something to do and helped expand his network of friends and contacts. The establishment has become a hub of the community and is allowing Jim to better monitor what goes on in the town. Then the promise of electricity changes everything.

In the Borrowed World Series, America is brought to its knees by coordinated terror attacks against the infrastructure. After spending weeks walking across a violent and horrific landscape to reach his family, Jim Powell hoped they could weather this storm on their secluded Appalachian farm. They had prepared for this. They had armed for this. They could live without power and fuel. What happens, though, when the same qualities that drew Jim to his isolated valley begin to attract another armed group looking for a place to hide from the unrest of a starving nation?

The Mad Mick’s new employer, Walter Lightspeed, has promised great things for America. Lightspeed cleared the way for his rise to power by skimming the dead weight off government, assassinating a legion of career politicians, lobbyists, and agency heads. Now only one barrier remains between him and the presidency—wrangling the support of the military. If he lives that long. Conor and Ricardo have their concerns about Lightspeed, but that’s not enough to make them surrender their lucrative contract work with him.

A new mission. An old rival. The powerful secret that binds them. Since the U.S. collapsed into chaos, Conor Maguire has fought to keep his family and friends safe, turning away attackers who threatened their community, seeking to live off the spoils of theft and murder. Fortunately, Conor is no stranger to fighting. In fact it’s his job. He’s an old-school assassin. When Conor and his partner reach their target they find that all is not as it seems. One small job, killing a shady financier, quickly becomes something larger.

Willie grew up outside of Damascus, Virginia, and life was never easy for her. She’s a hard-as-nails single mom who struggles to make ends meet with little support and few opportunities. She’s also the community “rescue mom”, taking in young people with no other place to go. All this while dodging an ex-boyfriend turned stalker who also happens to be a cop. Willie only made it to adulthood by being resilient. That toughness, combined with a series of odd jobs and side hustles, helps keep her unorthodox family afloat.

Robert Hardwick is finally within reach of his family in Damascus, Virginia, but there’s no time to rejoice. His presence at a friend's compound in North Georgia put him on the radar of a corrupt congressman whose only bug-out plan is to take the property of someone better prepared than himself. When the congressman’s effort to take the Georgia compound fails he has little time to find an alternative. He decides to track down the writer from Virginia, a man whose own home should be well-stocked to survive the apocalypse he describes in his books.

While just a few days have passed since the initial attack, the group finds that its country is quickly descending into a vicious, chaotic landscape where nothing comes easy. While they fight to close the distance between them and their loved ones, they cannot avoid the steadily growing number of people who have realized that they can get away with whatever they want in a world where there are no longer any legal consequences for their actions.

We find Grace taking refuge in a secure compound in the Southern Appalachians. After reuniting with her father, she expected that the remainder of her journey home would be uneventful. Her dad was with her now - things would be okay. She couldn't have been more wrong. Nothing in this new life is easy. Grace and her friend Tom, a physically-challenged veteran utilizing a specially-outfitted track chair, find themselves suddenly thrown back in the fight. Robert Hardwick and Tom's mother become separated from their children and find themselves under attack from a highly-skilled and heavily-armed force. Most alarming of all, an innocent comment from a child's lips puts the remainder of Grace's family directly in the crosshairs of a violent sociopath. If he is able to carry out his plans, Grace and her father will not have a home, or even a family, to return to.

In a night of devastating terror, ISIS operatives have unleashed a coordinated attack on America's infrastructure. With thousands of trapped travelers and scarce law enforcement, the miles between Jim Powell and his family become a brutal gauntlet where the rules of civilized society no longer apply. As Jim puts his years of preparation and planning to the test, he is forced to ask himself if he has what it takes to make it home. Does he have the strength - the brutality - required to meet this new world toe-to-toe?

After his last mission collapsed into utter failure, Conor Maguire and his daughter Barb returned to the US only to confirm their worst fears - Conor's friend and longtime handler, Ricardo, is presumed dead. Worse yet, Conor's new boss is none other than the man who ordered the hit, Billy Browning, and he's long held a grudge against Conor. Conor is given an ultimatum: work for Browning or lose his compound to a missile strike.

It's been around nine long months since the United States spiraled into chaos due to a cascading systems failure. From the recesses of a fractured government comes a plan to restore order and rescue what remains of the population. The first step comes with restoring power. But what if having access to electricity came at such a price that many - like Jim Powell, his friends, and his neighbors - would rather face a future in the dark.

In this fifth installment in The Borrowed World Series, human resources manager Alice Watkins is finally making it home. In her journey across Virginia, she experiences a country disintegrating and collapsing in on itself in the wake of a nationwide terror attack. Her trip home is agonizing; her experiences indescribable.

Across America, citizens of this once proud nation sit in the dark, slowly starving to death. Most are dirty and sick. They've been abandoned by politicians and bureaucrats who continued to grow fatter and richer during the collapse. Foreign governments court the nation's leaders, putting them up on cruise ships and in foreign hotels, while the average American lives in squalor, ignored and abandoned. A reluctant savior rises from an unlikely direction. He doesn't need the politicians nor the American government. They represent everything he despises.

For a year now, Jim Powell has wrestled with his personal demons. As he watched people around him suffer and die, he harbored a secret guilt. He'd once wished for an event like the one America was now experiencing, dreaming of the great reset that would purge the nation of those who'd gone soft and weak.

Jim Powell is convinced that his presence in the valley is putting his friends and family in danger. Hoping to buy them some time, he increases the security at his home, then sets off on a trip to allow the situation in his community to cool off. As much as he hates the idea, he also intends to scout out a location to fall back to if his people get driven from their homes. Frustrated by the constant tension and violence, his best friend, Lloyd, joins him.

Having lost both a hand and his entire team when Jim Powell and his friends attacked the power plant, Boss is obsessed with revenge. He had no idea who the men were, but he’s determined to launch a search for them until his command makes it clear that his mission of vengeance is not a priority. Undeterred, Boss arrives at a covert method of engaging the entire population of southwest Virginia in his hunt for the insurgents.

Army combat veteran Ty Stone has now joined the ranks of DKI, a veteran-operated organization waging war on human trafficking. He splits his time between training in Arizona and his home in Virginia. He's doing better at the training than at winding down, struggling with his relentless PTSD symptoms if he has too much time on his hands.

In his last mission, Conor Maguire was called back into action by his handler, Ricardo, to go after a man who helped facilitate the terror attacks that devastated America. When Ricardo next pays Conor a visit, it's at the behest of a shadowy collective of patriots determined to purge the government of those who sold out the nation. It should have been a simple mission, a short trip to "punch tickets" in the way that Conor had successfully done hundreds of times around the world. But nothing in this mission will be simple.