Wiser Than Serpents [NOOK Book]

( 6 )

Overview

Into a nest of vipers

Her sister had vanished, trapped in a human slavery ring. To find her, FSB agent Yanna Andrevka arranged her own kidnapping into Taiwan's sex-trafficking trade. And found herself with no way out.

Until Yanna discovered an ally deep undercover: Delta Force captain David Curtiss. He was after the kingpin of the Twin Serpents, the organized crime syndicate that had Yanna--and hundreds of ...

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Wiser Than Serpents

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More About This Book

Overview

Into a nest of vipers

Her sister had vanished, trapped in a human slavery ring. To find her, FSB agent Yanna Andrevka arranged her own kidnapping into Taiwan's sex-trafficking trade. And found herself with no way out.

Until Yanna discovered an ally deep undercover: Delta Force captain David Curtiss. He was after the kingpin of the Twin Serpents, the organized crime syndicate that had Yanna--and hundreds of others--in their clutches.

With opposite agendas, David and Yanna had to rely on each other to outwit their cold-blooded enemy.

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Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

Yanna Andrevka, an agent for the Russian Federal Security Service, will go to any length to rescue her sister from a human slavery ring; this means staging her own kidnapping into Taiwan's sex-trafficking underworld. Now in too deep to get out, Yanna must team up with Delta Force member David Curtiss, who is also working undercover to bring down the sordid leaders of the human slave operation. Only, David wants to catch the kingpin, while Yanna's primary mission is to find and bring home her sister. Top-notch suspense, well-drawn, intelligent characters, and skillful writing mark this contemporary thriller by three-time Christy Award nominee Warren (Everything's Coming Up Josey; In Sheep's Clothing; Happily Ever After). Highly recommended for women's fiction and suspense collections. Warren lives in Minnesota.


—Tamara Butler
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781426818615
  • Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises
  • Publication date: 10/1/2008
  • Series: Mission: Russia Series
  • Sold by: Barnes & Noble
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 352
  • Sales rank: 217,757
  • File size: 255 KB

Meet the Author

Susan May Warren started writing in the first grade — winning her first book contest with an entry entitled "My First Day of School." Since then writing has been her way to explore and share the experiences God has given her as a Minnesota girl and as a missionary to Russia.

She loves to be outdoors — hiking, fishing, canoeing, skiing, snowmobiling… even doing yard work! Married to a really cute guy with devastating blue eyes, she's also a mother of four children (she homeschools two of them), is in charge of her church's Children's Church program and is active in local and online writers' groups. She loves hands-on research; she once interviewed firefighters while her garage burned down. She can most often be found buried in a book, hiding out at her local library, or taking long walks, talking to herself as she works out a story. (Or maybe she's just looking for a moment of quiet!)

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Read an Excerpt

Wiser Than Serpents
By Susan May Warren Steeple Hill

Copyright © 2008 Susan May Warren
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780373786206

One week earlier

Yanna Andrevka hadn't spent the past ten years of her life putting her kid sister through college to watch her throw it away on some pudgy, bald American named Bob.

Then again, she wouldn't be doing cartwheels if Elena were marrying a hip, urban Russian named Sergey or Ivan, either. The very fact that her bright, beautiful sister put any man before finishing her law degree had Yanna turning the beet she was chopping into a blood-colored mash.

"About finished with the salad, Yanna?" Katya asked as she drained off the water from the mashed potatoes into the sink. Steam rose, cooking the already stifling galley kitchen. The tourists who thought that Siberia in summer still meant glaciers and bitter winds should spend a day in her apartment in August. The Gobi Desert was probably cooler; certainly it was less humid. Yanna scraped the beets into a bowl along with onions, pickles, diced cooked potatoes and cooked carrots. She picked up a wooden spoon and began to stir.

"Where's Elena? She's supposed to be back by now." The fact that her sister had lifted nary a finger for the goodbye send-off she'd planned gave Yanna sufficient ammunition to let her anger simmer. It felt better than facing the fact that in twenty-four hours, she'd be alone in their two-room flat, no one to greet her when she stayed too late at volleyballpractice, or harass her about having no social life.

