title: Vanished, Value (J. D. Stanton Mysteries)
author:  Alton Gansky 
description: What sinister secret lies hidden in the town of Roanoke II? How did the entire population of this desert military instillation simply disappear? High-level Pentagon orders call J. D. Stanton, retired navy captain, back to active duty to investigate. Heading a crack team of military, government, and scientific experts, Stanton faces a bewildering scenario. Food still on dinner plates, gas nozzles still in the fuel ports of cars at the filling station . . . Whatever happened took the people of Roanoke II completely by surprise. But took them where? The answer -- far beyond what Stanton could conceive in his wildest dreams -- carries a steep price. For forces higher than the Pentagon are invested in the top-secret research of Roanoke II. And they'll protect it ruthlessly. Caught with his team between trained paramilitary killers and an unearthly and deadly enigma, Stanton faces a choice that will stretch his Christian faith to the limits. It could supply answers to the mystery of Roanoke II . . . Or unfathomable and irrevocable horrors.
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  The China Bowl
  
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  # The China Bowl
  
  
  ### E. F. Benson
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
    
  I had long been on the look-out for one of the small houses at the
  
  
  south end of that delectable oblong called Barrett's Square, but for
  
  
  many months there was never revealed to me that which I so much I
  
  
  desired to see—namely, a notice-board advertising that one of these
  
  
  charming little abodes was to be let.
  
  
  At length, however, in the autumn of the current year, in one of my
  
  
  constant passages through the square, I saw what my eye had so long
  
  
  starved for, and within ten minutes I was in the office of the agent
  
  
  in whose hands the disposal of No. 29 had been placed.
  
  
  A communicative clerk informed me that the present lessee, Sir
  
  
  Arthur Bassenthwaite, was anxious to get rid of the remainder of his
  
  
  lease as soon as possible, for the house had painful associations for
  
  
  him, owin