Desert Burial — Brian Littlefair

Nuclear waste, Africa, and the new world order conjoin in a literary thriller that announces a new talent of startling proportions.

Mali, northwest Africa, the near future. The Sahara is ravaged by internecine warfare. Ty Campbell, an American geologist living in Mali, spends his days on the conflict's periphery, dowsing for water and trying to forget his murdered wife. When Lila, an aid worker near emotional collapse, leads a human convoy of African refugees into Mali's badlands, Ty's solitude is shattered, but his conscience is reawakened. In a desperate bid to save the refugees, Ty and Lila are forced into a Faustian pact with Bud van Sickle, the smiling face of Timbuktu Earthwealth, a powerful multinational corporation competing for the lucrative privilege of ridding the planet of its nuclear waste. Van Sickle's solution? Bury it beneath the land Lila's refugees have claimed.

Pressed into reluctant service by Timbuktu Earthwealth, Ty is shuttled from commando training centers in Virginia to technocratic councils in Vienna to the jungles of the Congo. As the stakes escalate and Mali's growing civil war threatens to consume Lila and her refugee camp, Ty finds himself at the center of a ruinous conspiracy of global proportions.