She had a social life. Namely, Elena. Especially now that Yanna's other friends—Vicktor and Roman— had ladies who took up their free time. Ever since Elena had moved back to Khabarovsk two years ago, after getting her undergrad degree in Saint Petersburg, Yanna's life had taken on new vibrancy. Maybe it was watching Elena come into her own and blossom into a beauty like their mother. Or maybe it was living vicariously through her soap-opera romances, or listening to her dreams of life after school. Until two years ago, Yanna had seen her kid sister as a nuisance, a leech, just another price Yanna had to pay for her mother's foolishness.

Now, she wasn't sure just how she'd survive without Elena snuggling up to her when she arrived home from a date, or a class, regaling her with her latest drama.

Bob had better be worth it. Or Yanna would cross the ocean in a single bound and spike his head across his two-story beach house. The pictures did look nice, however.

"She's picking up her wedding dress," Katya said.

"I told her they have dresses in Seattle, but she says she wants a Russian dress. You can take the girl out of Russia, but you can't take Russia out of the girl." Katya looked up from the potatoes she was mashing. Skinny as a sixties-era model and wearing a pair of jeans and a sheer white blouse, Katya looked like she hadn't the strength to mash a pea. With long, bottle-bleached hair and brown eyes, the twenty-two-year-old English teacher had a ticket to Seattle with Elena. She'd continue on to Jersey to meet her prospective groom. She poured more milk into the potatoes. "I'm getting my dress from a store in New York. I already told Mario that."

Yanna swallowed a remark and turned back to her salad. She added oil, salt, pepper, and tried not to let her cynicism leak out. She should be happy for the two girls. They'd won the lottery, according to too many Russian women. American husbands. Life in the promised land. True, most women in Russia today struggled to find jobs and, when they did, pulled in less than eighty percent of the salary men did. Yanna had to be twice as good at her profession to get half the respect a man did. Still, after seeing what loving the wrong man—too many times—and living with a permanently shattered heart had done to their mother, well, Yanna wasn't about to mess with the good thing she had going. Decent friends, a solid job, an apartment to come home to…she had more than most women could hope for.

Besides, she had already found her true love. And, even if he never knew it, their e-mail relationship was enough for her. Actually, it was probably safer, even more rewarding her way. If he never knew how she felt, he could never reject her, could he?

Yanna poured the salad into a glass bowl then, lifting it above her head, squeezed past skinny Katya and out into the family room. She'd set up her dining-room table, pulling it out from the wall and placing it in front of the sofa. Three chairs were set opposite the sofa, and with an end table added from her bedroom, she'd made seating for at least eight. The rearrangement left little room to maneuver, what with her shelving unit running across one end of the room and her television on the other. Khrushchev forgot to leave room for breathing when he designed the tiny single-family flats.

The doorbell buzzed. Yanna grabbed her key from the latch by the door and peered out the peephole. Elena smiled broadly. Her teeth looked huge in the domed view.

Yanna pulled open the inner door, then unlocked the outer door. Her fellow FSB pal Vicktor had installed the vaultlike steel barrier during the reign of a serial killer a few years back. It squealed on its hinges as it opened.

Elena squeezed past Yanna into the narrow entry hall. She toed off her sandals, setting a bag down beside her. "Guess what I got?"

"Your wedding dress?" Yanna closed the door. Elena's face fell. "Katya, you rat!"

"Oh, please," Yanna said as she brushed past her sister. "I spy on people for a living. If you think I didn't know what you were up to, you haven't lived with me since you were a kid."

"Oh, I have no doubt you have my computer and my cell phone bugged, as well as listening devices planted throughout the flat and in my schoolbag." Elena placed a kiss on her sister and scooted into the kitchen as Yanna finished setting the table.

Sometimes, she seemed so much like Yanna, it was difficult to believe not only their fifteen-year age difference, but that they had different fathers. Long, mink-brown hair, flashing dark eyes, a reserved smile—these things Yanna recognized of herself. But Elena's willingness to embrace new ideas—like Internet dating—or even her belief that she could make marriage work with a man she'd never met, these were from her father, their mother's youngest and most outspoken boyfriend. Her mother had been wildly happy with Genye, the dreamer. Until he'd been arrested for drunk driving and beaten to death in his holding cell.

After that, something had died inside their mother, as well. About then, Yanna had graduated from college, stepped in and taken over the raising of Elena.

Perhaps this was why Yanna couldn't forgive Elena for abandoning her for a man. This, too, felt like a legacy from their mother.

