Sheepdogs: A Novel
Elliot Ackerman
Aug 2025 · Penguin Random House Audio
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About this audiobook
A sly, funny, action-packed thriller introducing an instantly iconic spy duo, from the author of New York Times bestseller 2034
Skwerl and Cheese are down on their luck. Skwerl, who is resourceful like a squirrel (Marines win battles, not spelling bees), used to work for the CIA’s elite paramilitary wing. He was fired after a raid went bad in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz, a legendary pilot—his country’s Maverick—is equally hard up. The fall of Kabul has left him working the nightshift at a gas station. Skwerl recruits Cheese into an anonymous network of so-called sheepdogs, who operate in the shadowy space between predator and prey.
Their mission, which Skwerl convinces a reluctant Cheese to accept, is to repossess a private jet stranded on a remote African airfield. Their fee: a commission on the jet’s $5 million value. But nothing about the job adds up. Their contact goes missing. Their handler is as mysterious as the real source of the money. And when the women in their lives get involved—one pregnant wife and one dominatrix—the stakes skyrocket.
From the jungles of Kampala to a glamorous hotel in Marseille, from a veteran-run pizzeria in Kyiv to a Panera in northern Virginia, Skwerl and Cheese and the players around them navigate an increasingly tangled set of loyalties. They join forces with an eccentric bomb technician turned off-the-grid survivalist, a lapsed Amish adventurer, a used car dealer elected to Congress, even a case officer known as the White Russian. Globe-trotting and page-turning, full of heart and humor, Sheepdogs is a uniquely perceptive, wild ride through the underbelly of modern war and intelligence.
About the author
ELLIOT ACKERMAN is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels 2054, 2034, Halcyon, Red Dress in Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, as well as the memoirs The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan and Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning. His books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among others. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, a Senior Fellow at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, and a veteran of the Marine Corps and CIA special operations, having served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. He divides his time between New York City and Washington, D.C.
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