Soon to be released!
A country doesn’t fracture all at once—it happens in stages, through rising tension, conflicting beliefs, and decisions that carry unintended consequences. As those pressures build, individuals on opposite sides begin to act with increasing urgency. In Body Man by Al Pessin, those forces converge.
A divided America becomes the backdrop for a chain of events triggered by a failed assassination attempt on a newly elected president. The incident intensifies already growing tensions, setting off a wave of unrest that spreads across the nation.
Spencer, the president’s closest aide, steps into a role that grants him unprecedented proximity to power. As the administration responds to rising threats, he must balance loyalty with the realities unfolding around him.
Carl, a disgraced Marine sniper, is recruited by a militia movement that believes drastic measures are justified. His mission begins with clarity but gradually loses definition as circumstances spiral beyond control.
As cities erupt and authority begins to splinter, both men continue forward, guided by their own understanding of duty. In the chaos, the distinction between patriot and traitor becomes increasingly difficult to define.
A “Thought-Provoking” Story From a Former White House Press Corps Member
Steve Berry says Body Man is “crisply plotted, thought-provoking and troubling in its take on our new reality.”
In this incredibly timely new political thriller, former White House and Pentagon press corps member and multi-award-winning author Al Pessin takes readers inside the corridors of power, on deployment with a Marine Corps unit, and into the secret world of militias willing to commit violence to “defend America.”
Jon Land calls Body Man “a taut, terrifying, terrific political thriller that cuts to the bone . . . an all-too-credible cautionary tale ripped from tomorrow’s headlines.”
Body Man reads like the true story it could easily be, told by its two main characters. Spencer is the Body Man, close personal aide to a liberal senator who catapults to the presidency. Carl is a body man of a different sort, a Marine Corps sniper with a bad conduct discharge who gets drawn into the Alt-Right movement and recruited to assassinate the new president.
As America’s real-life tensions explode, there are mass shootings, riots in the streets, and mutinies in the military―all things that could actually happen if we let them. And two young men have more power to determine the course of American history than they should ever have.
Body Man is a “chilling cautionary tale,” says NY Times bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker. “Al Pessin has done it again. Don’t miss this one from a terrific writer.”
Enjoy an Excerpt
I woke up to what was really happening in America, and I did something. I defended it. I gave everything.
Because that’s what American patriots do.
And that’s what I continued to do, no matter what you think, even when the Corps fucked me, even when the world turned upside down and inside out, even when “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic” became more of a curse than an oath.
I’m Carl Reddy and this is my story.
I know you’ll remember my name. Everybody will.
But also remember that I’m an American patriot. Always was. Always will be.
About the Author 
Al Pessin is an award-winning author and veteran foreign correspondent whose decades of frontline reporting fuel his high-tension political thrillers. He’s covered war zones from Iraq to Afghanistan, interviewed militants in Gaza, and was once expelled from China for “fomenting counter-revolutionary rebellion.”
Before turning to fiction, Pessin spent nearly four decades with Voice of America, serving as a White House and Pentagon correspondent and reporting from global hotspots across Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. His debut thriller Sandblast launched the Task Force Epsilon series and was followed by Blowback and Shock Wave.
He lives in Florida with his wife and their Labrador, Rory.
Visit Al at his website and follow him on Facebook and Instagram.
The book will be available April 21, 2026 at Amazon.
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A Real Collusion is about the secret conspiracy between the Republican and Democratic parties to control the US government through an illegal duopoly.
Stu Strumwasser is a modern-day muckraker who writes literary novels that address important sociopolitical issues. His first novel, The Organ Broker, was published by Skyhorse (distributed by Simon & Schuster) and shortlisted as one of five finalists for the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime writing. Strumwasser was also the primary songwriter and drummer for the indie rock band Channeling Owen. He is a longtime investment professional (investing in sustainable technology that improves the manner in which we make food) and hails from Brooklyn NY. His new novel, A Real Collusion, is both an exposé and analysis of broken government and a fictional David Vs. Goliath(s) story of the man who almost took down the two-party system in America.