In a few days, the only thing she'd have left of Elena would be her hand-me-down jeans and one of the matching silver lockets they'd exchanged last year for Christmas.

Katya emerged with the potatoes as the doorbell rang again. Yanna opened it to three of Elena's group-mates from school. They charged into the flat, dumping their sandals and book bags, and turned up Valery Meladze on the stereo. Yanna felt young again as the music found her heartbeat. The bell rang a second time, and Vicktor, Roman and Sarai stood just outside the metal door. Yanna's contingency.

Sarai gave her a quick hug. "How are you holding up?" She had to nearly shout.

Yanna shrugged. Although she and Sarai had only met for a summer years ago, and hadn't seen each other until this past winter when Roman rescued Sarai from becoming a political prisoner, Yanna felt as if she had known the blond American doctor all her life. Or maybe she simply reminded Yanna of Sarai's brother, David. Probably another good reason Yanna enjoyed having Sarai around.

Roman handed her a bouquet of flowers. "For the bridesmaid." He gave her a kiss on the cheek and Yanna was touched by his kindness. The Cobra captain with the tawny-brown hair and hazel-green eyes seemed so much happier with Sarai around, and the wounds he'd received in gulag had healed nicely, especially under Sarai's care.

Walking in right behind them, Vicktor caught her before Yanna could follow Roman and Sarai into the flat. Vicktor had an intensity about him, from his dark hair to his toned frame that scared away most women. But Yanna and, most of all, Gracie, his fiancée, knew that underneath that take-no-prisoners exterior resided a man who would give his life for his friends.

"Gracie said she'd meet Elena in Seattle. She's there working with a new project, so she said she could sneak away. I sent her the flight information."

Yanna nodded, hating the sudden prick of tears his words caused. His blue eyes softened, and he reached out and gave her a one-armed squeeze.

"Thanks, Vita," she said. She'd planned on asking her friend Mae—a national guard pilot who'd recently moved to Seattle—or even David to keep tabs on Elena, and the fact that Vicktor had suggested his fiancée, well, all at once Yanna felt that maybe Elena would be okay, after all.

Yanna followed him into the family room, where everyone crammed around the table. Some merciful soul had opened the windows to her flat, and when Katya switched off the music, street traffic three stories below drifted up, adding an early evening ambience. The smell of hydrangeas and dahlias lifted from the bouquet on the table, now covered with bowls of salads, cutlets, mashed potatoes, and glasses of prune sok.

Elena emerged from the kitchen, carrying her masterpiece, a tall Napoleon cake of thin layers and abundant cream. Yanna couldn't help but notice how she glowed, just like a bride should. She'd pulled her dark brown hair back, and it cascaded in curls along the neckline of her sleeveless tank. With a hint of tan on her arms and nose, she looked about sixteen.Yanna could hardly believe this was what Elena really wanted. But then again, if Yanna were to look deeply, perhaps her dreams weren't so very different. Not really.

Someone to love her? To count on? No, that wasn't so foreign a desire.

Yanna picked up her glass of sok, raised it to the group. "To Katya and Elena. Cheslivaya Vechnaya!"

"Happily ever after," they all chorused as they touched their glasses for a toast.

He'd never eaten deep fried frog on a stick, but David Curtiss was a patriot, and he'd do just about anything for his country.

"Shei-shei," he said as he took the delicacy from the vendor, fished out a New Taiwan dollar and dropped it into the vendor's hand.

He wondered what might leave a worse taste in his mouth, fried frog, or meeting a man who had beheaded the two undercover agents who had tried this trick before David. But if all went as planned, his culinary sacrifice would lead him to the identity of Kwan-Li, leader of the Twin Serpents, the largest organized crime syndicate in eastern Asia.

The smells of night market were enough to turn even his iron gut to mush—body odor, eggs boiled in soy sauce, fresh fish and the redolence of oil from the nearby shipyard. Even worse, the fare offered in the busy open market sounded like something from a house of horrors menu: Grilled chicken feet, boiled snails, breaded salamander, poached pigeon eggs, and the specialty of the day—carp-head soup.

