The Bitter Ground and Blood & Smoke (Reggie Arnold Novels) Paperback – February 10, 2026

THE BITTER GROUNDHector Ramirez has spent years disappearing, off the grid, off the radar, and out of the systems that once claimed him. When a violent extremist movement begins organizing across rural America, Hector is pulled back into a world he swore he left behind.Operating alone and without backup, he moves through a fractured country where ideology has replaced loyalty and silence has become survival.The Bitter Ground introduces Hector Ramirez in a standalone novel of resistance, consequence, and the quiet cost of doing the right thing when there are no clean choices left.BLOOD & SMOKEWhen the violence reaches Louisiana, Hector’s path collides with that of Reggie Arnold, an investigator who still believes lines matter, even when the world around him insists they don’t. As the threat escalates and institutions begin to fail, the two men are forced into an uneasy alliance, each carrying a different idea of justice and a different tolerance for how far it can be bent.Blood & Smoke is the fourth Reggie Arnold novel and the first to bring him together with Hector Ramirez, expanding the series into darker territory where loyalty, law, and survival no longer align.Two novels. One country under pressure, and the thin line between holding the ground or burning it. Read more