"What did you get me into, Chet?" he whispered, wondering if Chet Stryker, his cohort for his unfortunate op, was grinning at the other end of his transmitter. "Squid or even snails, okay, but a frog?" Chet had set up this meet—and the frog signal. "Next time, you're going to be drinking asparagus juice, buddy." He hoped Chet's silence meant he still had his eyes on him. David hadn't seen his partner in the forty-five minutes he'd been walking around the market—a sign of Chet's skill, no doubt.

David looked at the brown and crispy frog and wondered if he was supposed to add condiments—he'd noticed a sort of ketchup and horseradish at the bar.

A few more seconds and he'd have to take a bite. It wasn't enough to just stand here and try to blend in with the crowd, not an easy task given that every man who brushed by him stood around chin height. Even with David's long dyed-black hair, silk Asian shirt and designer jeans, he knew he looked like a walking American billboard. Thankfully, foreigners flocked to the novelty of night market in this part of Kaohsiung in Taiwan.

Continues...

Excerpted from Wiser Than Serpents by Susan May Warren Copyright © 2008 by Susan May Warren. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
( 6 )
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Sort by: Showing 1 – 7 of 6 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted July 14, 2008

    Great Romantic Suspense!

    Yanna Andrevka goes undercover to try to save her sister, who was kidnapped by ruthless slave traffickers. And who comes to rescue her? None other than David Curtiss, the American Delta Force captain she¿s been secretly in love with since their college days together in Russia. But now they¿re both in trouble, because the kingpin of this human slavery ring, known as the Serpent, knows who they are and has an uncanny way of finding where they are¿and trying to assassinate them. Yanna and David are on the run and fighting their long-standing attraction to each other. But David must resist the urge to care about Yanna, because she¿s not a Christian and isn¿t even open to discussing it. And Yanna has been hurt so many times, she¿s not sure if even David¿if he cared about her¿would be enough to heal her brokenness. And if you¿re a fan of Vicktor and Gracie like I am¿I admit it, I was giddily excited when I saw that there was a story thread involving my two favorite characters from In Sheep¿s Clothing¿then you will get a glimpse of their continuing saga, as they¿hopefully¿inch their way toward matrimony. Oh, how I wanted them to run off to Vegas! But I shouldn¿t give it away. I highly recommend this deliciously satisfying book, the third in the Mission: Russia series. Can¿t wait for the next one!

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  • Posted January 29, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Fantastic thriller and very romantic!

    Susan May Warren really knows how to write suspenseful tales about unrequited love. Wiser than Serpents contained such passion and spiritual depth that it took my breath away. I loved her Josey series because it's so funny, but I really loved Wiser than Serpents because of the depth of emotion between the main characters in the book. It amazed me how much serious brutality (as in blood and guts) was allowed in this Steeple Hill book. But it was necessary to make the storyline believable. I was impressed, to say the least. Susan's tale of romance and intrigue not only had me turning the pages, but holding my breath each time Yanna and David were together. The sparks between them were electric. I'm serious. And the deep emotional connection they had was beautiful and sacrificial, especially on David's end. He was willing to lay his life on the line so many times because of his love for Yanna. It was exhilarating. And his internal conflict was so intense because he wanted her so badly, but had to deny himself to the point it rocked him to the core. What a heroic hero! Fabulous story and incredibly romantic. I'd give this story a ten out of ten if I had a rating system. Seriously. The ending left me glowing.

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  • Posted January 29, 2009

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    A reviewer

    This book was a total thrill ride right from the beginning of the story. I felt like I was watching an episode of Alias or 24. Yanna is such a strong female character who does not need to depend on a man to save her. Compared to the other two female leads in this series, she's my favorite because she knows she can take care of herself. I like that she has a soft side as well but it's nice to read about a women who can kick butt and fall in love at the same time. It's appalling to think that the sex slave trade is still very much alive in this world especially in the US. It is scary to think that women can completely vanish off the face of this earth because they have been sold as slaves. I can't imagine how Elena must have felt when she was captured, thinking that there was no way anyone could ever find her. It's an eyeopener for sure. The way the story ends, I think this is the last book for the Mission: Russia series. I really hope there'll be at least one more. I love the characters and I love reading about Russian culture. Susan Warren really displays her knowledge of the country and culture through these books. VERY HIGHLY recommended.

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    Posted November 24, 2011

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    Posted August 15, 2011

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    Posted January 19, 2010

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    Posted August 20, 2011

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